Getting Back in the Saddle and Doing Hard Things
As a child, my father bloodied by nose often.
In the vast expanse of acres of yard devoid of landscape except for well-maintained Kentucky bluegrass, the foundations of some of the most important lessons of my life were laid. These lessons were hard. And they hurt. The kind of bloody violence that was a near-daily occurrence in the Kelley household during the lazy, humid Midwestern summers isn’t the sort of dark, domestic type which probably comes to mind.
Bloody noses were the result of pop-fly baseballs escaping the clutches of a well-oiled leather baseball mitt, worn down by two generations of hands calloused by hard labor on the farm. Bloody knees manifested themselves as badges of valor after miscalculating the balance required to stay upright when turning the handlebars of a shiny new Schwinn.
I’ll never forget the day I learned to ride a bicycle in the cul-de-sac of Norwich Drive. I couldn’t believe that I had convinced my parents to buy me something this cool that was all my own, an entire size too big for me at the time, but a bike that I could grow into. I was five years old. My parents didn’t believe in training wheels. It’s a damn miracle that I didn’t wet myself as I gingerly pushed off and placed both feet on the pedals. It was terrifying yet exhilarating to throw caution to the wind and attempt to balance on two wheels while simultaneously remembering to pedal and steer at the same time (a feat which, at 35 and with tens of thousands of miles on the bike under my belt, I still sometimes struggle to do.)
My tangled hair trailed behind as the glory of self-propelled flying sent my spirits soaring and heart racing. The glory was short-lived. In a split-second, my fortune had changed and the aluminum frame lay on top of my crumpled lanky kid body, newly adorned with two freshly painted crimson knees and a well of tears threatening to betray my confidence. I assumed that this would be the end of my short-lived cycling career, a failed experiment never to be undertaken again. I mean, how could one be expected to retry such an utterly fruitless and disastrous experience? Not only did it hurt like hell, but it was humiliating. Maybe the neighbors were looking out the window and seeing the one kid who couldn’t keep two wheels on the ground. What if one of the other kids saw my failure? Most importantly, what if I let my dad down? There was a certain amount of pressure to at least look like I was enjoying this new toy that I felt was such an enormous privilege to have.
I was shocked – SHOCKED – when my dad swiftly stood the bike up and motioned for me to get back in the saddle. Trying again seemed like a monumental task for another day, maybe after my dad carried me up the driveway, bike slung over his other shoulder, and after I could recuperate with some milk and cookies. It never occurred to me that the next trial would happen NOW and HERE, so publicly and without any fanfare.
It was bloody, and it was hard, and even the thought of doing something again which had begun so poorly seemed improbable. But it was the first of many lessons my dad would teach me using sports as a metaphor for life; it’s only hard before you succeed, and if you don’t get back in the saddle, you’ll never ride. Part of the glory is in doing something that is hard.
My parents were big believers in doing hard things sometimes just for the sake of doing hard things. We grew up in a farming community and it wasn’t uncommon for families to loan their kids out to other families, especially in the dog days of summer, to do chores around the farm. Of course, a lot of times we didn’t mind the backbreaking work because we somehow made tasks like shoveling out the hog barn fun. When there is dirt involved, kids always find a silver lining. But some tasks weren’t fun. I’ll never forget the time my parents forced my sister and me to dig a hole under the house with trowels in order to install a sump pump. It took hours. There were any number of professionals whose actual livelihoods are forged doing this work for a living, but in the eyes of my parents, there was no one better for the job than my sister and me. We complained. It wasn’t fair. It was really hard. It was dark and sweaty and there were bugs under there that we’d never seen before, even in the farthest reaches of the woods that was our playground. We weren’t allowed back inside the house until the task was complete. It was boring and miserable work, but it did feel kinda good to have completed something hard.
For my parents, it was partially about finding a time-intensive task to get us out of their hair for a while and also out of the house, but in hindsight it was, more importantly, a lesson. A lesson in the value of hard work and grinding through something when you really don’t want to. I wish this was the only example I could think of where our parents made us do manual labor seemingly for the sole purpose of making us suffer and destroying our childhood aspirations of beating every level of Mario Brothers 3, but, alas, it was with shocking regularity that there was more and more hard work to be done. I once asked my parents why we had to do all this stuff that they easily could hire someone else to do. “Because it’s hard,” my mom said. What a ludicrous answer. And child abuse. But the older I get, the more grateful I am for the opportunity to have experienced hard things so early and so often because now I know how to do hard things.
A week ago I was the victim of a violent attack at knifepoint in Ecuador, just two weeks before the end of a 9-month trip around the world. I was alone and shaken and scared. It might have been the worst day of my life. I spent a solid 24 hours in tears not wanting to leave my apartment. My initial reaction was to catch the next flight home, but my friends and husband encouraged me to finish my travels. It was great advice and I was so grateful to have been able to fall back on the lessons from my youth in getting back in the saddle. If I hadn’t continued, the fear would have stayed with me and it would have really held hostage my love of travel, maybe forever. Don’t get me wrong, the attack certainly changed me. I’m still uncomfortable walking alone. I have a super annoying habit of constantly looking over my shoulder and I cross to the other side of the street if there are men on my side. I really get tremendous joy out of taking pictures and using the internet to learn more about places as I visit them, but I’m not comfortable pulling out my phone or camera or wallet in public anymore. When I recently needed to peek a map, I walked into a grocery store and hid between the aisles before I would let anyone see that I didn’t know where I was going.
I shared a cab from the airport with a local gal when I landed in Colombia the day after the attack. I offered to pay for her taxi if she would come with me in the car and drop me at my hotel. I recounted the story of my attack and asked for the name of her salon in Santa Marta. I was planning to dye my hair black to do something about looking like such a gringa. At least it was one thing I could control. To my complete and utter dismay she said, “It’s not your hair, sweetie. It’s your face. You have the most American face I’ve ever seen and no amount of hair dye is going to hide it.” FML. I had to do something else.
A few days post-attack, I was just miserable. Stuck somewhere in between knowing I needed to move on and get over it and continue to travel and do the things I love but also feeling very hesitant and having a lot of trepidation about what to do next, I executed the nuclear option; I knew I just needed to do something that felt hard. Without any sense of ego, I walked into the nearest tour operator in Colombia and asked for the hardest activity they had planned.
Turns out, the next day this company was beginning a 4 day trek to Ciudad Perdida, an ancient archaeological site meaning “Lost City” in Spanish. Built about 650 years before Machu Picchu, the lost city was rediscovered in the 70s by treasure hunters and after ancient artifacts began showing up on the Colombian black market, archaeologists began restoring the site.
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The view of the main terraces of Ciudad Perdida from the top.
No, there is no KKK in the lost city. These guys are "mamus" -- or tribe leaders -- of the indiginous Kogi people. *This is not my picture. I felt super awkward photographing them in person so I found this one on the internet without attribution so apologies for not giving photo credit.
These guys did not believe in building on flat land. No one knows exactly how the stones were cut from the nearby quarry as the only metal that was found was gold, a soft metal.
Coca plant being grown for personal consumption.
The trek was grueling. The average daily temperature was 90 degrees F and 100% humidity. Just taking 10 steps was enough to streak your clothes with sweat, and the trail, with its red-tinged clay, never dried, turning the pathway into a muddy mess that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tough Mudder race. We hiked for 28 hours over 4 days in the rain, the heat, and the mud, stopping to cool off in the Rio Buritaca when it became too unbearable. While the trekking was tough and steep, the swims were amazing! The chilly mountain water raging from above winding into streams and twisting into waterfalls was a natural icepack for sore knees and tired feet. There was no point in toweling off after getting out of the water because the high humidity kept every article of clothing permanently drenched. Even after hanging wet, stinky clothes on a clothesline overnight, they were just as soaked when it came time to put them back on the next morning.
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Suspension bridge crossing the Rio Buritaca
A traditional Kogi village. Image credit: Hecktictravels
The trek to the lost city began just a few miles off the Caribbean Sea on Colombia’s north coast, which was hit by Hurricane Matthew several weeks ago and did quite a bit of damage to the trail. A number of bridges we crossed had either fallen or were about to. In the United States, our overly litigious society would never have allowed passage on this trail in its current shape but the Colombians were eager to reopen and allow the trail to provide income for the supposedly 1500 people who rely on it. The thrill you get from doing things that seem dangerous are kicked up a notch when they probably actually are dangerous. I’m fairly certain there is no country on earth in which these bridges were up to code.
Between the missing boards you could see and feel the rushing river below.
In addition to the difficult terrain and stifling humidity, there were also river crossings to deal with. Our guides really proved their mettle shepherding us across the swift thigh-deep water that apparently can get chest-deep after a heavy rain.
Crossing the river.
After two days of hiking, we finally arrived at Ciudad Perdida with its towering terraces and ancient maps carved into blocks of stone. Our two guides to the lost city did not speak English, but our intrepid translator ensured that we didn’t’ miss a detail. We also traveled with a cook, who made some of the most amazing food with virtually no modern amenities to work with.
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Our guide, Jose, and intrepid interpreter, Joanne, explaining the stone map
My unbelievable guide, Jose, carried a TV through the jungle for two days to deliver it to some local tribespeople. Apparently this is Amazon Prime delivery in the actual Amazon. I cannot believe these hill people can get DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket in the literal middle of nowhere and I can't get it in NYC (true story.)
After 2 days of climbing a mountain to get here, there were 1200 of these mossy steps to climb.
Sitting on the throne.
One of the few bridges that actually looked safe.
The lost city has only been open for tourism for about 15 years, so it’s not as completely excavated or restored as Machu Picchu, a similar set of ruins to which it is often compared. The lost city is comprised of multiple sets of terraces set into the side of a mountain, each of them having served different purposes from farming to worship to living before the city was abandoned more than three hundred years ago. No one knows precisely why the city was abandoned, but the Tayrona people who lived there likely contracted empire-ending syphilis and smallpox after the Spanish conquistadors arrived.
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Viewpoint from the mountain. The bald spots are former coca fields. For most of the 20th century, Colombia was the world's main producer of cocaine.
Swinging from vines and sliding down waterfalls. A real-life Indiana Jones adventure
The sleeping accomodation. In either an awful bed or a hammock, you are so tired you don't realize how uncomfortable it is! My tiny red daypack in the closest bed is all I brought for 4 days.
There are a soul-crushing 1200 steps that lead up to the lost city, and it is thrilling to think of what the first people to rediscover the lost city must have thought when they stumbled upon the beginning to this massive city in the jungle that at one time was home to somewhere between 5000 and 10000 people. The lost city was also a great time to do some reflection -- on my own recent history and what lay in my past and the physical struggle in the past days that had helped me take my mind off of an extremely harrowing experience. It felt good to wrench my feet out of the sucking mud with each step up the red clay trails and it felt it felt good to purge emotions out with the sweat. It felt good to need nothing more than the 15L daypack on my back and to feel foolishly purified by the torrents of river water. At one point, alone in the humid jungle among the palms and toucans, tears came to my eyes as I realized that it was one of the first moments since the attack that it occurred to me that I had momentarily stopped being scared. Although I swore as a child I would never feel this way, there is something exceptionally gratifying and restorative to doing hard things.
Zen moment at the top of Ciudad Perdida, the lost city.
My friend Stephanie got this manicure before completing her first Ironman triathlon. What an inspiration!