the ridge hike | remote andes mountains, ecaudor

I trembled as I straightened my legs. I inhaled deeply, and I caught myself thinking that I could really die up here. As though my fear were a pesky fly buzzing nearby, I shook my head to shoo it away. I placed my hands on my thighs, took in another deep breath, and willed my legs to stand tall and to please god stop shaking. I balanced one foot in front of the other; the trail was too narrow to stand with them side-by-side. The not quite foot-wide trail dropped precariously off on either side. It was sheer cliffs down either. For a moment, when I finally rose to my full height, for one minute the danger gave way to the sight of verdant mountainsides and downright breathtaking scenery. At somewhere between 11,000 - 13,000 feet in the air, with mountain peaks that shrank beneath me, and a heavy sky weighing down on top of me, I felt like I'd reached the top of the world. Like I was standing on the very point where earth and sky meet, and were that the case, I can promise you that it's a sight to behold and worth the death-defying climb to reach it.

Zan bellowed from 40 feet below me, his voice stricken with fear that camouflaged itself as anger. HOW MUCH FURTHER?

My legs started to shake again. I'd taken in the view, and for that one instant of total clarity, my fear had receded, but his voice brought me back into the moment, the physicality of our situation, the responsibility that weighed on me. In search of where the trail led, I made the mistake of looking down.

I'm not afraid of heights. I love the feeling of flying while barreling down a 100 foot drop on a roller coaster, and I learned to rock scramble just for the thrill of jumping off cliffs 30 feet above swimming holes below, but this. This was a different sort of height. To my right, the drop was vertical. To the left the drop was vertical. And all that was between me and those vertical drops was this narrow dirt path and the wind, that was unfortunately picking up.

I pulled the hand drawn trail guide out of my jacket pocket. I unfolded it carefully; it seemed like every move I made in those few moments was calculated, was exact, was more cautious than I have ever been. My heart raced trying to read the map standing on this ridge. I reminded myself that Edmundo, the owner of our guesthouse, had discovered this hike when he was 8 years old. Eight. If he could do it then, I could certainly do it now. And then I thought that 8-year-old feet were much better suited to this sort of thing and got flustered all over again.

But I read and re-read the guide.

You will squeeze through a gap in the rocks and come out on the other side of the mountain. I flashed back to the narrow crevice we'd crawled through 20 minutes earlier. Check.

The path splits, with the left heading downhill. Take the less developed path on the right... We'd seen that and gone right. Zan had been leading at that point. We pointed it out and checked it off the map. But early in the hike we'd thought we'd finished one instruction, and we hadn't. We had to retrace our steps. What if we turned the wrong way?

Continue on top of the ridge. Well, there was no doubt we were on the ridge.

Once you get to the plateau, keep along the left edge. What plateau? I couldn't see any end in sight. The ridge was just a balance beam of dirt.

I thought about turning back. Could we scale down the ridge? That seemed as dangerous as moving forward. I read back through the guide and went with my instincts: we had followed it correctly, and this path would - it had to - eventually come out to a plateau.

I moved onward.

Zan, terrified of heights, followed behind me, yelling ahead every few minutes to ask about my progress, what I could see, and for the love of god to stop taking pictures!

I couldn't. The thrill of the ridge hike paralleled my fear, and every time I found large shrubbery to grasp onto or a skinny rock to squat nearby, I took the opportunity and  kept snapping photos.


I repeatedly told Zan I was stopping to catch my breath and that all was fine, and the trail was great to keep encouraging him to move forward and to stay calm. The truth is that every 10-20 feet I re-read the guide, prayed a little that the plateau was ahead, and tried to swallow the pit in my stomach.

At one point, I laughed at the handwritten note at the top of the guide, Warning: If you are afraid of heights, you may not enjoy this hike. So much for that!

Five minutes later, out of nowhere, the ridge emptied into the plateau. It was a large, open area covered in beige reeds and spindly shrubs. Zan fell to the earth and lay there recovering, practically hugging the security beneath him. When we had reached the ledge, he could have asked us to go back, he could have said absolutely not, we don't even know that this is the right path, and I'm terrified of heights, but he stayed on the ridge. And I think that when you find a person that will walk across a foot-wide trail to stand on top of the world with you, that you have everything you'll ever need.

My legs finally stopped shaking, and the adrenaline-laced euphoria eventually subsided until my heart beat normally again. The rest of the hike was less harrowing but only the tiniest bit less beautiful.

When I look back on Ecuador, it's the ridge - that moment of nothing but the sky and the earth and me, and the adrenaline of hiking a tightrope trail - that fill me with every feeling I could ever feel. That hike... every traveler searches for that hike. Every traveler has those few and far between experiences that, like an addictive drug, keep you exploring to the ends of the earth for another.

welcome to the monster jam

When I saw that Monster Jam was in town at the Verizon Center, I laughed out loud. Giant trucks demolishing smaller trucks and roaring through an arena that suddenly seems small in their larger-than-life presence? Wasting fuel with all that engine revving? And boys upon men upon guys decked out in camo gear and tacky t-shirts repping their favorite truck (and who knew the trucks had names? and personalities?!)? None of it was me - and all of it stirred something in my deep down Georgia roots that made me feel alive, and that's what made it so irresistible.

After the last six months of filling my life to overflowing with applying to graduate school, and the last few weeks of painting Zan's place and writing Craiglist ads and thinking non-stop about how in the world to get it rented for what we need to rent it for... it seemed like nothing in the world would be more satisfying than watching trucks with wheels taller than me crush things. It was kind of my own therapy session.

I drank a vodka cranberry and dabbed wet tissue to the fake ink on my chest and on Zan's neck and straight up enjoyed overpriced drinks and picked a favorite truck -the Crushstation! We ate fried food and filled the lulls in the show with banter with our friends and felt so glad we have the kind that embrace the silly, fun bits of life with all they got.

The Monster Jam was completely ridiculous, and 4 trucks out of the 6 broke down (seeing one stuck on the piles of cars was kind of a highlight?). It felt good to laugh at the antics and aggression of it all, and that was worth the ping of a vodka headache and rawness of a throat that cheered all night the next morning.

in the stacks | orange is the new black

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I spent the first half of Orange is the New Black: My Year In a Women's Prison disappointed that it wasn't as scandalous as Netflix's version. I felt bad saying it out loud - I told Zander that it lacked excitement - there was no crime, no drama, and certainly no lesbian shower sex scenes. But I shook myself out of it, thank goodness, and really delved into the last half of the book for what it was, instead of what the show is. And it's so much better than the scandalized account. It's a real, deeply personal account of life inside the US prison system.

Piper Kerman was in a serious, committed relationship with a drug dealer 10 years prior to her stint in prison. For her, Piper agreed to deliver a suitcase of drug money across international borders. After that experience, she chose to leave the relationship and rebuild her life.

Piper and her boyfriend move to New York from San Francisco, where she has a booming career. Her life is interrupted when federal officers bring charges against her for the crime she committed 10 years ago.

Piper agrees to a deal but spends years battling in court, growing increasingly anxious about serving jail time. She's eventually sentenced to 13 months in Danbury Federal Correctional Institute, a women's prison.The rest is her story of living in prison.

Piper is so honest in this book. She talks openly about her privilege as a white and well-educated woman and how that made her stay infinitely more bearable than for many of the other women. She often received better treatment because she was seen as an anomaly, someone who "shouldn't" be in there. Piper uses her privilege for good. She writes appeals letters, shares the abundant supply of books and magazines she gets from friends and family, and even helps a woman earn her diploma.

She brings the inmates to life. She gives every woman in the prison system a voice and imbues them with the deepest humanity. She talks about the struggle for uneducated women to receive their high school diplomas and learn skills that could help them enter the workforce when they leave. She heartbreakingly tells accounts of women that don't have a support system so when they are released they have nowhere to go, struggle to find jobs, and end up back in jail. Jail becomes more of a family than some of the women have elsewhere.

Piper discusses how backwards our prison system is. For instance, she describes women who are in jail for drug charges who were forced into it, their lives threatened. She talks about the need for rehabilitation, prison services that prepare women for the world, and the sheer despondency of pregnant inmates whose children are taken away once they're born.

I cried throughout the entire ending of Piper's story. She owns her crime, she accepts the punishment, and she's able to move on with her life - marry a man she loves and pursue her career ambitions. But what about the women inside? What happens to them? Long after I closed the last page, their stories ran through my mind. Where are they now?

latitude: 00° 00' 00"

In Ecuador, the exact location of the middle of the world is up for debate.

I tend to believe that the one tucked amidst dense foliage off of a dirt road is the real deal. I checked the time by the sun, balanced a raw egg on a nail vertically, and couldn't step two feet in a straight line with my eyes closed and arms outstretched because the force of the north pulling me up and the south pulling me down messed up the equilibrium in my ears, and I nearly toppled straight over. I believed it when the guide demonstrated the Coriolis Effect - the water swirling one way in the north, and the other way in the south, and just straight down on the equator. But I believed it most when I felt the full effect of the equator on my muy rojo cheeks and forehead and nose.

The Museo Intinan was discovered by GPS and is run by locals in jeans with holes in the knees. Some of them speak English, and they spoke of the native Ecuadorian tribes that still live in the Amazon jungle today. We saw the shrunken heads of men on poles - the strength and leadership of the full-sized man transferred into his captor, as his head lay buried under burning embers, its skull removed, down to nothing but the flesh, miniature enough that I gawked and still wondered, "but how is that possible?" A symbolic usurping of power; I get it. (And literal - because the man's head was on a pole, after all.) At that memorial to latitude 00.00.00, these is a playpen of guinea pigs, alive and well and adorably furry; the guide laughed and said, "Dinner!"

At the prettier tribute to the center of the earth, a stately stone monument named Mitad del Mundo rests in the center of a sprawling complex, complete with an elevator to an observation deck and an Ecuadorian museum conveniently winding its way back down the stairs. There are restaurants and gift shops - you can even have that guinea pig dinner... for $22. And I'm positive I saw an amusement-park style ride just down the road. I liked the big "S" and "N" emblazoned in the well-manicured lawn and the view stretching over endless mountains (that view is common in Ecuador).

Zan and I didn't shave our heads on the equator like the sailors once did, and really we didn't do anything legendary. But we stood on the line between North and South, one foot in each hemisphere, home and away from home, here and there, near and far, and it all felt equal because it was equidistant; the world was smaller and more reachable in its vastness, and that felt significant.

Then we got on the wrong bus and unknowingly circled around ("haven't we seen this before?") and watched a funeral procession march through town. Even in the center of the world, I have no sense of direction.

steps unsuitable for sasquatch feet | quito's basilica

The steps winding the way up to the top of the clock tower are no more than six inches wide, and they're steep, each metal stair only inches above the one below it. At 5'10" and with size 10 (wide) feet, my ascent was something out of a cartoon. I climbed up on my toes -- I only fit on each step from the tips of my toes to the balls of my feet. Had I hunched over and looked frantically from side to side a time or two to make sure a wily mouse or cat or coyote wasn't chasing me, I think animated music would have accompanied my itty bitty tinkle toe climb. But when I reached the top, all of Old Town Quito spread out before me. It was a postcard, addressed to me from blue skies and wisps of white, lightweight clouds above. The Basilica bell rang; it was Quito's finest hour. And I started my clumsy descent, side stepping one foot over the other and holding on to the wobbly rail for dear life.

if you go...

Basilica del Voto Nacional is in Quito's charming Old Town

Fee to climb the clock tower: $2

(there is sometimes a fee to enter the church)

you can take the stairs or the elevator inside the church

hours: 9:00-5:00

some history of the church

15,953 feet on cotopaxi volcano

I cried when we reached the shelter at base camp. I'd gone into our hike on Cotopaxi volcano thinking that the altitude would make it tougher but not that much tougher. We'd only be gaining 1,000-1,500 feet of elevation while hiking, and that should be nothing for me. I didn't anticipate how hard the altitude would make every step.

We reached the dirt "parking lot," where our bus let our group out to start the ascent, and I knew something wasn't right. I was the tiniest bit dizzy, my stomach the tiniest bit topsy-turvy, and my vision felt out of sorts. I felt off, and I felt it immediately. I slowly drank some water, trying to mentally calm down. I took in breaths slowly, hoping it was just nerves and the anticipation of the altitude more than the altitude itself.

Zan and I started hiking and found ourselves squarely in the middle of the pack. The guide told us if we reached base camp with enough time, we'd hike up to the glacier. We all wanted to see the glacier and picked up our pace. Even with an accelerated pace, we weren't moving quickly.

Within 10 minutes, I slowed down to a snail's pace. I would take three or four steps and need to stop to regain my balance and clear my sight. I was breathing hard and the dizziness came and went in increasingly stronger spells. Zan told me to turn back more than once. At some point - about halfway to the refuge, I started to agree with him. I knew I'd regret turning back; I'd always regret turning back. On the other hand, altitude sickness is very real and scary. I kept taking a few more steps. And then stopping for a slow sip of water and to reconsider. Step, step, and reconsider.

And then it began snowing. The trail turned from black volcanic ash and rock to pure white in a matter of minutes. The snow came down like hail, pelting us on every surface. We shielded our faces and talked through the storm. By that point, I felt nauseated. We'd long ago lost track of the majority of our group. Through the storm, we couldn't see anyone ahead of us or behind us. We walked and stalled like that, getting colder by the minute, until a group of three men, not with our group, rounded the switchback and neared us.

"You're only about 10 minutes from base camp," the guide said, pointing to a blanket of white in the distance. Clouds and the snow obscured our sight of camp, but it filled me with hope and renewed determination. Ten minutes with the long switchbacks meant we didn't have much more to gain in elevation.

We kept on like that, with Zan encouraging me, reminding me to take it slower. My biggest problem was starting out with a burst of energy, which exacerbated my headache and other symptoms. Hiking so slowly I didn't think we'd ever make it, we rounded the switchbacks one by one, until finally, the refuge came into view.

We climbed the last small hill and stumbled inside, desperate for warmth and tea. Tears pooled in my eyes. The feeling of accomplishment overwhelmed me. After a few cups of coca tea, my body started to adjust a little better, and we went outside just long enough to watch the snow storm end and the clouds break the tiniest bit. The entire volcano was covered in white.

We were standing at 15,953 feet on one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. The descent was straight down and we half walked, half slid down in the snow, the whole group re-energized from the break and the view. We weren't able to make it to the glacier because the storm made conditions hiking further up dangerous, but by then none of us cared.

We rode back down the volcano on mountain bikes; Zan was the first one down, and I was the second to last. I slowed for potholes and bumps in the ash road, and meandered to the side about 100 times to take pictures.

We booked our day trip to Cotopaxi on a whim and the recommendation of another traveler the night before. Like most unexpected things when I travel, it was a highlight of our trip.

if you go...

day trips run about $65 with a reputable group, English-speaking guide & lunch

it's doable independently - look up bus times from Quito & be prepared for freak weather

a great guide for climbing cotopaxi on the cheap

wear: hiking boots, layers, wicking & waterproof, gloves, hat

it's possible to climb to the top of Cotopaxi, but it's a technical hike with crampons & other gear

about 2-3 hours from Quito

a sea lion at sunset on san cristobal

Missing our flight was the best thing could have happened at the time.

Our 7:00am ferry from Santa Cruz to San Cristobal turned into our 7:45am ferry. After we'd finally boarded, a lengthy roll-call ensured all the members of a tour group were on board, in addition to the rest of us. I'd taken Dramamine, and it was the right choice. The water was choppier than we'd seen the whole week. We cut through swells so high that the yacht flew airborne for a stomach-dropping moment before the jarring impact back into the water. For an hour it was a roller coaster, with all 30 passengers screaming and laughing with every jump and plunge. Then it got rough and painful for those closest to the bow and wet and cold for those nearest the stern.

At long last, we slowed to a lulling stop and the engine cut; the silence was deafening. The tour passengers were transferred onto another boat - a yacht rendezvous in open water. Ten minutes later we docked on our beloved San Cristobal; it felt like coming home.

Zan and I hailed a cab and dashed to the airport. But even on island time and at an airport devoid of an enclosed building, checking in 20 minutes before our flight didn't "fly," and we were stranded. I burst into tears. It seems ridiculous that I got so emotional being stuck somewhere so wondrous and coveted. But we were mentally prepared to leave and get to our next destination and survive the 20 hours of travel it'd take to do so. In hindsight, prolonged exhaustion, coupled with the drugged, drowsy effect of the seasickness medicine exacerbated my reaction.

It took us most of the morning to get re-booked on a flight for the next day and switch into "plan b" mode. Our favorite ecolodge was booked, but Harry recommended a simple hotel. We threw our things on the bed, put on still-damp swimsuits, lathered on sunscreen for the millionth time that week, and played on the beach and in the ocean with sea lions and locals until the sun set.

Drugged and worn out or not, our "bonus day" served as a good reminder that being grouchy, not finding the "bright side" right away, and arguing with Zan doesn't mean a trip is ruined, that I'm a "bad" traveler, or even that the day is shot. In fact, it might have been my favorite day of all. We put no expectations on ourselves to see or do anything in particular. And it was then, when we weren't looking, that we made some of our favorite memories and took some of our favorite pictures in the Galapagos, and on our favorite island, in particular.

We ate at San Jose, the best restaurant on the island, one more time, hugged Harry goodbye twice, and woke up laughing the morning away.

And that time, we made our flight.

the day after i was mugged

I wrote the following journal entry the day after Zander and I were mugged at knife-point in Quito on our first day in Ecuador. Please know that it may contain triggers. Quito is a beautiful city filled with beautiful people. Bad things can happen anywhere. 

Every time I close my eyes, I see one of two things. In the first, the man with the knife stabs Zander in the shoulder. I scream and rush at him. But before I can knock the knife away, he stabs Zan again. The guy runs away with our belongings, and I lay screaming "Help!" in Spanish (and the vision pauses for a second as I confirm in my head - is "alto" help or is it stop? Maybe "ayuda" is help... or is that stop?).

In the second, I stop the guy. Every time, I use a different method to stop him. All my anger builds like a water balloon until it finally bursts, and I punch him in the face, knocking him over and the knife away. I really do punch him straight in the face, and it's so real that when I open my eyes I'm shaking my hand out, like that really stung. Other times I bargain with him. Spanish flows easily as I convince him Zan's designer sunglasses are cheap knockoffs, and it's mine that he wants - the ones I really bought on the side of the street earlier that day for $7.

But I did none of those things.

What really happened was that a guy - a scrawny punk no more than 20 years old - rounded the corner and lifted his shirt slightly enough that I saw where the sheath of the knife met his dingy boxers. He pulled out the knife - it blindingly glinted in the bright sun at that crazy altitude. He erratically imitated stabbing Zander in an up-and-down motion, both hands on the handle like he was going to jab him in his skull over and over, despite the six or eight or even foot height difference between them. He did all this while demanding our cameras and cash and Zan's sunglasses in something like broken English.

Instead of all the things I think I could have done when I close my eyes, when the silver of the 4 or 5 inch blade neared Zan's chest, and the guy, trembling (I wondered, is he drunk?), yelled again for our things now, is that I removed the memory card from my camera and slid it into my pocket, without moving at all.

I don't know why I did that, but I know my thought was - you're not getting my pictures, you bastard, and that somehow that felt like the only control I had, and that the only other thing in my head was a hope that telepathy works and that Zander could hear my silent plea to please oh please don't take on a man with a knife.

And then Zan babbled. He talked and he talked: What do you mean? What does that mean? I don't speak Spanish he said. He stalled and bought time; another family or more tourists would come along any second now. But as soon as that knife got too close, he handed over his DSLR and his sunglasses.

And then I waited because I was next.

Before he reached me, as I removed the camera strap from my neck, a local man screamed and came running, his arms outstretched. Everything happened in an instant. The guy sprinted into the woods, Zan lunged after him, and the older Ecuadorian man went on the chase. Zan and I locked eyes and got the hell out of there.

Three minutes later and 100 yards from police officers, as Zan and I took the steps down the steep pathway two at a time, I looked up and noticed a man watching me too closely. He was coming up the stairs in my direction, pretending to talk into a cell phone. I cautiously said to Zan, who was a few feet in front of me, that I was going to cross the street. I crossed, and the man crossed with me, closing the distance between us. I crossed back, and he met me on the sidewalk.

He demanded my things and threw his fists up in my face like he was imitating something he'd seen in a bad American movie. And I thought, Really? Is that all you brought? Because after facing a knife and being filled with anger I hadn't yet even processed, it felt laughable.

He grabbed me, and I don't remember screaming, but my throat was sore later and police officers came running. As he lunged for my camera, I threw it on the ground behind me and fell with it - I don't know if he pushed me or I threw myself there, too. Zan got a hold of the material of his shirt, but he wriggled free and he, too, went running out of sight.

Shell-shocked, we climbed down the remaining stairs and stepped into the broad expanse of a public square. We hailed a taxi to a mall to buy a replacement charger for Zan's phone, the next thing on our to-do list.

I'm okay, except when I close my eyes.


-----------

**El Panecillo, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the highest point in Quito, is the best view point in the city. There are two ways to get there: a taxi or walking up the "trail" - a steep set of steps straight up the mountain. Tourists are discouraged from taking the latter route. There's a sign on the side of a building on the path that says it is a robbery zone. We were warned by locals as we climbed the stairs, and we saw the sign. We made the decision to continue to take that path. I did not address this because it's irrelevant and was our decision to make (and does not justify the crime). We met a couple our age a few days later who had climbed all the way to the statue on the same day, less than an hour earlier than we had without incident. I share this information in the hopes that if you visit Quito you can make the choice that is best for you.

zanta claus is coming to town

I couldn't really say goodbye to 2013 until going through and sharing photos from Matt's and my holiday party. It was a special party for us because 1) Zanta showed up, and he's the cutest Santa Claus you've ever seen, right?! And 2)  it was the last party we'll host as roommates (errr, we assume!).

Matt and I met at a summer nerd camp in high school, and we've been friends for the last decade since. All of my favorite memories in our friendship are kind of around the same theme - what's next? We've always seemed to be catalysts for big, good change for the other. He came to visit me in school in the dead of a Nebraska winter in 2007, and he helped me get over a really bad boyfriend and realize how horrible a person he really was - with the help of homemade baked goods and binge-watching America's Next Top Model.... and so many jello shots we lost count.

We roadtripped from Georgia to Los Angeles in the summer of 2008; he was moving there for acting school, and I was going to find a summer internship before finishing my last semester of college. We dyed my hair blond (big, BIG mistake), saw the tallest cross in the Western hemisphere (and after, Matt's broken AC in his car miraculously worked again!), and we ran through a waterpark in Amaraillo, Texas riding every single ride in 30 minutes flat (best choice ever). That summer in LA we shared a bed in a studio apartment that wasn't worth half of what we paid but "they filmed A Lot Like Love in the courtyard and omg we live in Hollywood!" so it was kind of worth it anyway, at least for the crazy memories.

Matt came to visit me in DC in 2011 after he went through a bad breakup, and my god if we didn't paint the town and shut it down. He loved DC so much that he swore he'd move here. Within six months, he had. We've lived together since. We've survived a slumlord and bionic rats, and it has been so. much. fun.

He decided to go to grad school, and when Matt puts his mind to something - it happens. He got into American for international relations, and we tore up nachos and pitchers of margaritas to celebrate his victory. His success was my catalyst to finally do the same exact thing, a goal I've had for years but was too afraid to pursue because of the possibility of taking on more debt. He helped tutor me for the math portion of the GRE and has been my biggest fan in this process.

So for our last party together, we wanted to go out with a bang. With the help of our closest friends in the city, we went through a dozen bottles of wine, threw countless beer bottles in the recycling bin, ate fried turkey and deviled eggs until we nearly burst, laughed until our faces hurt, and filled our whole stinking basement apartment with holiday joy.

I can't wait to see what's next for us in 2014.