I was at the ranch in Patagonia, walking in the mountains with only my backpack, some water, and the sun on my face. It was windy but the sun made me feel hot beneath my thermal shirt. I was walking fast up the mountain, listening to Andean music play in the background from my iPhone speaker. The music made me feel strong, light, and free, like I was made of muscle. But the flowers around me made me feel soft on the inside, like my innards were little white petals that could crumble if you touched them and float away softly in the wind like feathers. The landscape was bright green, every surface of leaf reflecting the sun’s shine. The trees sang as they swayed in harmony, like a choir. I was smiling and giggling as I walked, step by step, up the mountain.
I hiked two hours up to Laguna Corazon. I sat there, so unbelievably and endlessly far away from anything for hundreds of miles. Walking on grounds that no human could have ever walked before. I was completely alone.
And so blissfully, magically, amazingly content.
That’s when I started writing.
I wasn’t the scared, anxious girl I had been for years anymore, waiting for someone to look up to. Waiting for someone to guide me, to show me what’s true. I wasn’t scared sitting on that mountain. I had gone to the bottom of the world. I had ventured out into the mountains with no phone service, where no one knew where I was, where the nearest hospital was five hours away, having just quit my job, sold all of my stuff, and with no plan for what’s next. I had gone to the scariest place I could think of.
And it was the most beautiful place in the world.
For the first time since maybe I was eight or nine years old, I took out a notebook and began to write. Not a diary, not facts from the day, not a planner, not notes for schooling, not for work. I wrote about nature. I wrote freely and lovingly about the sun, the mountains, the heat on my back. I felt more safe there, sitting on that beach next to that lake, looking through the crack down the center of the mountain where you could see the abyss of mountains behind it, than I had in a decade.
I looked through the crack, imagining what layed beyond. I couldn’t get there behind the lake, but boy, did I want to.
That was a day where I felt very, very happy.
I can still feel that same sun on my back.
I still listen to Andean music.
And I still write.
Ali Walks Around 