Clumsy in Colombia
I awake to a solitary figure standing outside my tent. A dark energy begins to boil in my belly until I realize that although I’ve never seen him before, I know who he is. Through the mesh he’s no more than a blurry silhouette, but still I can recognize the notch in his hip. It’s common to all people who spend their entire lives standing, watching. He spies a few lonely cows as they graze the steep slope beneath us, making slow progress up towards the cliffs of Nueva Machetá. His name is Orlando. I’m camping on his land.
Then the memory comes. I see a young boy, the same bored patience cementing his body into place. He’s looking out on his family’s cattle as they nibble the prickly plant life of the Sahel desert in West Africa. His torn shirt is blood red and his right leg is folded beneath him like a triangle. But the memory, borne from a nostalgia I didn’t know was still there, suddenly breaks loose all the rest of what I remember since that day six years ago, and instantly I’m buried mercilessly underneath the weight of it all. So many unalterable decisions, baffling choices, and all those ideas I had for myself that were ultimately demolished by reality — so many actions left deserted on islands of insecurity and doubt, left waiting for a rescue that would never come.
I take a breath and focus my thoughts on where I am: Colombia. And then I take another breath and remember of what I’m doing here: Climbing. Slowly, like waves churning inside the confines of a pool, the dejection and regret inside me settles into a placid surface of contentment. I take a third breath and I’m calmer now, but still I’m left wondering: should this be the moment I start my life over, and from now on begin building someone different, someone better?
I look again to where Orlando was standing, but he’s gone. I’ll never see him again.
When Juan told me about Colombia, his face would brighten the way anyone’s would when given the chance to speak of home. He told me of unparalleled sandstone, beautiful women and delicious food. And each time he’d close the conversation with an invitation, as he always seemed to be on his way there.
He grew up just a few hours from Bogotá. The drenched green mountains of Montserrat and the Cordillera Oriental fall away from the capital into an arid flatland to the west, where the Magdalena River splits the entire country in two. The landscape here is more reminiscent of Southern California than what you’d expect in Colombia, with rolling plains of golden white brush and a sparse population of acacia trees. But then the mountains begin to rise again in yet another chaos of green, up and up until finally ending at the snow-capped, 17,110 foot summit of Nevado del Tolima. At the foot of these mountains is the town where Juan was born: Ibagué.
A few days after I arrive, Juan takes me to an old spot of his high above the city. This is where he’d come with his brother back when their only goal for the day was to escape parental supervision. He tells me this is where he taught Santiago, five years younger, how to hold his arms out wide and let the wind that ran up the grassy knoll from the city lift him off the ground, if only for a second. Then they’d gaze out at the south end of the city where it disappeared into a desolation of hazy desert and dream of flying. That was over a decade ago. The city has grown into a miniature metropolis since then, but that ominous flatland still engulfs the city’s edge like a vast golden ocean.
It is one thing to have a climbing partner you run into every so often at one crag or the next, but something very different to join him on a flight to South America and meet the family that raised him — to experience for yourself the landscape of his past and the world he left behind when he was nine. Now we’re closer than we used to be. We’ve become like brothers.
Juan is orienting the GPS software on his brand new aerial drone by spinning around in circles while he holds it out in front of himself. It’s perfectly white and shaped into a square by its four propellers, and underneath its belly is an HD camera. He sets it back on the ground, stands back with the controller in his hand, and suddenly it takes off in a quick, menacing whizz. The loud buzz of the propellers slowly diminishes as it gains altitude, until a quiet calm returns. I watch the drone as it passes over the city, but Juan is looking down into his iPhone where it sits fastened over the controller.
“Recording!” He cries. And as he walks backwards with his eyes trained on the iPhone he catches his heel on something and topples over. I watch as he scrambles back up again, still head down and gripping the controller, but now with sheepish smile on his face. He’s waiting for my laugh.
He’s clumsy like that, always knocking, dropping and stubbing himself on things, and it has become a joke between us because he denies it every time I bring it up. But when I think about how defensive he gets, I wonder if I shouldn’t poke fun at all the perforations in his self-awareness, because my sarcasm conceals a larger, much more important truth. The fact is, we can be just as clumsy with our time.
We all are. Those of us omitted from the Fortune Five Hundred list, without empires at our feet and a yacht in the harbor, have for our entire lives oscillated between intense periods of personal industry — of making forward progress in our lives — and much longer periods of lackadaisical meandering, or benign neglect. Maybe it’s a product of our privilege — our ability to choose. We shop like an heiress for what it is that will make us happy, and like her, we take for granted the chance to pick up and put down opportunities as if they were shoes, handbags or sunglasses. With the chance to do anything, we’ve essentially committed to nothing.
But I feel a change coming, and it’s as real as the rain I can smell in the cool breeze coming from the mountains beyond the city, on the western side where they stand in proud opposition to the plains. I submitted my grad school application the day before I followed Juan to Colombia, and soon I’ll be presented with a choice, one way or the other. As for Juan, he’s spent every last cent he has on a new camera, lenses, and this glorified remote-control fly-toy that is quickly becoming a necessity in the world of adventure photography. Juan says he’s here to capture this country and its people with images that wont just get his foot in the door of the industry, as they say, but kick it in completely. He wants his first real effort in professional photography to break the hinges and boom into the room with such a commotion that everyone takes notice, stricken by surprise. He may achieve this goal, and he may not, but the point is that he is actually trying, actually doing, and that is the measure of a not-so-clumsy life.
Over the next two months we explore the crags of Colombia. Through Juan’s network of friends, we infiltrate a community of elite climbers who remain largely under the radar. Colombia’s war-torn economy and resulting social conditions made it difficult for nationals to find their passion for the outdoors and climbing over the years, but in the last decade or so, the brave ones have found the means necessary to build modest homes and hostels near their favorite cliffs. They made a choice, took a risk, and did something. And because of their hard work, what was unthinkable just five or ten years ago is now our reality; Juan and I can explore the climbing in Colombia in the same way we would Kentucky, or Utah, or Wyoming. We borrow space in spare bedrooms and backyards, and try and pitch our tents out of the way. We carpool across the country with folks headed that way, and if they aren’t, we take the bus.
In Suesca, north of Bogotá, Fernando Gonzales-Rubio tells us of a new area established less than an hour away. Fernando has established hundreds of routes throughout the country, so we point our ears at him and listen. Many of his ascents have been high alpine routes in the Cocuy National Park — hard climbs that top out at over 17,000 ft. — but he remains adamant that the area now called Nueva Machetá has many of the best rock climbs in the country.
The next day, the doors to the bus swing open and I pull myself in. The seats are all occupied, so I make my way towards the back and turn around. A man rises and takes the seat of his four-year-old daughter, next to his wife. When he picks her up she wiggles like a disgruntled kitten in his arms, but by the time he nods to me to come and sit down, she’s laid out on her parents’ laps, close to sleep.
At the next stop a dozen school children file in and plug the isle. On any given bus in Colombia the look of a life’s achievement is reversed, where the finest dressed are the elementary students on their way to school, prim and proper, the shine of the girls’ black shoes at a match with the shimmer of the boys’ styled hair. This look of refinement descends through the years with the gaudy extravagance of the teenage girls, proud and grimly satisfied with the way their tight sequined blouses and hooped earrings contrast with the modest dress of their parents, who clearly have spent all their money on their daughters. Finally, a much older generation of campesinos are making their way home to their farms in the countryside. They’re content to stare out the window at the checkerboard of green, and their stained and scrubby attire reflects an apathy towards what people think about them that is well-earned, and dutifully enjoyed after their lifetime of toil on the land.
Just past the town of Machetá we drop out of the bus by a restaurant along the river and onto the street. Fernando explained how it works: from here we will find a trail just beyond a rock wall on the left side of the road. We follow it upwards through a perilously steep crop until we reach the highest home on the hillside. Be sure to pick up a long stick to keep the ferocious dog at bay. Agree with the landowners on a price to climb and camp on their land (5,000 pesos). From here, follow a faint narrow cattle trail until it plateaus at a dreamy outcropping of grey limestone boulders. Always remember to close the decrepit fence behind you.
This morning marks our last day. I scramble from my tent and walk to where I saw the man standing. I look down on the dark grey road we came in on. Its white backbone cuts deep into the valley as it winds back to Bogotá, reminding me that tomorrow I must be back in the city. Grad School is calling… literally. I have a Skype interview with admissions at noon. As if on cue, the wind crashes into my chest. I take a deep breath and the feeling rises quickly from not just one place inside me, like my heart, but from all over, as if it had been dormant all this time in the marrow of my bones. I feel like I can do anything, if only I can be strong enough to make the choice to try — to do.
Fernando was right. This place is pure magic. I turn around and gaze at the cliff that towers above us. Juan and I are questing up every route with a rack of cams and 18 quick-draws at our sides, stretching my 80-meter rope each time we drop back to the ground. The sandstone is bullet-hard and beautiful. I knew rock like this existed in the American East and Australia, but to find it in Colombia as I journey with my friend, my brother, as we help each other grow into who we want to become? If the landscape, the people, the food or the music hasn’t done enough to prove that these moments together in Colombia are to be cherished, then Nueva Machetá has. After 30 years being told that every day is precious, a gift to cherish and take advantage of — I’ll remember this morning as the first time I truly believed in the fleeting perfection of a brand new day.
The countless parcels of tree-lined pastures are like a quilt over these mountains, each square the mark of a family that has been raising their cattle on these steep slopes for generations. I look to see if Juan is awake and feel my feet back on solid ground. I don’t have to decide anything right now. Today I get to climb. But that question, the one that crept into my head while I was still half-asleep and made me wonder: is now the time to start my life over? Well, it’s not making any moves to leave. And so maybe it isn’t a question anymore. Maybe it’s the answer.
