Peru. The Sacred Valley.
Peru and the Bucket List
In the general theme of this whole series of “the bucket list,” Peru had been at the top of mine for several years. Throughout my childhood, we had this ethereal photograph—taken by one of my dad’s friends—hanging on the wall that always filled me with wonder. It wasn’t one of those crystal-clear wide-angle shots of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu that you find on the cover of National Geographic (or, to an extent, in the photos below). Instead, it was a simple shot of a mist-covered stone circle erected by the Inca, tucked away in an area of the ruins that tourists rarely visit because nothing seems particularly special about it.
This circle was located in the quarry where the Inca once hewed massive stones for the city, yet the arrangement is so precise it seems to indicate some ceremonial purpose. That photograph shaped my impression of Machu Picchu growing up: not the “Disney World” of dramatic ruins and panoramic Andean vistas that most people imagine, but a place shrouded in mystery and unanswered questions. Why was almost no gold discovered at a site purported to be the luxurious home of Incan royals, especially from a people who surrendered countless galleons of it to the Spanish? Why were only the bones of women uncovered upon its discovery? Did the men all go off to war and never return? And what exactly took place on the human-sized altars, seemingly designed to honor the sun and the surrounding mountains?
My Father’s Fascination
As a kid, I’d ask my mom about that picture. She’d tell me there was once a mighty culture there—kind of like the “Indians” of North America, but bigger, grander, and more mysterious. She’d remind me that my dad often spoke of wanting to go but never did.
He had always been enamored by Native American culture. He could spend hours walking a freshly tilled field in Indiana, searching for arrowheads or any trace of the tribes that once lived there. He even made his own tools out of rawhide, wood, and stone—just as they would have centuries ago—in an attempt to recreate the lives of the men and women who lived in America long before us. Everything about their culture fascinated him. And now, it fascinates me as well.
It was for him that I made this trip—finally coming face-to-face with the mystery I had stared at on my living room wall since childhood.
A Story from the Road
In telling the story of the trip, I’ll let one of my older posts (which, by coincidence, I wrote five years ago almost to the day) speak for me. It was about coming across road construction in the otherwise uninterrupted jungle landscape of the Santa Teresa river valley, just outside Machu Picchu. My thoughts on the experience haven’t changed much since then, so I’ll simply link to it rather than retell it all.
But I can’t help but note: if my dad had been there, he might have had a deeper appreciation for how changing times can be bittersweet—that development can spoil Mother Nature in irreversible ways. He might have reflected on how there was once a time when men behaved as if humanity and Earth were dependent on each other, our fates inescapably intertwined.
Perhaps I’m putting words in his mouth. But this I know for certain: at the very least, he would have been walking through that construction site looking for Incan arrowheads.
