Thin air. Wet stone. The kind of quiet that has weight.
Four days on the Inca Trail, and my lungs never quite caught up — but something else did. I am a planner. I love the map, the itinerary, the neat little list of what happens next. The trail did not care. It gave me switchbacks that went on longer than my patience, a green expedition tent that smelled like rain and soup, and a guide who kept saying the same word: despacio. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly.
Here is the thing I learned, somewhere above the clouds. Pace is not weakness. Pace is how you actually arrive. I’ve spent a career making complex things simple for other people, and I forget, constantly, to do it for myself — to take the hard climb one honest step at a time instead of sprinting at the summit and missing the whole walk up.
We came through the Sun Gate at first light. Machu Picchu just sitting there in the mist, patient, like it had all the time in the world. It did. I stood at the edge with my arms out like a kid, and I let the moment be bigger than my plan.
Everybody made it. Everybody was tired. Everybody was better for going slow.
Wherever you’re climbing right now — despacio. You’ll get there. And you’ll have actually been there.