8:40 AM, Costa Rica. Rice and beans eaten, waterbottle filled: all systems go. I step out onto the dust and rock road at the center of Boruca, turn left, and start walking.
The first few meters are blissfully flat, a ten or fifteen second tease. Then the ascent begins. One foot after another, one meter after another, I climb. The sun burns bright overhead as I pass the shuttered police station, occupied only once a week, and then the pulperia on my left and the bus stop across from it, teeming with the relative life of four or five people standing, sitting, buying, and watching me, the gringa in orange sunglasses making her way up, up, up.
The road does not flatten out after the pulperia—it gets steeper. The incline is at least 30 degrees, an estimate which to my out-of-practice brain and aching calves seems pathetically conservative. A shout—HELLOOOOOO, TEACHER!— is answered automatically with my response of HELLOOOO into the cluster of tin-roofed houses to my right. And I keep climbing.
The already scorching pre-noon sun is blissfully off to the side in the sky, allowing for several of the trees towering over the road to cast arching shadows into my path. Several, but not many. Even now, at 8:50, the vast majority of what lies ahead is unprotected, uncovered, bleached by the power of the giant ball of energy pulsing above me, waiting for my Tevas to crunch in, crunch on, kicking ambitious pebbles loose to tumble back down to the center of the pueblo below.
I pass the last of the houses, then the blue-roof clinic, then the energy compound. The incline increases. I can feel the sweat starting to drip down my back and my arms, feel my pulse pounding in my fingers and the pads of my feet, hear the roar of blood in my ears. I think of the Hunger Games, think of Katniss Everdeen and how she lost the hearing in her left ear as she fought for her life. I am lucky to not live under the rule of tyrants. And I am lucky to hear. And I am lucky to be alive.
I keep climbing.
9 AM. The road curves again to the right and I stop to catch my breath, resting my hands on my thighs and leaning down as I gaze back over Boruca. I have been hiking on a steep incline for 20 minutes without respite and my shirt is damp with sweat. From this altitude the houses look like toys, the giant cross in front of the church a dainty white figurine against the rolling backdrop of the mountains stretching as far as my eyes can see. These mountains are majestic in their enormity, their endless peaks reminding me of stiffly beaten eggwhites atop a lemon-meringue pie. Dark green, leafy eggwhites. I find my brain again thinking of the Hunger Games and Katniss, again thinking of her struggle for food and the fantasies of meat and water that haunted her, then thinking about my own thirst and the water and cookies in my camera bag. I promise myself that once I reach the top of the mountain, I will take a break and refuel.
But I still have quite a way to go.
Up, Up, Up. I round a bend and come up short—this is the curve, this exact swath of dirt and rock, this exact precipice over a valley—this is exactly the place where, three weeks ago, the bus broke down and began to slide backwards, backwards down the incline, first in a straight line and then in a curve, the driver unable to control it and the wheels rolling further and further until—suddenly, blessedly, and diagonally across the road—the wheels had come to an abrupt stop on the edge of a steep drop. I remember the knuckles of my fingers grasping the seat in front of me, remember searching for a way out—windows too small, door closed— remember the shriek of nervous laughter that had escaped my lips as I wondered what would be the safest position to crash in, what I could grab that would give me the best chance of survival, and then it was over. Over, and then we were out on the side of the road, waiting for an hour in the shade of the bus for a pick-up truck to come and drive us up the mountain. Waiting, as men dug a path in the mountain around the bus so that a car or two could get by—waiting, waiting, in the dust and rocks. The same dust and rocks that now slip under my feet as I climb.
Up, up, up. It is now past 9, and I have yet to see a car, a motorcycle, or any other sort of vehicle. I pass a horse chewing its way through the high grass beside the road, contained not by a fence but by an overabundance of food. It whinnies what seems disapproval and continues to chew, chew, chew as I climb, climb, climb. The sun climbs, too, but I do not welcome its company.
I hurt. My legs hurt. My lungs hurt. My throat hurts. My lips are dry, my gaze does not want to focus as well as it did a half hour ago. My face and body are wearing a mask of sweat. There are three shadow-patches ahead on the final stretch of mountain, and I force myself to trudge up from one, to the next, to the next, waiting a few seconds in each and savoring the treat of an instant of shade. I think about each step, think about the distance I am putting between myself and where I have been, think about where I am going. I think about music, about the birds, about death, about the absence of humanity, and about nothing at all.
Have you ever noticed how some birds have a wingspan as large as a human? A huge shadow grazes over me as a vulture swoops down close over my head, and I think not only of its size but also of how, were I to collapse in the heat, the vultures would soon return, gleeful and wanting to pick my bones clean.
Up, up, up.
I can see it now. I can see the curve of the road that promises relief, shade, and a stretch of flat path before hills begin again—and I know that I will make it, can almost taste the sweet water in my thermos, can barely contain my relief as I round the bend and find a swirling, cool patch of air under a copse of trees where the wind seems to be caught in an angry loop, furiously swirling around my aching body.
Finally.
There are no benches here. There is no curb. There isn’t even a stump of a tree or a big rock that could serve as my chair, so I plop down unceremoniously on the road, sending up a small cloud of dust into the mountain air.
For a few seconds, this is my dream, this is my heaven. It takes no effort to block out the entire universe save for the rise and fall of my chest as I gulp air, the ecstasy of every exposed inch of skin as the wind—ohhh, the wonderful wind!—dances across it and lifts away the heat. I am purely, entirely happy, aware of my life and knowing my ignorance and full of love.
My fingers trace over the cool metal of my thermos and I crack it open,
sipping down life in short gulps. I break into my honeycrackers, chewing them slowly and letting the flavors sit on my tongue. My pulse and breathing slow and a rooster crows somewhere nearby and I imagine a camera, zoomed in on me, then slowly panning out, out, out, and I wonder how long it would take, how many seconds of film, how many hundreds of meters of dirt road, before that camera would arrive at the first houses, the first people, the first signs of civilization. Quite a few, I think.
9:20. I smile, stand back up, dust off the back of my shorts. I am almost there, now, I know—only a few small hills left to go—and I start walking again, this time quickly, pushed forward by the knowledge that I have almost accomplished what I set out to do.
I crest a hill and come upon the place where I once found a recently dead puppy in the road. I can still see its paws and empty eyes and sleek hair, and I want to cry, and I feel thankful, and I force myself onwards. It’s not far now. I come upon a few small houses-- a radio is blaring out—and first I think it is Pearl Jam, then I think it is Madonna, then I realize that it’s more like an awful cover of a Celine Dion song and I speed up even more. The music cuts a harsh wound into the stillness of the mountaintop.
To my left and right, valleys spill out around me, rolling hillside dotted with palms and fruit trees. Smoke rises from where a farmer is burning off the remains of last year’s crops and the air has a faint scent of barbeque.
The rumble of an engine far off announces that I finally have company on the road. From behind, a car struggles up, followed by billowing dust in the air. It pulls to a stop next to me and I get in with two strangers, two men, two Ticos, a thing I would never have dared to do in the States but that here is so commonplace.
Only one more hill, less than a minute in the backseat as palms flash by, and then I am stumbling back out into the sun, murmuring my thanks, and slamming the door a little too hard behind me without wanting to. The car pulls away and I am left on my own at a place I have only been once before.
I enter the store, walk up to the counter, and explain who I am and what I am doing here. The woman I speak with is small, round, and obliging, and at her direction, I enter the attached house through a small wooden door in the back.
I follow the short body of the boy who is my guide through the labyrinth of rooms and corners until he motions to the right and there it is—the room— and I can almost taste sweet success. I enter, I rummage, I unlock, I reach in, and AAAHHHHHHHHH. There it is. My fingers close over its reassuring weight as I pull it out, open it and inhale the enticing smell of pages and binding. After all that work, after all that sweat, after all that incline, I have it: The second book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.
It is 9:35 AM. I exit the store, wave my thanks, and start the hike back to Boruca.
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