To close your eyes
.
It is the order that is heard after 15 hours of rock and road.
One step forward, another one.
High!
The bodies - intertwined as in a chain - weigh as if they were full of sand.
And the silence stretches in slow motion.
Now, open your eyes.
And what you see from 2,800 meters above sea level is
a precipice of rocks and emotions
, where each of the 25 protagonists of the excursion to Champaquí Hill throws their stomach out of their mouths.
Is this real or a movie?
Hugo Marchisio is an old mountain guide, but he acts like a film director.
Or like a preacher without a church.
For eight years he has been taking and bringing “pilgrims” to the roof of Córdoba.
And he swears that each trip is unique and unrepeatable.
Do rocks change places?
No, it's not that
, he clarifies.
The shapes of the clouds change.
And the company.
Sweaty t-shirt, messy hair, dark eyes, Hugo is
more than a guide, he is a poet
.
It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves
, it will be repeated throughout the three days that the journey will last.
And then you'll think you're Edmund Hillary the day he reached the top of Everest.
Up there, close to the sky.
A stop on the way to the top.
Before leaving for the summit, in Villa Alpina, Hugo will make things clear:
when that moment arrives where our legs no longer respond, the only thing that will get us there is our head
.
And then he will form behind him a long platoon of combatants against the monotony of life.
A compact and supportive block of
Stone and the Path
, as Atahualpa Yupanqui sang.
Step by step, rock by rock, Hugo will
uncork stories.
Like the grandfather who managed to reach the summit last month with his grandson or the Buenos Aires office worker who broke her knee jumping over a stream where she shouldn't have.
He will also talk about the day the weather changed and a whirlwind of demonic winds made his “pilgrims” flutter on the edge of the hill.
The mountain has its risks and its secrets
, he warns, and then he will allow himself to be embraced by the silence.
One, two kilometers.
Until the next break, on the banks of a crystal clear river, where water will be replenished in the bottle.
Later, much later, you will reach a pot and only then a waterfall.
Hugo no longer counts the number of times he retraced his own footprint in these 8 years,
but it will be about 150 times,
he risks it with his eyes pecking at every stone he leaves behind.
Are all trips really different?
Would one look at the rainbow if it were always in the sky?
Habit does not make magnetism disappear
, insists Hugo, who is one of those guys
capable of discovering a star in a million constellations
.
And he returns to the example of the clouds, their shapes, their colors, and the sun when it sneaks in and spreads shadows on the rocks.
Forward.
There was Marchisio, at the head of the "platoon."
Each figure is unique
, he insists.
How unique is each climber who reaches the top and discovers with amazement the lagoon that gave rise to the name of Champaquí: “water at the summit.”
But before getting your feet wet, you will have to close your eyes and look over the precipice.
Some gaps in the clouds will allow us to see the forests, valleys and lakes that were left along the way.
And what now, Hugo?
To leave the peloton and walk inside.
See also
See also
Perfect days, do they exist?