Sliding Down Volcanoes, and Crying My Way Up
In sixth grade, I decided that I wanted to play tennis. I have never been athletically inclined, and my preteen years were no exception. Practice involved running laps around the neighboring high school's football field. During one of our first practices, I realized just how bad I was at running laps (or running at all). I finished second to last, right before the only kid on our team who had asthma. He was a few seconds behind me. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my best friend's mom (a nurse) when she picked me up from school one day.
"Maybe I have asthma?" I asked her.
She just shook her head. "No, hon."
I don't have asthma, and I'm still no good at tennis. But at least now I know why I still come in last in races or practices. Some people like to exercise, and some people buy Fitbits to make sure that their muscles won't fizzle out and die in their early twenties. I don't fall into the first category.
This past weekend, Annabel and I packed our tennis shoes and took three buses to bring us to the trailhead for volcan Parícutin. When my dear, guide-book owning friend read the description of the horseback trail and majestic ascent of the youngest volcano in the America's, it sounded absolutely romantic. I was sold.
I was even more invested when we arrived at the little town and hired our guide for the day. Angahuan, the town, is one of those unique places in Mexico where you can only live there if you were born there. The goal behind this is to preserve the Purépecha language, which is still the inhabitants' native tongue. Announcements in the endangered language echo through the cobblestone streets. Signs written in Spanish seem out of place, as Purépecha is spoken all around you. The women wear long, brightly colored skirts; the men wear brimmed hats. I ask whether the teachers speak Purépecha in the schools, and learn that they don't have to at the higher levels (a future retirement spot, perhaps?). "My heart," as Jane Austen says, "was irrevocably gone."
We were introduced to our horses and our guides, and started out on the trail. My horse, I learned, did not have a name. Aside from thinking incessantly about the folk rock band America's song lyrics, I worked with Annabel to give a name to my horse. We decided to refer to our pair as Sam and Frodo. And as we rode Sam and Frodo through the woods and towards the rocky, lava site, our guide told us more about Parícutin.
On February 20th, 1943 (75 short years ago) a farmer was working in his field. At first, when the ground shook and began to part beneath him, he tried to repair the damage. Then, he started running. For nine years, the volcano grew, spat ash, steam, and lava, and buried two towns surrounding it. When we saw the volcano in the distance, it seemed impossible to believe that it had just popped up out of a cornfield one day.
After two and a half hours on Sam and Frodo, we got off and started our walk toward the volcano. The ride was exactly as romantic as I had imagined. My horse was a fun-seeking guy, leading the crew, and trotting at regular intervals across the uneven terrain. As romantic as it was, though, there was nothing romantic about the first few steps I took after those two and a half hours.
My knees, ankles, legs, rear end, back, and shoulders were beyond sore. I had forgotten how to walk, and realized at once how inept I am at riding horses with proper form. There was no time to lose, though, as our guide bound toward the volcano.
Seeing the baby volcano, and the even smaller baby volcanoes around it, was maybe one of the coolest things I've ever done. Our guide showed us how you could crouch down, and hear the boiling sound emanating from cracks in the ground. You could fry an egg on the hot steam that poured from the rock, and warm up next to it while camping (I'll take his word for it. I don't know that I'd be brave enough to sleep on an active volcano). After we saw these sights, we started up the face of the volcano, answering my question as to where the path was (there isn't one).
Our guide, like a limber and graceful gazelle, ran up the side of the volcano, hardly disturbing a pebble between his leaps and bounds. For every step that I took, a small avalanche formed behind me, throwing me almost as far back as I had managed to step forward. After the two and a half hours on the horse, and ten minutes of what had promised to be a 45 minute hike (for most tourists, not our local guide), my legs gave up. This is unsurprising, as these are the same legs that became painfully, almost intolerably sore only two days prior after a singing "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" a dozen times with my preschoolers.
Twenty minutes in, I was crying, not from sadness, but from the sheer exhaustion of slipping like buttered banana peel down this majestic volcano. The tears streaked my ash covered face, making it impossible to conceal from our guide who seemed so confused by my obvious lack of strength. Annabel, bless her heart, cheered me on, but I was not receptive to any messages of hope.
An hour later, though, I did make it. I made it, and sat on the peak of the youngest volcano in the Americas. I posed for pictures (after wiping as much streaky ash off of my face as I could, using only my ashy hands). I thought about staying forever so as to never walk again. I felt accomplished and happy, and proud of myself for climbing my first ever volcano.
The trip down was amazing. We slid in slow motion down an ash trail, which was maybe the most fun I have ever had in nature. It was like sledding on your feet, but if snow were soft and grainy like sand, and if sledding felt like you were about to fall down the youngest volcano in the Americas.
The only motivation I had to reboard Sam, and face the protest of all of my muscles was the thought of our upcoming stop to eat blue corn tortillas and see a church half-buried by lava. They were worth it, by the way.
When Annabel and I made it back to Angahuan, I felt like I had lived a long time since I had left it. I felt how quickly blisters form (and in what uncomfortable places) when you spend five hours on a horse at once. But mostly, I thought, "I'd do that again." This is so far from the thoughts I had during the actual climbing of the volcano.
And today, three days later, I can still feel these blisters. I can almost feel the knot in my throat that formed five minutes up that volcano. I think about how I might eventually be somewhere in the middle of the pack when running laps, or I might always be (almost) dead last. But, I also think about how I want to run anyway if it's toward something that will be worth it.
I may not be the fastest, I may never be able to run up the side of a volcano, but I always want to try. I want to work and overcome the little things too (lesson planning, applications, homework, and waking up early) because they are followed by brief mountaintop moments, often much briefer than the hours of work that I put into it, where I sigh and think "I'd do that again."
I want to cry up volcanoes, because (as cliche as it may sound) I've found that I'll end up sliding down them eventually. And maybe one day I will have a good medical excuse for being as ridiculously slow as I am (just kidding. I don't actually want asthma). But maybe one day my pride will have gotten smaller. Maybe on that day I will be more capable of realizing how absolutely okay it is that I am struggling, hard and visibly, when I am out-of-breath running, climbing, or living one of the obstacles that tend to pop up, like volcanoes, out of nowhere.
This is a video of us sliding down the volcano.
