Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [54]
“Once you pass the gate, cross the creek. You only cross the creek once! From then on, always keep the creek on your right!” She waited to make sure I understood.
“Only cross the creek once. OK.”
“Good. Keep the creek on your right and you’ll come to a eucalyptus forest. Walk through the forest, and when you get past it you’ll come to a gate. That’s where the trail officially begins. From there, you’ll be able to see a tree with a broken top on the ridge in the distance. Climb toward it.”
She held up a picture of the ridge, with the tree with the broken top circled. It seemed awfully small. I wondered what would happen if the tree’s broken top ever fell off or filled in with leaves again.
“When you get to the tree, turn and climb up the ridge,” Silva continued. I tried to concentrate and found myself jumbling the directions together. “You’ll see a corral at the top of the ridge.” She held up a picture of the corral, a small wooden structure buried in high grass. “Just make sure you keep your back to the corral and hike up to the top of the ridge—but don’t go over it. If you go over it, you’ll go to the wrong peak.” She showed a picture of the wrong peak, which I suspected was the one Darwin reached.
“Is that where Darwin made it to?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “This one on the left here.” She pointed it out on the picture.
“Anyway, when you near the ridge, you’ll see another tree in the distance. Walk toward that and keep it on your left. Once you reach that, you’ll see the peak. From there, you can climb it. Got it?”
“Sure,” I said. She handed me a cartoon map, labeled “not to scale,” with drawings of the creek, eucalyptus forest, broken tree, corral, and other tree.
“Good luck!” she said.
I started walking under the blue skies of a gorgeous early fall morning. Birds twittered in the trees. Butterflies fluttered across the road like falling leaves, blowing in the wind, sunlight turning them translucent. It took about an hour to reach the Glorieta Outpost, where I leaped over the very important creek and scrambled through a field of waist-high grass and star thistles. At the far end of the meadow, the trail wound up into the eucalyptus forest, rising sharply on steps of slippery white quartz and loose pebbles. At the top of the forest I came to the gate marking the start of the trail, a small wire fence amid fields of gently waving green grass. Slabs of rough gray rock punctured the ground in regular geometric patterns, making ridges resembling the backs of armor-plated stegosaurus. The path continued along the ridge toward the tree with the broken top, disappeared over a hilltop, and reappeared where the next hill rose in the background.
I passed the tree with the broken top and reached the corral, where a delicate breeze brushed the air clean of noise. I was well-along on the trail now, feeling much more certain that I would actually be able to carry out Silva’s instructions (after some dark moments down below), and feeling not even remotely tired. The possibility of beating Darwin to the top gave me an extra boost of adrenaline.
At the top of the next ridge a small herd of guanacos eyed me curiously but without apparent concern and allowed me to get within fifty feet before slowly, grudgingly ceding the ridgeline. Darwin reported that if a sportsman suddenly encountered several guanacos standing together, “they will generally stand motionless and intently gaze at him; then perhaps move on a few yards, turn round, and look again.” I remembered Darwin also describing them as inquisitive animals. “That they are curious is certain,” he wrote. “For if a person lies on the ground, and plays strange antics, such as throwing up his feet in the air, they will almost always approach by degrees to reconnoiter him.” I enjoyed the image of the well-dressed Englishman lying on his back, kicking his feet in the air, and rolling around on the ground in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to try it out myself. The guanacos hadn’t gone very