A Lesson

I seldom found friends who would come with on some of my odder trips around Peru so I often went alone. This is about a brief two hour spell during a trip I made up to the Callejon de Huayllas which is sometimes called the Switzerland of South America.
I took the Carretera Panamericana northward out of Lima on one of the many buses you see careening at ridiculously high speeds, top heavy with loads of boxes, suitcases, cages with livestock on the roof. Inside much the same, more boxes, livestock but not caged, and people .... lots of people .... a mix of cholos, indios de la sierra, middle class businessmen, children, babies ... loud babies ... and one skinny, seventeen year old white boy blending right in.
Ten hours on the bus to Chimbote, then a narrow gauge train ride up to the northern end of the Callejon. Back to a bus, more indios, more quechua than spanish spoken. Off the bus in the quaint town off Yungay. Meal. Then heaving on a ridiculouly heavy pack, I hiked east out of town and up away from the setting sun. Dusk found me a few miles above Yungay and so I stopped and set up my tent. Stove to comfort with warmth and food, then into my sleeping bag with a book and headlight.
A little while later, some scratching on the side of the tent. The occupant nervously poked his head out of the tent. A small boy, a quechua indian boy said, "mi papa suelta los perros en la noche. Es peligroso quedar aqui." So, the thought of loose dogs on the prowl got me up and out of my tent.
An hour later I was back in Yungay booking into the first clean hotel I found. Slept dreaming of dogs. And so ended my first night in the Callejon.

More to come

Seal At Anchor In The Basin, Casco Bay

One of my favorite sailing spots of all, Casco Bay in Maine is a sailors paradise. Hundreds of beautiful islands dot the bay, some inhabited, most not, and some little more than tiny scraps of land adorned with a few trees. The Basin is at the Northern end of Casco Bay, well hidden and entered only through a very narrow winding stretch no more than fifteen feet wide at spots. The basin is a well-protected circular bay with a small island at the eastern end, great anchorage and totally protected from any weather outside. It's know as the best 'hurricane hole' in the northeas. It's truly gorgeous.

Molly the Frisbee Pro

C. S. Lewis said:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

From Mere Christianity

Loss by Five Minutes

From below, distantly falling, I saw the rock. It exemplified the argument I had been having with those climbers for a fateful five minutes. Six thirty in the morning found us on our summit on top of the world for a little while; a small world, mind you, compared to Everest but nevertheless it was ours. We left just as the sun tipped the horizon and as it rose, the shadow of a nearby ridge chased us while we descended the ice chute to the snow ridge that circled the crater below.
"Don't go, I warned. "You are too late".
The ice softened steadily, a thin steady trickling of pebbles dribbled down from those sunlit slopes to where we stood, fresh from the summit and now safe, below the crevasse, rope coiled, the sense of pleasure of standing above the clouds still with us, and an easy walk before us. Why, oh why, hadn't we moved on down?
But no. We knew the mountain, we had been on the summit when the air was cold, and still, and dark, we thought we knew these strangers would listen: twelve, in groups of two and three and ones. We stayed. They paid us no heed. They knew better than us.
I watched the rock, no pebble this, bound as it picked up speed and bounced from side to side. I stood silent, watching, gauging, ready to move as its path became clear. The others scattered. But one, seeing the rock bounce to the left, flew back up over the crevasse and rght along its upper rim. The rock checked in its downward dash, flipped to the right where, for one infinitesimal lifelong instant, it occupied the the same point in space as her head and together they tumbled, she ... head over heels ..., into the crevasse. Where she disappeared.

A Life Not Taken

I had always meant to sail around the world
Maybe not the world
Maybe just so far to
An island, sun-kissed virgin-white sand
Over-arching palm trees
Crabs skittering
She lies serene at anchor
Ten fathoms out
Our home beat-up
gale worn but hardy
Tough
My home
My lover
My other, true lover lying beside me
Both naked on the sand

Her rival at anchor
At peace
After the gales and heart-wrenching seas
Beyond the protecting encircling reef
And I
I lie safe within your arms

Or is it you safe
within my arms
Your rival brought us together
Made us
One
Bred the calm we share
Growing from fear to trust
As
She fought the breaking waves that
Buried her stern with green
White flecked hills
Then
She taught us to be strong

O my love
She is no rival
We grew within her weathered
Womb
She saw us love for
In some way
We are her children
She our mother

And now
She watches us
From ten fathoms out
As our lips touch
Softly, warmly, drawing us
Into one another
At first
Our flesh woven togther
The sudden light that
Outshines the brilliance of the sun
All too briefly yet
Another bond that
Ties
Us
More completely each time

Nevado Huascaran en el Callejon de Huayllas

One of my favorite mountains in the world

Perelandra

So ... Why Perelandra? "Perelandra is the second in the Space Trilogy written by C.S. Lewis. The first and last books in the trilogy are respectively: "Out of the Silent Planet" and "That Hideous Strength. A wonderful set of sci-fi novels that I'd recommend to anyone, well almost anyone.

Still, why Perelandra? Well, beside being one of my favorite novels, it is about a man's voyage to Venus (Perelandra) and his stay there. Perelandra is a new world , A Garden of Eden, completely unspoiled and a place where the 'Adam' and the 'Eve' archetypes have a second chance at the apple, so to speak.
Ransome, our intrepid explorer, has been sent to Perelandra to forestall Weston, another voyager to Venus, but a man corrupted and possessed by evil, and an emissary of the evil 'fallen angel' of Earth, Thulcandra -although we know him by another name. He has been sent there to persuade the new Eve to eat the 'apple' of Perelandra. ... Read the book it's a good one, well-written, an allegory for the Biblical view of creation, the fall and the sacrifical lamb, the Son of Maleldil, and at same time a great adventure story which can be read on many levels.