Weaving our reach in Andes elevations
On turning situations into high-elevation meaning
What if your reach—is a thread that never ends?
Hi, everyone-
There’s a final door upon which our reach would be decided.
I’m guessing that door won’t be found anywhere in social media. What do you think?
For one woman living in the Andes elevations as high as 22,841 feet (6,962 meters), that door is upon her. Around her: are the lives of those she’s changed.
A weaver doesn’t get to do all the cool stuff. Not the hunting. Not the killing. Not the bragging, either. Kind of reminds me of the times I stood in the frustrating quiet of piled-up dishes, while my kids’ laughter echoed from the other corner of the house. As the pile of dishes went down, volumes of my field research—piled up.
Sacrifice, I think, is so often hidden in responsibility.
This weaver woman was a Wari Queen in the Andes mountain regions. To be a queen, in her books, doesn’t mean she gets to sit around on a throne all day. It means that every thread of life connected to her domain—be it an ancient village or a kingdom—leads to where she’s sitting.
She was the axial epicenter from which every thread unrolls.
For this one woman upon the final door:
… Years in the frost of one of the breathtaking (and breath-killing) elevations meant that—her fingers were exposed. Every day. As she moved them forward and back. Forward and back.
Underneath her: threads attached to a wooden apparatus—a weaving machine.
Around the Andean villages exist places that make us question our eyes. Here, millions of years of mineral deposits (and shifting tectonic plates) have painted the mountain otherworldly hues.
To the weaving woman, all the lives that thread back to her spool, doesn’t stop there. It links further up: to the great mountains that show her, exactly—what to make.
I used to hate having to sit in one place. Feels like I’m going around in circles. Little did I know: I really was. But not to no end. To the ends of people around me. And—further.