All the Creatures that Breathe by D. Dauphinee

Author:D. Dauphinee [Dauphinee, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D. Dauphinee
Published: 2021-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

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Two kilometers … Enrico was about right. Ten minutes past their previous night’s campsite, they came to the rock dam. It looked old. Everywhere they went in this land, there was evidence of life before the Campesinos, the conquistadores, and the Inca. And the evidence suggested advanced life. In Cusco, Casey had stood in wonder at the architecture and remembered reading that when Pizzaro’s brother and a contingent of conquistadores first marched into the city, all the temples were sheathed in gold. The city shimmered in the mountain sunlight. He could imagine how magnificent it must have looked. They built all this, he thought, 200 years before the Massachusetts Pilgrims were living in thinly built wood-framed houses, freezing in the winter, starving, and killing each other for being witches. Who was more civilized?

Standing at the rock dam, the group looked across the valley. The drainages between the mountains on the other side were obvious. One was directly opposite the dam. Al pointed to another, just to the north. “That’s the one on the map,” he said. “Casey, may I look at the map?” Al removed the compass from a small pocket in his backpack strap. He took a reading and wrote a heading on the map and made a small line across the stream where they stood. “This is the heading back to the dam from the base of that drainage,” he said. Jack jotted it down in his notebook.

The day before, the group had gained and lost several thousand feet of elevation and had hiked through several different biomes; deciduous forests, high pampas plains, alpine, and jungle. In the Andes, trekkers can hike for an hour, see completely different flora, and feel they have changed seasons.

Claire’s thighs and calves were a bit sore from the hike over the mountains the day before, but once they started across the valley toward the drainage, her legs loosened up, and the pain subsided. Casey seemed to be walking slower, but that might have been because Alberto, walking ahead of him, was constantly trying to find a path. It had been evident on the far side of the rock dam, but now it was ill-defined as it wound through the shrubbery and the eucalyptus trees.

After more than an hour of picking their way across the valley floor, Al stopped for a water break. He had worked hard to stay on the compass heading for the base of the drainage.

“I think,” he said, “since we spent so much time at the farming community this morning, we’ll probably only get a short way up the drainage before we have to make camp.”

They were headed up the east side of the valley. Casey looked up at the mountains for a point of reference and said, “It’ll be a nice sunset.”

Al looked at his compass and continued. They passed the first drainage, keeping it on their right. As they headed up the second drainage and started gaining a few feet of elevation, they knew they were approaching the mountains — the last mountains before dropping down into the Amazon Basin.

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