Pacha

I climbed before sunrise because someone told me there was a place above the settlement where I could see almost the entire valley.

When I arrived, I could see far more than the valley.

From the stone platform, mountains rose in every direction. Rivers cut silver lines through the land below, terraces covered the slopes, and smoke was beginning to rise from houses as people woke. Llamas moved through one field. Birds crossed the morning sky. Somewhere below the stones beneath my feet, water moved through the earth where I could not see it.

The Sun appeared slowly behind the mountains, while the Moon was still faintly visible on the other side of the sky. A condor passed high overhead. Far below, something moved among the rocks, and for a moment I thought of the puma I had seen earlier in my journey. I remembered the serpent carved into stones and woven into stories along the road.

Standing there, I began thinking about all the places I had walked through to reach this one. Roads and rivers. Fields and forests. Houses and temples. Burial places. Mountains where people made offerings. Skies watched for the movement of the Sun, Moon, and stars. The living world had never seemed separate from what existed above it or what remained beneath it.

For the first time, I understood why pacha could not be contained by one simple word.

It was the place beneath my feet and the time I was living through. It was the people below me and the ancestors who had walked these roads before them. It was the Sun warming the terraces, the water moving through the soil, the animals sharing the land, and the mountains enclosing all of it.

Nothing I had encountered on this journey stood alone. Neither did I.

I stayed until the whole valley was bright.