A Walking Landscape

When the Quilotoa volcano erupted 800 years ago, it blanketed the region in ash, filling river valleys and creating a high terraced plateau. The rivers cut down relatively quickly through the soft rock, reclaiming their canyons. The lanscape is a walking landscape, craggy mountains shed water into valleys a thousand feet below.

We left Isinliví and dropped steeply to the Rio Cumbijín a tributary of the Rio Toachi. Not 25 meters down the path, a grandmother, climbing from below, paused to catch her breath. She asked our destination. Her sing-song Spanish was accented with Quichua, and I strained to follow her. I caught enough to understand she was telling us it was a long way to walk. "Muy legos" she crooned. Across..down..and up up. She laughed at my light-colored plants and suggested I tuck them into my rubber boots (which were strapped to my pack) or better yet, take a car. We all laughed and she reviewed the directions again before turing upslope to continue her journey.

The well-traveled path descended past hobbled cows, fields planted in corn, beans and potatoes, and past small houses, their laundry waving from the line. I was staggered not only by the steepness of the landscape, but also by the angle of cropland and pasture that quilted the hills. Everything, including places that seemed too steep to walk, let alone plant, weed or harvest, held rows of plants.

The trail passed a small farm and ascended through a pasture, then turned to descend through earthen clifs, opening at last onto a bench whose contours we followed 400 m above the Rio Toachi, a rocky, almost-braided river that runs north to join the Rio Guayllabamba then rushes to meet the Pacific at Esmeraldas. We followed the river upstream entering its deeply carved canyon.

On the opposite bank families worked the land; their brightly colored clothing highlighted ant-like movements. For many of these families, all of whom seem to own at least one horse, our path must serve as the road to town: Isinliví or the equally small Chugchilán. We crossed the river on a felled tree, to which was bolted a post-and-wire hand rail. Continuing up stream, our eyes followed the switchbacking paths that rose to houses on the plateau. At our feet mountain lupine and yellow daisy-like flowers bloomed. Eucalyptus trees formed hedgerows between pastures.

Just below Itualo, our path began to climb. The sound of the river rose upward with us as we switchbacked to the terrace where Itualo perched. We sat in the shelter of the church doorway for a rest. As soon as we had our packs off, school let out for the day and our sanctuary flooded with curious children. One propelled a wheel over with his stick, two others giggled over a handmade kite which exhibited a lingere add. A fourth stopped to chat, asking us words for things in English and pulling out her English and math workbooks to show us her grades. We chatted until the afternoon chill drove us up path which rose 300m up the cliff to the upper terrace.

Again and again on the path, I stopped to gasp for breath while school children scampered up-slope and home. "Aqui!" they called down to us, mistaking our pauses for confusion "Por aqui!" At the top Miguel, a woodworker, invited us out to a vista overlooking the canyon through which we had climbed. We stopped to admire a door he was making and the hand carved scenes he had created of the Toachi valley, before we headed on to Chugchilán. The path brought us out to the road and back to a faster paced life.

In his book Wandering Home, Bill McKibben talks about the welcome he received while travelling on foot from Vermont to his home in the Adirondacks - and here I felt it too. Built into the walking landscape was the space to put down my pack and pass a few minutes talking with the neighbors.