December 28, 2021

My dearest,

It’s 5,200 metres above sea level. A two-hour drive from Cusco, then hiking for five kilometres. In the Andes, in Peru where you had found your spiritual land.

Vinicunca. Montaña de Siete Colores. Rainbow Mountain.

You show me pictures of the slopes and the summits, the stripes in seven shades that give the mountain its name: the pink from the manganese and the mud; the red from the iron oxide in the clay; the yellow from the sulphur in the sandstones, of course.

The earthy hues come from the fanglomerate, from its stores of magnesium; the greenish blues from phyllites and copper that has oxidised over the centuries; the midnight black from merciless granite; and the sudden snowy white from the marls and the quartzose, the pristine presence of calcium carbonate.

You tell me you wish to visit, to travel the miles required from our home, crossing continents and oceans to arrive at our destination. It’s your dream.

When it’s safer, of course, you hasten to add. Goodness knows travel won’t be sensible anytime soon. Not till the danger has passed. However long it takes, you acknowledge, firmly sure that this day will come.

I am afraid. I have always been hesitant to travel, to go beyond my comfort zone. I have told you many times before and I will tell you many times to come, that if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have seen so much of our beautiful world.

I wouldn’t have seen the thunderous waterfalls of Iguazú. I wouldn’t have scaled the heights of Cerro Chaltén and other perilous peaks. I wouldn’t have tramped the length of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in a single day without you by my side.

I wouldn’t have been courageous, only a coward. But instead. But, instead:

I am afraid and you teach me to be brave anyway.

So I know we will visit the Rainbow Mountain some day. I don’t know when, I don’t know how. But we will.

It’s your dream. And it’s our dream.

You have taught me to be brave, you have taught me to be proud. We will find that place that is ours, somewhere over the rainbow, somewhere that is home.

And that somewhere is you. We are found, for we have found each other. We are home, for we are our home.

Yours, ever and always.