Leon, Nicaragua
I woke to a knock and a voice at the door of our sleeping quarters. My feet made contact with cool, dusty concrete as a I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I woke my husband and we entered the courtyard together and crossed to the kitchen where our friend fed us rice, beans, and hard cheese. By the time we had each downed our cups of coffee we felt alive and ready for the long day ahead of us .
We packed a few essentials–water, a machete, a book of poetry, a hammock, a few baloney sandwiches–and then we were ready to set out on this adventure. Stepping out onto an empty, stoned-paved street we were hit with a wave of morning heat. Down one street, then another, through an alley and out into a busy market our friend guided us. People on foot, in carts pulled by donkeys, on bikes, and motorcycles all swarmed around us.
We plunged into the covered market area–a maze of booths and stalls selling everything imaginable. Freshly arrived from a world of neatly, packaged sterility, I was overwhelmed, invigorated, and intrigued by the myriad smells and sounds attacking my senses. Piles of strange fruits and vegetables, pungent cheeses, and raw meats surrounded us on all sides and the merchant of each product yelled out a price and promotion. I could hardly move for desire to soak it all in; but my husband and our guide were rapidly disappearing into the labyrinth. I ducked quickly through the crowded space to catch them.
We headed towards the light and open air on the other side of the market; stopping on the fringe to get bags of juice for the bus ride (like a gold fish at the fair would come in). Our friend led us seemingly arbitrarily onto one of a line of retired school buses. We sat aboard drinking our juice bags through straws and waiting for the bus to start.
Soon we were leaving the narrow streets of the city and driving through the dusty countryside. The others chattered and joked, but I couldn’t draw my eyes from that hot, dry countryside with its scattered tin-roofed huts. The world was so foreign and strange and soon the sharp, smoking triangles of the volcanoes appeared in the distance.
We were dropped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. We began our trek up a dirt side road with the largest of the volcano peaks looming in the near distance. Halfway up the road a young horse appeared trotting down the road towards us. We watched bewildered as it drew nearer and then passed by–unaccompanied and intent on its destination.
After a while the road came to an end and we found ourselves at the head of an unmarked trail heading up into some sparse trees and meandering in the general direction of the faintly smoking peak. We paused for a few moments before beginning the real portion of our adventure. Up the rooted, rocky trail we climbed–grateful for the thin shade that the trees provided to protect us from the sun. It was still early in day, but the air felt like it came from an oven–so hot and dry.
We climbed through the woods for miles, up and up. Finally, we broke out of the trees and passed through parched fields on a path so narrow, dusty and hot that we were soon covered in a fine layer of brown dirt clinging to our sweatless skin. I would not readily admit that I was tiring, but once or twice suggested we stop to eat–anxious to have a rest before I had to break down and demand one. It had been a long and sunless winter for me and I bitterly found my body weaker than I was accustomed to. But I soaked in the hot sunshine like one starved–feeling it heal and warm me to my bones.
Finally, after many miles through this desolate unmarked wilderness–when we all felt at the end of our morning strength–we saw it. A massive, lush tree in the midst of all of the dry shrubbery. It was surreal–like seeing a mirage of an oasis in a desert. We did not fully believe it until we reached its shade and entered instantly into another world. Under the thick, heavy canopy of this massive mango tree was an atmosphere of peace, still and cool.
Our friend strung his hammock and we sat on a rough wooden bench already there. In this haven of coolness and quiet we devoured the most delicious baloney sandwiches anyone has ever eaten and gave sighs of relief and contentment. We reclined and relaxed and read a few poems. We sat quietly and melted into the earth and the tree and felt that it would be best to never leave this place.
I don’t know which of us broke the spell and suggested moving on. We emerged from the shadow of the tree and instantly were returned to the ordinary world. It was still brutally hot, but the sun had shifted in the sky and we saw that we would have to hurry to complete the miles to the top and then begin our descent.
Revitalized, we set out with renewed briskness. The climb grew steeper and the undergrowth thicker but shorter. The path began to switch-back up the side of the cone–we were on the side of the volcano now. The climb was backbreaking and my heart was pounding harder than it had in a long time when we crested a hill and broke out of the undergrowth. We scrambled up through barren, rock strewn hills; one after another. Finally we reached the summit of a hill like the rest but instead of another hill beyond it we saw that we were now on the backbone of a ridge leading directly to the crater. Beneath us was a flat field strewn with rocks of all sizes thrown from the mouth of the crater. A few tents were being set up there for other pilgrims to spend the night. We speculated about how awesome that would have been to do (but when we woke in our beds that night to a massive earthquake we were grateful to be safely away from the power of the mountain). Ahead, looming over the boulder field was the massive crater, the sun just behind it, veiled in a thin cloud of smoke and outlining it to make it look even larger and sharper.
The narrow foot path lead on through the boulders and up towards the crater, and so we followed. No signs showed the way or told where not to go. No barriers to stop those who made this pilgrimage. At the end the path grew very steep and we scrambled excitedly, anxiously to the top, to the rim. When we reached the level ground around the rim we walked slowly forward, slack-jawed in amazement.
Our friend directed us to a rock at the edge where it was “said” to be safe to stand. We all stood in silence staring into the vastness before us. The opening of the crater created a sheer cliff dropping away hundreds of feet to the floor of the pit. As the smoke shifted you could sometimes catch gray glimpses of the rocky bottom far below. The crater produced a mind-filling, brain-numbing noise of its own. I cannot quite describe it–whether it was a roar, a hum, a whirring. But it was there nonetheless and combined with the fumes and the enormity of it all I felt off-balance–as if I might at any moment pitch forward head-over-heels into the abyss.
We morbidly speculated over what would happen to one who fell in–would they die first of impact, heat, or suffocation–as we peered into crater. As we looked into the shifting depths and our eyes tried to focus on some end point something gradually began to appear to us–a glowing red-orange orb. We could not believe our own eyes at first. It could not be, could it? The orb grew larger, pulsing, unmistakable now, then vanished in a swath of smoke.
My eyes searched for what they were sure of a moment before, but was now gone. And then again, out of the swirling depths a glow appeared–faint, but unmistakable. The veil of smoke that threatened to hide it once again from my eyes did not lessen the effect–it made it feel all the more real, and threatening; a monster in the shadows. I knew then that I was seeing the living world beneath our feet and it looked back at me, and I trembled. I felt naked and vulnerable, but also more alive and aware of my own being than ever before. I was looking upon some mythical, primal force, some power I did not know until that moment that the world possessed. I knew of magma, yes, but when I looked upon the exposed, pulsing heart of the world I knew I would never be quite the same again. The world was a new place for me–more terrifying and wonderful than before. I felt that I had been looking for dinosaur bones and instead found a living, breathing dragon–looking for the incredible and finding the mythical.
Snapshots of a Traveler's Life 