3 Life-Giving Words I Learned in the Dark, Alone with my Daughter, on a Volcano in Guatemala
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
I fell asleep at 1:00 a.m., sandwiched between strangers and my daughter.
We were in a tent, the strangers on my right. They were a friendly couple from Brazil — or at least whatever they said in Portuguese sounded nice. They smiled when they said it. All four of us cocooned in borrowed sleeping bags below the summit of Acatenango — the third tallest volcano in Central America.
After she finished college, my daughter, Averie, moved to Guatemala, where she founded a socially conscious clothing and textile production company. When I was able to take a week to visit her, she thoughtfully said, “Hey, you like hiking — there’s a big dormant volcano here. We should hike up it.”
I’m always up for a hike and a good time with my children, so I said sure. She signed us up, then emailed back with the details: Oh, this isn’t a day hike. It’s an overnight, guided backpacking experience with lots of medical forms and liability waivers.
