My daughter Annie and I just returned from a hiking trip in
Peru. We followed an old Inca route
through the Salkantay pass (more than 15,000’) into a cloud forest in the
Andes, then dropped back down toward the Urubamba River and Machu Picchu. This was a “bucket-list” trip for me, and it
was as breathtaking as I had imagined.
The experience at this sacred stone city was one of those
magical “peak” experiences in the loosest sense of the expression. To walk the paths of this unfinished marvel,
engineered for worshiping the sun and in doing so, communicating with other Inca
villages on other mountain tops, is to lose one's own sense of self.
When I returned from the top, I started to call up other
magical moments I have had in my life, and some immediately came to mind. There was a trip into a cave in the Basque
region of when I saw an ochre imprint of a 40,000 year-old hand from another human
being who could not have imagined the resonance of this simple act. There was an aurora borealis that I enjoyed
from my airplane window during a trip over the Arctic Circle. There was Herculaneum near Naples, whose ancient
frescoed homes were preserved by the ashes from Vesuvius. There were the Viking ships in Roskilde,
Denmark, being excavated and restored from a millennium ago. There were the fairy penguins on Phillip
Island in Australia who return each night to exactly the spot they had left a
week or two before. There were Stonehenge and the chalk horse in England. There were the
heavily salted grilled green peppers in Cordoba followed by entry into the
mosque of endless arches.
As I worked my way back, I realized what a long and rich life I have indeed had. And how many “peak” experiences are ones that
are readily accessible, if we pay attention.
There is, for example, the whisker kiss and raspy lick of my
cat Pogo, whose soft and commodious black form drapes over me as I prepare to
sleep. There is the patter of my
daughter’s feet every morning and the sunset over the Inverness ridge every
evening. There is the joy of reading a
book so good that you stall and stall so as not to finish. There is sculpture of Richard Serra and the
painting of Mark Rothko. There is the
thrill of the opera overture just as the maestro strikes his baton. There is meeting a friend for coffee or
dinner and sharing our most intimate concerns.
Life can be long, but it can be hectic, and we can fail to
pause long enough to taste the daily sweetness of our existence. Getting older and being retired has allowed
me to be better at this. How about you?
