Excerpt from The Eagle's Journey by Carlos Martinez

Day 7

A SPECIAL INVITATION

We were now at the seventh day of this experience, and at last we had reached the rocky ditch, after an extensive trek along a path, that as we went up, it became more and more rocky and narrow, taking us away from the initial path. Despite this, it was as if nothing had started. Nothing. I kept asking myself, what was I doing in this moor, which we had reached, and me, exhausted, freezing cold, with the wind that wouldn't stop blowing, furiously, fearlessly as if it were up against the world and we were its prize. At some point along the path, Peter said, he who insults the wind insults himself. I didn't say a thing and I tried to be as calm as possible. After a while, as if understanding my purpose, Peter smiled pointing to the leaves, the twigs, saying that we had to learn from them, unavoidable friends of the wind. "Unavoidable" is what he said. And he added, upon taking some steps, some arduous steps up the slope "that the leaves, the twigs and even the grass had a responsibility to this friendship. This is why they are unavoidable to the wind, until the ultimate consequences. I became quiet, I was tired, worried and to add to it the wind and the dust that didn't let me see, the clouds, getting thicker and darker, announcing one of those storms that you feel like being at home, in bed, rolled up in blankets, really warm.

Peter stood against the wind and as if knowing what was happening to me, told me the place where we were. At last, I said to myself, at last this hike has ended! I stopped going round, fighting off the wind. I stood still; breathed deeply. Standing in the ditch which we had reached we could see the moor where we would set up camp; it looked intriguing, as if everything and the wind itself left its footprint to reveal itself in this immense green that didn't stop stirring and involving this new landscape, so full of life with its long and restless stream zigzagging like the very devil's tail. From the moor I could see a huge stone barrier that ascended from the esplanade where we were standing, with its plants growing from the rock unions, and just like that, facing the sunlight, nurtured from the humidity that flows from there. How wonderful! -I thought to myself "as if everything could be in agreement and be everything, as if everything followed its own path, and every path belonged to everything! I was absorbed just being there, when Peter told me that it was exactly here where, what we came to see happens, and something in me knew that this was so. At once, we started to put the cameras in strategic places to capture all the action, but maintaining a careful distance. We put a camera on top of a large tree full of branches. And when I say "we put" I mean to say Peter climbed up the large trunk and put it there. This man looks like a monkey- I thought " subdued by the lightness of his movements. Peter indicated to put a couple of cameras tied to the smaller trees, and that I put another one between two big rocks. It was by no means an easy feat for me, with the wind at my face and then having it on my back.