Night 1: Good night, Cusco; Good morning, Arequipa

I've never been happy to leave Cusco before. 

But the evening I started off on my current adventure was clear and beautiful, with views that reminded me of why I fell in love with Cusco in the first place. And knowing that the absence would only be for a few weeks at most, I couldn't help but feel that incredible thrill that appears at the beginning of any new experience. 

We started out with 3 occupants.

 As I watched Cusco's familiar buildings and streets disappear behind me, and faced a whole new world of landscapes, towns, and thoughts, I knew I was in the right place.

After a few hours of beautiful views and fading light, it was two dark to take pictures, or even see anything, and I dozed off. I woke up a few times at one stop or another, and promptly fell back asleep. But some time around 11:30 I woke up, and as we pulled away from the station, I was too

much in awe to go back to sleep....

Have you ever been in an open place on a clear night? Have you ever seen a sky so full of stars that you're not sure where the star ends and the sky starts? I remember growing up on a farm in rural Tennessee, every night I would go lie in the yard and just look at the stars. And watching the stars out of my bus window, I finally understood how my hopes, dreams, and ideals survived the struggles of adolescence: there is something brilliantly thrilling, calming, and endlessly hopeful about a vast expanse of lights so strong that they travel billions of miles to illuminate my small life. And I couldn't help but feel their power, their warmth, and their light. 

As I stared open-eyed (and open-mouthed) out of the freezing cold window, my mind began to wander to some of the places I'd not yet been brave enough to enter.

The emotional trauma I'd been through had seemed to pose an insurmountable obstacle. How could I even begin to face the wall of pain that seemed to surround me? I felt that if I even began to acknowledge its existence it would consume me. But as I looked up at the stars - too bright to even say they were shining in darkness - I came to an understanding and acceptance of my own pain that I knew was the first step to conquering Pain Mountain. 

In the case of a physical wound, the first few minutes or days, depending on its severity, are spent guarding the wound. Bandages, using body parts not exercised in years, pain medicine, and more bandages are the typical remedies for trauma wounds, and this is normal and natural as the first steps of healing are difficult to detect, and hardly seem to abate the pain. But after some time, the bandages have to come off. Without exposing the wound again, it won't heal. 

And so with emotional wounds. 

So it's ok to just hurt for some time. Guard my heart with everything I have. But at some point, I have to take an honest look at the wound, expose it to the fresh air, accept its intricacies, and recognize that the healing process has only just begun. It takes courage to face and accept both the immediate trauma and the long-term effects of the kind of pain I'm experiencing. And it takes hope to believe that in the end it will be worth the effort of healing. An honest look at the effects of this situation paints a daunting picture: Pain Mountain won't be vanquished in a day or even a month. Only time will tell how long it will take.

But as a woke up to view that looked like this...

...I realize that there will be beautiful and happy moments along the way. And the view from the top is something that I can't even begin to imagine. 

So bring it, Pain Mountain.