Post 1
I was terrified of Rainbow Mountain.
For months before I traveled to Peru, Branden sat across from me, at our shared writing table, regaling me with stories about his journeys into the Amazon, the wisdom gained from meeting Mama Ayahuasca and the brutality of climbing Vinicunca (more commonly referred to as “Rainbow Mountain” on the posters plastered all over Lima.)
It wasn’t that the hiking was treacherous, Branden explained. He knew I’d crested several ridge trails on O’ahu, trails that required strength, coordination, navigating broken stairs, mud, weather, hunger and sometimes even rope-work. No, Branden warned, Rainbow Mountain wasn’t about the technical aspects of hiking. It was all about the altitude.
Though Vinicunca is not the highest mountain in Peru, it is still the equivalent of climbing to base camp at Everest. You never take one step below 14,000 feet. It’s challenging from the get-go so I took Branden’s warning seriously. Branden is a Nike master trainer who times himself running the 1,000 stair incline at Koholepelepe in under fifteen minutes so if he says something is gonna kick your ass, it is most definitely going to kick your ass.
Past attendees of his Warrior Retreats leadership adventure were no shrinking violets expecting luxury travel. They were global entrepreneurs, wellness influencers, yoga instructors and pro athletes who, despite their youth and vigor, had crumbled under the weight of Vinicunca’s physical and emotional demands. During my intake interview, one of the retreat facilitators suggested I consider riding a donkey.
I decided to train instead.
My training started with an eight-mile Spartan race over the sacred lands and utterly breath-taking beauty of Kuoloa Ranch on O’ahu, where I am blessed to live, and ended with a fifteen-mile swim at the Kailua Y to raise three-grand for the American Cancer Society. I pushed my body to the point of being laid up for a weekend, unable to put weight on my left leg without collapsing. By the time I boarded the plane to Lima, I was physically stronger than I’d been since my early 20’s but still, Vinicunca loomed large and impossible in my imagination.
It didn’t help that after a week of ayahuasca ceremonies, I arrived in Cusco running a high fever and missing my daughter profoundly. In the years since Clayton’s death, Cecilia and I’d become inseparable, wrapped in a tricky bond of healing and heart-break that was only amplified by Covid’s lockdowns. There’d been days when I desperately needed a solo-mom trip (spoiler alert: I would have settled for adult conversation) but now that I was thousands of miles away, free of all parental obligations and sick as a dog, I wept with the pain of missing her.
I was utterly miserable.
Branden decided I had altitude sickness and sent a facilitator to my hotel door with a tank of oxygen. I rolled my eyes, informing her with great disdain, that air had never been known to cure an infection. Still, I acquiesced and strapped the oxygen mask to my face and lay there in bed, fuming and glaring and sucking like a middle-aged Darth Vader.
It was into this hot mess that my poor roomie entered carrying a handwritten note and leather-bound journal from Branden. A gift from him to all the retreat participants. I didn’t even read the inscription. The second she handed me that book, I threw it violently across the room. It slammed against the wall and dropped to the floor.
Yes. Good. Exactly that.
That’s what I felt about his damn journal.
I was (as they say) NOT in a good place.
