Chapter 20: Climbing San Agustin Hill

So, when she suggested we should climb up the hill above the Las Rosas, with Kike, it came as the greatest idea I had heard, and especially cool coming from Adalid. The biggest surprise, I guess, was that we hadn’t thought about it before. It would be the biggest physical feat that Kike would have endured up to that point in his life, but an awesome challenge. And Adalid wanted to both help and be part of it. Obviously.

So we talked it over, packed a lunch, and started up the trail. The challenge was this: to get him, in his wheelchair, about 2000 feet up the hill, along a “road” that was mostly boulders, cactus, and eroded trail. We would have to back track about a fifth of a mile, along a grassy path, to get him to the main road that would get us about a quarter of the way up the hill. The next half was pure boulder, maybe a mile, and the last quarter would be cactus, plants, and otherwise uphill gravel to reach a lookout point that the San Agustin church had built for Easter Sundays some years back.

We didn’t really treat it like a challenge, like something we were going to conquer, though. It was a definite battle getting him up the poorly paved, winding road, but we would stop and chat and laugh and throw rocks. It was more like an adventure, one that would take hours but we were set on doing it, so there was no turning back. There are houses up as far as the road is paved, so we stopped to buy chips or cookies or whatever we wanted. I had finally got my Spanish down to the point that if I wanted to throw something in, some side joke or whatever, I would start to, they would wait, I would think about it, and then at some point it would come out, better late than never. It was great.

The view out across the valley was a curious site, as we climbed higher and higher you thought there was no way that you could possibly see more, that it could possibly get nicer. As we moved forward, the valley lost its contour, all the little hills and bumps became a flat plane that ran all the way across to Mount Joco across the other side. All the little towns lost their borders and houses met corn fields wherever they felt like it, order and organization lost in the vast layout. It felt like I was flying over head, instead of looking down from the hillside.

When pushing Kike’s chair – Adalid and I took turns – Kike doesn’t really let you push him. He more uses you as propulsion to keep him moving forward. I mean, he is always pushing, as if you weren’t there. But obviously it would be a lot more difficult for him to get over boulders and through shifty gravel if we weren’t there keeping him moving forward. The motion of pushing and pausing while you reach back to push again really hurts your momentum. Sometimes Adalid and I would each take one handle, throwing our other arms around each other, each doing half the work. It was more fun than effective, but we weren’t in a race.

Then, as I was almost at a 45 degree angle, full force into the chair, something scary happened. We came up over a ridge and as I looked up, coming straight at us was the one armed man. Have I mentioned the one armed man? He is a guy that lives somewhere up the hill, I think all the way up actually, who comes down the hill everyday to catch the bus to go somewhere. And he always stares me down. He scares the living daylight out of me. People generally tell me he’s a really strange guy and to be careful of him. He is tall with a long twisted beard and has long hair that is always topped off with a blue wool hat. He looks like he is coming right from jail. The three of us reacted, all of us facing directly forward looking past him as if he didn’t exist. The protocol in San Agustin is to say “good morning” or “good afternoon,” depending on the time of day, in Spanish or Mazahua, to anyone you pass, simply because they are in your community. But we froze. Nobody said anything. I could see he was staring us down. I swear I was ready to grab Adalid, throw us over Kike’s chair and hurtle us back down the hill at full speed. Luckily without a word he passed us by and at a great stride, continued down the road. We stopped and watched him continue down, waiting until he was out of sight before saying anything.

“Oh my gosh”

“Aaaaagh”

“Oh, let’s run for it.” I grabbed Kike’s chair and pretended like I was going to go full speed into a cactus patch.

We were at the last house on the hill. Which meant the last stretch of moderately smooth ground. The really rough stuff was coming up, and we could see it. We had three switchbacks left until the final ascent. There was nothing crazy steep, nothing a car couldn’t climb if it really wanted to, which made me relax a little. From the bottom of the hill it looks like there were pieces where rock climbing was going to be necessary. I hadn’t really figured how we were going to get Kike up that, but now seeing it from here, I realized that it wouldn’t be necessary. We continued to move slowly, sometimes have to work all three together to get over certainly places.

Up ahead we could see a stretch of where the pavement continued again. As we got closer to that point, I started to see that the concrete made no sense. It was a stretch of about 30 yards of straight road that looked like it probably got washed out constantly, and that was the reason for the pavement. But where it ended and began, it was maybe a foot or two up or down, where the dirt had eroded away in front and at the end. If any car tried to take it, it would totally scrape up the bottom to pieces. I couldn’t imagine any car high enough to make it cleanly. We pulled Kike up onto it and he could help push again. It made the going much easier for us, but I could see no other logical use for that road.

The view was exponentially sweeter than it had been down below.