4. Warmiwañusqa (Green)

there aren’t mountains in michigan.

we’re a peninsula. we have dunes.

i’d been up high before,

of course, driving across america,

my brother and all our family pillows

with me in the back seat,

but this –

this was a mountain i had climbed.

there had been an ascent.

i was days away from the trailhead,

and i had walked myself there,

up into the thinnest of peruvian air.

i kept looking out to the mountains,

all the way to veronica, and thinking,

“but it looks just like a picture.

it can’t really be right there;

it can’t be real, so perfect and green,

right in front of my eyes.”

but it was real.

i was really there,

and so was the mountain.

i stood and i looked;

i soaked it all in.

i knew i was alive.

then i climbed down.

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the highest point on the inca trail is called “dead woman’s pass,” as the surrounding landscape resembles a woman on her back. the mountain willka wege was renamed veronica for a woman who died in an avalanche while climbing down it.