Dear Casa Carmen family,

We recently returned from a trip to our home country, Ecuador. Few people know much about this small patch of South American land, so I want to share with you some thoughts about its striking mountains. 

Imagine that the hands of some giant and formidable god took the United States and squeezed it into a space of under 500 miles wide—narrowing its great plains into high plateaus, collapsing its valleys into deep gorges, pressing its mountains into sharp spear tips of stone that pierce the clouds. Imagine that planning and zoning offices never existed, and that houses and buildings sprung up with the chaos and spontaneity of the human will upon its encounter this staggering landscape. That is Ecuador: messy, beautiful, and untamed.

Its capital city, Quito, sits on a plateau 9,350’ above sea level, below an active volcano called Pichincha whose intermittent eruptions gave us “volcano days” when we were in school. To the south is Cotopaxi, one of the tallest active volcanoes in the world, with an altitude of 19,347’. Further south, soars Chimborazo, a dormant volcano of 20,549’—higher than any mountain in North America and the closest point to the sun in the entire world. Immense mountains define the landscape of Ecuador. 

Felipe and I have been traveling through these mountains on horseback since we were very young—first with our father, then with our friends. Early this January, we had the great pleasure of riding to the top of Atacazo, another of Quito’s dormant volcanos defined by its fierce, jagged peaks and an elevation of 17,863’. Up there, the air is very cold and thin. There are no roads or paths. Remnants of old Inca trails crisscross the ridges like barely perceptible scars. Horses stumble and sometimes fall in the thick tussock grasslands of the páramo (Andean highlands), and there are many passes where horses can’t carry riders, so one must continue on foot. It is hard to walk and breathe, and the danger of the situation bears down upon you with crushing clarity. You wonder why you chose to make such a journey. 

But going there earns you the chance of being granted a rare and ephemeral gift: the truly extraordinary vista from the continental divide. To one side, the sharp mountainside fades into distant valleys where the growing city creeps into the fertile fields of rich volcanic soil behind which the colossal peaks of the eastern mountain chain rise like impenetrable walls of rock and snow. To the other side, steep glacier-carved ridges like the protruding veins upon the body of some ancient stone giant descend into a cloud forest. Everything below disappears into a thick blanket of mist, pierced only by mighty peaks like snowcapped promontories amid a sea of clouds. Far on the horizon, the deep blue of an infinite ocean—a world of contrasts and immensity that make the foundations of the soul tremble. 

Mountains have a history of being the place of such mystical experiences. Almost 700 years ago, the Italian poet Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux with his brother. At the mountain's base, an elderly shepherd urged him to reconsider, sharing his own failure to climb it fifty years earlier. Neither before nor since, he claimed, had anyone dared attempt the ascent. Undeterred, Petrarch and his brother pressed on, climbing higher and higher until the clouds were beneath their feet.

Upon reaching the summit, the vast vista turned Petrarch’s thoughts inward. He remembered his home, Bologna, which he had not seen for ten years. He then opened St. Augustine’s Confessions, which he always carried with him, to a passage that read, “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.” Petrarch and St. Augustine understood that the wonders of the external world, while good in themselves, are a reflection of the landscape of inwardness.

The staggering landscape, the world of contrasts, is an external mirror of the jagged peaks and valleys that lie within. In the colossal mountains, the finitude and fragility of life are seen in high relief, illuminating the reality in which we live and inspiring us to explore its mysteries. 

In this season of winter, which is always a time of introspection, I’d like to raise my glass to each of you, friends, and to the vast and inscrutable landscapes that each of you carries within.

Salud,

Enrique