Guatape

April 29, 2019

Greetings from The Rock,

In the movie ‘The Princess Bride’ there is a character who is repeatedly amazed by various circumstances and describes them as ‘inconceivable.’  At one point, Inigo Montoya says to him, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it does.”

It is a two hour drive outside of Medellin, along winding two lane roads, dodging oncoming traffic, the pervasive scooters weaving among the death-defying maneuvers.  The megalopolis gives way, finally, to rolling country side, open space, some sky to go with it.  There are farms right down to the road, and up the sides of hills so steep we wonder how the people keep from falling off while they harvest.

We wound around a curve and came up a small rise and then I saw El Penon de Guatape.  I think I was the only person in the car who didn’t know what we were going to see.  I had somehow skipped the tourist brochure, or maybe my nascent Spanish had not prepared me amply for what we were traveling to. 

Inconceivable.  I admit here that I may not have used that word out loud, but I definitely thought it. Imagine going out into your backyard, (those of you living in mountainous states are exempt from this exercise) and there is your lawn and a maybe a few trees and then, over there by the posies there is a 600 foot tall granite monolith, big enough to host a small town on its peak.  Bang.  Just woke up and there it was.  That’s how sudden and strange and powerful this struck me.

It is inconceivable.  That should be a word that you save for circumstances like this.  Not just toss it around like when you get a really good piece of chocolate cake.  We have already worn off the meaning of the word ‘awesome’.   We have to start saving words for special occasions.

We parked at the bottom and began climbing the 740 steps to the top, presented in an impossible stitch of lattice up the side of the rock.  740 doesn’t seem all that challenging until you get to about 200.  Of course, just for perspective, there are these old guys carrying freight, literally, piled high on their shoulders, up to the café’s and shops on the top, passing you on the steps as you lean on your knees and gasp for air.

When we finally reached the top the vista there took what little breath we had left.  The world, green and blue panorama, spilled out all around us, a view that no one in thousands of miles could have, unless they climbed the steps.  And so the rock, unbelievable as it was from one perspective, delivered an inconceivable gift from another.

Many years ago the towns that lay claim to this rock had a little tiff, and Guatape determined to make a stand.  They sent painters up the side to write the name of their town in bold graffiti.  The other town, El Penol, took issue and sent an angry mob, in those days equal to a sternly worded email.  And so Guatape relented. 

Imagine that you and your buddy are hanging from the side of a ten million ton granite rock, tacked to the sheer sides by a primitive wooden scaffold, just finished painting a 100 ft tall letter ‘G’.  Someone is shouting to you, some 400 feet below. 

“Never mind!  Stop painting.”

“What?”

“Yah, we are going to go a different way.”

“But I already started the ‘U’, I mean what …”

“It’s a long story.  Come on down and we’ll have coffee.”

“You want me to wipe it off?”

“No, it’s ok.  We’ll get it later.”

“Inconceivable!”

The best/worst part of this story is the letters are still there.  I don’t know what font it is but if it needed a name it would be ‘Inconceivable’.

We sat at a small table, tucked under a fragile umbrella out of the sun, drinking fresh fruit juice, hauled up 740 steps by a man old enough to be my father, with a resting heart rate half my own.  Our friend, and guide, Duviere, is quiet.  Then he says: “All the time we have been together you have been the minority.  For the first time I am the minority.”  We looked around and nearly everyone near us were European tourists.  He shrugged and smiled.  I wrote in my journal: ‘Duviere is a good friend to Carson.  I think he is a good friend to everyone he meets.’

It was one of many vignettes I have tucked away, part of the mosaic of those days that I am holding under a scrawled heading of ‘inconceivable’.

Nearly a year has passed since we visited my son Carson in Colombia, months filled with all kinds of other living that might conspire to dim that moment of awe I experienced as the rock came into view.  Except yesterday morning came, with its own nuance and subtle beauty, and then suddenly, on a path in the woods, the day exploded on me.

I stood on the damp carpet of leaves, panting from my run, the only sound in those woods.  The sun found its way around a cloud and filled the place with its perfect light, still low in the morning sky, but determined to show me its passion.  It spilled between the trees, created shadow and color and warmed me. And I was breathless again. In. Con. Ceivable.

There are moments and moments and moments and we see the mundane and the ordinary and all along, there is the inconceivable.  I do not think it means what you think it does.

Hope this finds you rocked,

David