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FROM HAIKU, MAUI

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On the Angel Trail: Celestial Despacho, Rites of Passage

Finally, a Day of Relative Rest after Three Days of Grueling Hikes

KACHIKATA, Peru, June 7 - After three days of grueling hikes, we were finally to have a day of rest.  Relatively speaking.   We still climbed up and down that 600-ft mountain peak you can see in the left picture (below) as part of our Rites of Passage.  But that hike was a child's play compared to those we had already left behind.

Since Jeff and I again slept in a "solitary," our tent stuck out the farthest toward Urubamba Valley (the Sacred Valley of the Incas - which you can see in the middle left shot).  When I unzipped the tent first thing in the morning, the sight that opened up before my eyes was incredible.

"Look, Jeff, we are floating above the clouds," I told my tent mate.  Several hundred feet below us, thick cloud cover stretched across the valley like a cotton ball net suspended to the mountain sides. 

Later, when the clouds passed and the fog lifted, I climbed to the Inca ruin above the camp site from where I took above shots with my cell phone camera.  That's where I also saw some stone, like the white one in the above right picture, that mirrored the contours of the mountain in front - Wakai Willke, in this case.

...or Alankoma, the leftmost shot above, or Pumawanka (middle left).

After breakfast, we all climbed up to the old ruins of Kachikata where we worked for hours on our Celestial Despacho.  The entire time, the mountain spirits kept flashing various signs in the clouds.  Since my cell camera had limited memory, I only took one picture of the three dolphins in the middle right shot.  But the mountain spirits put on quite a show in the clouds... several whales over Killawaman and Chikon, hummingbirds over Wakai Willke, a wolfe over Pumawanka, an eagle over Killawaman just as another eagle flew overhead; sign of the cross over Alankoma (all these are the names of the Holy Mountain peaks I was looking at).

Finally, as I looked toward Intipunko (Gateway to the Sun) with my eyes closed, I saw a face of a woman, a female expression of Wakai Willke, smiling at me.  It morphed into a round white light with a rainbow above it. 

"God's eye," I whispered, having seen it twice before.  "How beautiful."

During lunch, I studied the face of Bueno Negro, the mountain down which we had descended yesterday (right).  It was like a story book... so many faces, so many expressions.  A dove at the top of that white patch, an eagle on the right, a puma/jaguar on the left morphing into a lion's head.... Fascinating.

I told Jose Luis what I had seen so far.  "Yes, that mountain has many faces, depending on the light," he replied.

In the afternoon, we had to get ready for our "graduation ceremony."  That meant climbing up to the top of that ridge in the right photo, carrying a corn on the cob in one hand and despacho ingredients in our backpacks.  We were to plant the seeds of the corn along the trail in such a way that the last one remained to be planted as we passed through the Intipunko (Gateway to the Sun) portal (below left).

While other people were still working on their despachos, I initiated three rocks from the Intipunko ridge into special kullas (sacred stones) for Elizabeth and my two daughters.

Then, having made the despacho, we were led by a paqo (Pampamesayok), one at a time, through the portal (left).  The paqo then conferred the Altomesayok Rites of Passage upon us on the other side of the ridge.  I was glad that it turned out to be Don Sebastian in my case.  Over the last two trips, he and I have developed a special non-verbal relationship.  At the end, the paqo gave us a special kulla for our mesas, a gift by Wakai Willke, the mountain spirit whom we were honoring with our pilgrimage (visible through the portal above).

Earlier in the day, while we were doing the Celestial Despacho, I tried to visualize the kulla I was going to get.  It came out as black and white, symbolizing the yanantin/manantin, male/female, yin/yang... complementary opposite energies.  The actual one I received was brown and white. It had brown striped on white (quartz/crystal) background.

Afterward, as we sat in silence on the ridge, tears pouring down most peoples' faces, a strong wind whipped around us from various directions.  In fact, it blew so hard that it disheveled my despacho, spilling a part of its contents on the ground.

"Guess Wakai Willke could not wait until the fire ceremony tonight," I joked (when we were going to burn the despachos).  "He wanted his portion of my love right here and now."

Several days later, Apu Wakai Willke confirmed to us that he was indeed that wind who blew at us from various directions.  

"I had tears in my eyes watching you on that ridge after you had received your Rites of Passage," he told us in our last and seventh session of Conversations with the Spirits at Dona Alejandrina's home in Cusco.

The Biggest Day of our Altomesayok Journey ended with a fire ceremony in which we burned our despacho, followed by singing and dancing around the fire.  Tomorrow morning, our fifth day in the mountains, we are to march down the mountain all the way to Urubamba Valley, which seemed to lay at our feet in the above pictures.  So it was all downhill from now on, both literally and figuratively...

TO BE CONTINUED...

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