Tajumulco - 9.30.2006

We walk on a rolling dirt road through small Mayan farms for a quarter mile. Children peek out of the houses, and upon seeing our white skin they ask us for candy.

The road attempts a direct assault on the mountain, climbing straight up the steep slope. But within a few hundred yards it fails, and all that remains is a footpath that has sunk 16 inches below the sod. We walk in small gullies like this for most of the day.

Similar gullies cut the meadows all over the lower slopes and my guess was that they are cow paths. The guerrilla corrects me. They are the remains of footpaths left by farmers, who once grew wheat and potatoes here. The farmers have left now. The soil was only rich enough for two or three harvests, and then it was barren. Also, once the trees were removed, the soil was left to the mercy of heavy rains.

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But there are, indeed, cows on the mountain, and at mid-morning we walk through a small herd. They are grazing in an upper meadow surrounded by a thin forest of scraggly pines. The herd is guarded by a sturdy older man wearing a checkered shirt and a white cowboy hat. He has a weathered, creased smile, and he tends to look at the ground. He holds a machete calmly in his right hand. Occasionally he rests it lightly, blade up, on his right shoulder. He reminds me of my Grandfather.

When he sees us approach, he slowly moves the herd uphill, using a series of casual threats and encouragements. One cow refuses to move until the man slaps her stiffly on the rump with the broad side of his machete.

The herd ambles into the trees above the meadow, and soon I lose sight of them. Still, for the next few minutes I can hear him calling to them.

****

The guerrilla and I wait there with a few other hikers for the rest of the group to catch up. It is cold and misty, and we quickly put on jackets and hats to ward off the chill. The meadow is slightly above the clouds that sift through the mountains. There is a sturdy breeze from the southeast that rapidly carries forward new clouds, and pushes out the old.

From time to time the clouds break apart, and I can see the valley below us and the ridge beyond it. Small towns hide in hollows of the ridge, and garden plots measure out each family´s share of the lower slopes. Reddish brown scars mark the many places where roads slice across the hillsides.

****

The others arrive and we settle down to a quick lunch. The Danes eat hard-boiled eggs. The guides scooped spoonfuls of avocado from their husks. I eat banana bread and handfuls of granola.

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Our other guide is the guerrilla´s father, Pedro. He´s a chuckling, winky old man with big teeth that are frequently unveiled by happy grins. My guess is that he´s the kind of Grandpa who knows how to give a heck of a horsey ride to his grand kids.

During the war, Pedro was kidnapped by the Government, imprisoned in a hole in the ground, and tortured for 15 days. He was allowed to live so he could serve as a warning to the village. It took him two years to recuperate.

Today, his job is to walk behind us to make sure none of the slower hikers get left behind.

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The guerrilla, of course, leads our caravan. In his left hand he carries a small radio from which flows a steady stream of Latin pop songs.

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When we start hiking again, I drift to the rear of the pack to find new people to talk to. This is a good decision, for soon I get to see one of the Danes stick her hand in a cow pie while she struggles to keep her balance.

Then I too slip a little bit. Pedro laughs and tells me I almost ´bought it´. I tell him that in the States we use the phrase ´bought the farm.´ He says it´s the same basic idea. That gets me thinking about funny sayings, and so I ask a friend if her family took any funny proverbs over to America when they immigrated from India. She says that her mom used to warn her that if she kept kicking her brother, God would curse her by putting worms in her feet.

We walk in silence for a bit.

Then I tell her that as far as I can tell, the best phrase ever born of the English language is ´...(he fell) ass over teakettle.´

****

The guerrilla leads us to a small peninsula on the ridge we are traversing. Below us is a valley we haven`t seen yet, and on the valley floor is a village. In that village, the guerrilla tells us, 80 unarmed men were rounded up by the government and massacred for aiding the movement.

He then talks about the military importance of this mountain - a dormant volcano, actually - and of the firefights that took place here, and there, and there. The guerrillas had a radio on the mountain, and from here they were able to broadcast all they way down to Argentina, because the summit is the highest point in Central America.

He talks a bit about other villages being destroyed by the government. In one village, the men were locked in the church. The women were separated from the children. The women were raped and then shot. Then the children were disemboweled. Then the men were shot.

He points to a distant ridge where he served as a guerrilla and promises to tell us more when we reach camp. Then he leads us back to the path.

As we fall in line behind him, he flips on his radio again. On comes Kylie Minogue singing ´´Can´t Get You Out Of My Head.´´ The guerrilla starts grinning like crazy, and pretends to dance a little. A few Danes follow his lead and start singing boisterously.

A couple of us look back toward the village, but the wind has carried in a new bank of clouds and it has disappeared.

If I had to guess, I´d say that we were probably 1,000 meters above it.

****

After battling all morning long, the sun finally succumbs to the clouds around noon, and the afternoon becomes frigid and dark. We are inside the clouds when we reached our camp, and the mist and the wind only make things worse. I´m already wearing all of the clothes I brought, so I hop around to stay warm.

After our tents are up, the guerrilla gathers us around to talk more about the war. His father, meanwhile, hacks the dead limbs off trees with his machete. Everything is wet but soon he coerces a smokey fire from the timber.

****

The guerrilla was 18 years old when he joined the movement. He fought for five years before the peace accords were signed. While in the field he was allowed two hours of sleep per day. His bed was a single sheet of canvas. He was allowed two meals per day - each meal was a small cup of rice that he would boil on a fire no bigger than a pancake.

When firefights would break out and he would have to go for as many as five days with no food or sleep at all. The biggest fight he was in was near Zunil. He was one of 75 guerrillas engaged in a running battle with more than 1,000 government soldiers. This was in 1995.

We shudder as he tells us about washing his clothes in the winter. He had to put them back on while they were still wet, because he couldn't risk lighting a fire to dry them.

He briefly mentions losing friends in the war, but doesn´t go into detail about it.

****

We gather around the fire for supper. The guides place boiled potatoes and tamales on the coals to warm them up. The guerrilla offers me a bit of potato, and I give him some cheese in return.

In Guatemala all of the trash, including plastic and metal, is burned. There is no point carrying it back to Xela. We throw it on the fire, and then hold our breath until the flames are no longer green.

****

It is too cold to sleep comfortably, and I don´t have a sleeping pad, so my night is nothing by a series of 15-minute naps. At 4:30am I awake to the sound of two nasally tenors bleating about godonlyknowswhat. It is the guerrilla´s radio. This is his way of telling us to get ready for the predawn hike to the summit.

As I pull on my shoes I notice that there is ice on the outside of the tent.

At the fire, the guerrilla is cheery. He says he really only needs about an hour of sleep to be ready for the day, and last night he got four.

****

The Danes are slow getting ready, and we start late. It is difficult to find footing among the loose rocks by flashlight, but the guerrilla is impatient and walks quickly up the slope. Soon he is far ahead of us. When we can no longer see his flashlight, we follow the sound of the merengue music that floats from his radio.

A few of the stronger hikers separate from the others and catch the guerrilla. We ask him to wait for the others. Their flashlights snake up the slope toward us as we sit and rest.

****

From here we can see the lights from all the towns around the volcano. White street lights in Guatemala. Red lights in Mexico. I´m reminded of my descent into London - looking out the window of my plane, seeing all of the chaos as it is coerced into orderly, luminescent rows. But here the lights are not organized into battalions. Here they are more fluid, following the shape of the ridges.

We talk to the guide a bit. He says that 10 years ago, he could never have imaged tourists walking on this mountain. At that point it was hard for him to imagine anything but war. Then he talks about how beautiful it is up here and how nice the air is.

****

We reach the crater and the wind is insistent, nearly violent. The sun is not up yet as we circle the crater to reach the summit. The path is very narrow, but I think a fall would be survivable. We are about 14,000 feet above sea level. We are well above the clouds. It is freezing.

The rest of our group arrives and finally Pedro appears. He has a long green bath towel tied around his head, babushka style. He is wearing two pairs of jeans, but the waist on the outer pair isn´t big enough so it goes unbuttoned, held in place only by his leather belt. He holds a purple and white checkered blanket around his shoulders.

As usual, he is happy, almost giddy. He points out to me the town where he lives.

****

The sun comes up, and the shadow of our mountain is cast well into the Chiapas of Mexico. It is a black pyramid that seems to me to be hundreds of miles long.

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We prepare to return.

The guerrilla is ecstatic. The volcano gives him energy, he says. He flexes his arms like a superhero, fists by his ears.

He pauses on the edge of the crater for a few moments, letting us pass. A gaudy song by Shakira bounces out of his radio. He watches as we descend slowly, picking our way among the loose stones.

Then suddenly he howls like a wolf and hurtles down the slope, leaping from rock to rock. As he rushes past us, he is laughing like a child.

Photos of Tajumulco