My first solo backpacking trip: Peru, an introduction. pt 1

It seems like I've always been traveling. In a car. Mom's house. Dad's house. Grandma one, Grandma two, Grandma three. El Paso, Juarez, Las Cruces, Chaparral, Clint. One dusty road at a time. Mostly it was because of dad's work, and partly because I hated taking naps and there weren't many babysitters in El Paso willing to put up with a kid who wouldn't sleep. Dad's a welder. I loved going to work with my dad; especially when the customers (mostly the elderly with a soft spot for a chubby kid) brought out coke and gummy worms for me to eat while I helped my dad work.

About a year ago my dad told me that he knew the reason I had left El Paso. He talked about it the way children talk about their parent's when they die of cancer, as if they could have done something about it. Pried those cigarettes out of their hands. "I always wondered what would have happened if I would have let you go explore that mountain?" My dad said to me. He traced it all back to a time a when I was seven-years-old. He said we were out driving near the Franklin Mountains on our way to a job site when I turned and asked him, "What's behind the mountain?" More mountains, was my dad's response. I marveled at the answer. Parent's words are magic. I remembered thinking to myself. It's true they're endless! Seven-year-olds don't understand sarcasm. My dad said that the answer didn't seem to make me happy and before my dad could turn onto the interstate he said I asked him to pullover. He did.

He told me that I pointed out an area at the base of a hill covered in yucca plants with a few orange boulders that poked out over the cacti. Then, according to dad, I turned to him and said, "Just leave me here.You go to work. I'll go up there and explore the mountain. When you're done, come and get me. Then I'll tell you all about it." He said I was trying to bribe him with the last part, and as you can imagine my dad did what any other sane parent would do. He continued driving. But after I left El Paso to move abroad that scenario must have lingered in my dad's head.

He could be right. Maybe going up there would have purged that longing to explore from my system. Maybe I would have walked out into the desert and realized that the world was a frightening place, where the wilderness howls as wind or wolf, and there are no stores, or soft places to sleep at night. Maybe I would have realized that I was small and alone. Maybe that day I would have seen that the world could suck you up and forget about you until someone else walked by and found my corpse. You get the picture.

Cuzco, Peru

Instead, I grew obsessed with backpacking, camping, and hiking.  I started reading National Geographic, and journals about the Oregon Trail. I imagined myself in those times walking endlessly towards a place I wasn't sure existed, through landscapes I could only imagine. I wanted adventure.

That day, with my dad, I looked over to the side of the road and saw more than a low, wide peak. That day I realized that the world ended just on the other side of the Franklins because the world was the Franklins.

The thing about backpacking is that you never actually become proficient unless you do it.  In order to improve at anything you've gotta make mistakes and hope that they don't kill you in the process. I'm not an expert. I'm an amateur backpacker who hasn't made any mistakes big enough to kill him, yet. This is the first post about my first failure.Which didn't involve much camping or hiking, but I carried a backpack around Peru and eventually got to my destination.

My heart is in Menorca: The Jaleo, or me at my best and most foolish.

I was about to be crushed by a rearing horse when I found out that the people of Menorca had five eyes.

They have no choice.

When you stuff the main square of your town with a few hundred people (Mostly drunk people) and have a parade of horses file in five-at-a-time then you don't have much of a choice, especially if the thought of being dragged out of the crowd on a stretcher doesn't appeal to you.That day I saw a man knocked unconscious by a hoof, and you will hardly believe how unaware he was of the misstep.

"Hay que tener cinco ojos," The man who pulled me out from under the horse before it came smashing down on me from above said. (You have to have five eyes.)

 I weaved through the mob both seeking and avoiding the massive black horses that trotted back and forth within the square. The hooves snapped like crocodile jaws and the sand erupted towards the sky in plumbs of brown smoke. My heart pounded as the horses kicked and foamed while the mosh pit roared around them. The mud struck me in the face and arms. It was like the first time I had ever gone to a charismatic church. Jolted by the congregation as they spoke in tongues and dropped to the floor once their spirit took hold.
This was their ritual, so old they forgot the why, but it was okay, because for this one day of the year, the town of Mahon had amnesia.

 I could see it on their faces. The quiet men and women I'd seen everyday about town-their mundane lives- transformed into a smiling horde. I watched, dumbfounded as sober individuals stumbled through the people and horses as they sipped their Gin and Lemonades (Pomada) with one hand while attempting to lift a rearing horse with the other.

My students, as drunk on Pomada as their teachers, painted dots on their cheeks to indicate if they were taken, single, or not quite taken or single. I bore witness to the longest play. The Fiestas where the children practiced for the final act where they would eventually replace their parents. It was a cycle. I saw it in class everyday. Menorquins know their friends for their entire life. In class I hypothesized about who would eventually marry whom. I was jealous. My life, something I'm grateful for, has been unpredictable, and there was a part of me that envied this security. However, nomadic roses tend to die, and though I have thorns I haven't been known to be a flower.

Menorquins get a bad rap for being closed and leery of newcomers, but I did manage to do the impossible. I made a Menorquin friend. A teacher at my school named Kiko. I wouldn't find out that I had done the impossible until I moved across the sea to Mallorca; where their claim to fame was that they were, if only slightly, less closed to outsiders than Menorquins.

The Menorquins acted as if they knew I was leaving. Which was true. I was going to leave. I would abandon them, the way I abandoned every other place I have lived since birth. However, there was something refreshing about the Menorquin sincerity. Friendship, in Menorca, is a grave responsibility. It's serious. Not some bullshit button press, or a follow me tab. It wasn't something you could just leech onto. I learned this in my hours interviewing the high school kids about various subjects from fashion to relationships. They have expectations to and from their friends. It's a big deal.

Anyway, after a few hundred horses file through the town and into the square, the mayor of the town stands on the front steps of the town hall and toss out sacks of red wine into the crowd while they sing Volem vi, volem vi, which roughly translates into (we want wine, we want wine). Although, when it's translated you might imagine a group of twenty high school students pounding their forks on the cafeteria and shouting WE WANT WINE! I swear the song is much more poetic. Whimsical.

After the wine comes the Samba. Imagine the Samba as a cross between a high school marching band, electronic dance music (without the electronics), and the crazy dude from Prodigy directing the band with a whistle while the crowd holds him in the air on their shoulders. Anybody from Ciutadella, (the more conservative side of the island) would balk at the notion of adding anything but medieval flute music to their festivities.Now, I've never been to the Sant Joan parties in Ciutadella, but I will say, that there is magic in the way the Banda Des Migjorn Gran ends by slowing the beat of I Will Survive into a slow march. I remembered looking around and watching everyone singing in unison as they expurgated themselves of the fuss and burden the closing year had placed upon them. This mob catharsis kept them sane for the year to come.

My heart is in Menorca!