by Mark Adams
After spending half a career editing travel and adventure articles, Adams quits his job and spends months hiking around Peru guided by an Australian remarkably like Crocodile Dundee. Those of us more confined to the States can travel along with this marvelous memoir. Archaeology, history, culture, nature...all humorously intertwined. If I were looking for a book on Incas and Peru for South American geography for a high school aged-son (as I will in a few years), this is perfect. It's on our list.
Peru's borders contain some of the world's most varied topography and climate. Measured in square miles, the country is not especially large. on a globe it looks like a swollen California. Within that space, though, are twenty-thousand-foot peaks, the world's deepest canyon (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon), unmapped Amazon jungle and the driest desert on earth....Scientists have calculated that there are thirty-four types of climatic zones on the face of the earth. Peru has twenty of them.One of my goals for our high school geography course is to present my students with books and articles that challenge a Eurocentric viewpoint (which we cultivate in our history studies), reveal current life in non-Western countries, and explore the relationship between the past and the present in a way that allows them to appreciate God's presence in lives around the world and throughout time. While probably impossible to do perfectly, the attempt is worthwhile. Adams's book captures much of the attitude I am seeking. While respectful of Incan heritage, Adams presents a balanced view.
Today, perhaps because Machu Picchu is so popular among the spiritually inclined, the Incas are sometimes portrayed as a peaceful race who graciously invited neighboring tribes to join their thriving territorial conglomerate. In reality, they could be as brutal as the conquistadors.Because Adams shapes his journeys around those of Hiram Bingham III, the relationship between Incas and those who came after (whether from Europe or America) is woven throughout the book. Adams respects the skills of the Incas, both those of the architects and those of the builders.
Up to now I had been thinking of these places as Bingham had when first starting out, as self-contained lost cities and holy sites, akin to abandoned medieval villages and churches. Trails were just lines on a map connecting the dots. But if John was right, the Incas had seen things very differently. These sites and trails were more like organs and vessels, the circulatory system in a living body.Later:
The stonework at Machu Picchu is just the most conspicuous aspects of its brilliance. The citadel is also, in the words of the hydrologist Kenneth Wright, "a civil engineering marvel." Someone had to have made the climb up to the ridge around 1450 A.D. -- historians' best guess -- and decided that this remote saddle between two jagged peaks, with dizzying drops on two sides, could be cleared, leveled and made suitable for habitation and agriculture.Be aware there are mentions of coca use, overindulgence in alcohol, and some swearing.
Adams appears to be a fallen-away Catholic, not denouncing the faith, but seemingly disregarding it. There are a few shocking revelations that may surprise young Catholics.
(Colonial fun fact: after Columbus returned home to report his discovery, Pope Alexander VI briefly set aside fathering children with his various mistresses to issue a papal bull dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal--which is one reason that most South Americans speak Spanish, but Brazilians speak Portuguese.)This sort of flippancy is not false, but would need to be placed within the context of a study of church history (something Mater Amabilis™ does well). There are similar comments about the missionary family which raised Hiram Bingham III.
There's little flowery language here. When Adams wants to describe a natural scene of tremendous beauty, he uses a superlative adjective and moves on.
In Kant's epistemology, it means something limitless, an aesthetically pleasing entity so huge that it made the perceiver's head hurt. Machu Picchu isn't just beautiful, it's sublime.What he lacks in poetics, he balances in sensible assessments of history, his own humility, and respect for the relationships between people and the environment. His experiences also encourage us to take time to really explore our world.
I have received nothing for this post; all opinions are my own. I checked this book out from the library. Amazon links above are affiliate links.
