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The Fellowship of Maderas
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| After returning from the trek, I'm on my way to the lake for a bath. Notice the three skin tones: red from the waterlogged socks, brown from the mud, and pasty white from birth. |
It began upon entering the cloudforest, which quite literally left us hiking inside of a cloud. If it was wet before, it was soaking now. The vegetation underwent a drastic transformation here, from basic trees with basic leaves to smaller, more dense trees invading your headspace, moss everywhere, and vines draped throughout at staggered levels. Mist creeped around you leaving a 10-metre radius of clear vision (assuming there were no trees, which there were in abundance, so really vision was closer to 5 metres). Everything oozed with dew, and everthing you touched involved removing moss, no matter how good your environmental intentions. Each step was no less than two inches deep in mud, that is, unless you were climbing on trees elevating you off the ground, with precarious holes waiting to swallow your foot just long enough to twist your ankle before giving it back with a satisfactory laugh. Every twenty feet you had to crawl under a branch on your hands and knees, making sure to successfully navigate your pack through as well, which adds another foot to the depth of your back.
If you were ten feet away from the next member of the Fellowship, it meant that you could not see them. The vegetation was that thick, and the trail that winding, that despite knowing there are five other people around you, you still felt alone trudging through this muck.
There are three distinct parts of The Degobah System where you pop out in a small clearing over the midget trees, and expect to be gifted with a wondrous view of Isla Ometepe in all its glory, but Degobah will have none of it. It makes sure that you give it your total concentration by blinding your view with a thick, hazy white cloud, and you are simply forced to burrow back down into the thick jungle, and leave the memory of what could have been behind after three steps.
The best part of it all is that every step taken is another problem to solve. It’s rapid decision making at its finest. Sometimes a tree root is used to avoid slipping, and other times a tree root is avoided to avoid slipping. Sometimes a rock is stepped on to avoid mud, and sometimes mud is plunged into to avoid a rock. Other times mud is plunged into in order to avoid deeper mud. You are always grabbing onto trees and roots and rocks and vines to pull yourself up or through. And most of the time, as you confidently step on what you positively know to be solid ground, your foot sinks halfway up your calve into the mud below. You curse aloud and move on. The Fellowship giggles, because they too just fell for the same dirty trick, and they move on.
Your calves and quads are burning the entire time. Your hands are sprinkled with scrapes from six hours of grabbing Mother Jungle. Your back is sore from the forty lbs. of pack it is burdened with, and your pack is burdened with the extra weight caused by the absorption of sweat and cloud.
All the while, you are expecting to see the glimmering image of Obi-Wan Kenobi appear to guide you in the ways of The Force. (Alec Guinness, not Ewan McGregor, mind you.)
We reached the sign marking the crossroads of the paths after 1 ½ hours of Degobah System. This meant we had another 100 metres until we reached the best place to set camp. It turned out to be a small, semi-level, entirely rock-floored high point, and we stopped to set up camp. Ten minutes into it, the rain began to fall. We picked up our pace, working well as a team, and successfully hung three hammocks with a protective tarp, set up the tent, and hung a tarp over all of our packs. We huddled under one tarp, downed a bottle of rum in less than five minutes, ate two hard boiled eggs each, and waited for the now very intense rainfall to cease.
Matt, Mike, Seth, and I headed off to find the lagoon, while Eric and Anna waited at camp. After fifteen minutes of climbing down wet, slippery, cascading rocks, we descended to the bottom of the crater and found the lagoon situated in the mist of a cloud—low visibility, but a lagoon none-the-less. (Hey, what…is that an X-Wing Fighter Jet being raised from the depths in the swampy distance…?) We spent only a short while there, and headed carefully back to camp. No casualties.
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| Eric, sporting his warpaint from the final hour of the trek. |
We all hiked to the lagoon in the morning after breaking camp, and it was even cloudier this time, but still equally as mysterious and wonderful. We were inside a cloud, looking at a lagoon, inside the crater of a volcano on an island in the middle of a lake in Nicaragua. The concept was not discussed, but was equally understood and savored by all members of the Fellowship.
After a short stay at the lagoon, we climbed equipment and intelligence free back up the 30 foot sheer rock wall in the rain, and began our journey home. This time the cloud worked its way down the better part of the volcano, and it rained for a good bit of the hike, so we were drenched all day. Moving with gravity brings many slips and falls, and The Degobah System seemed to last an extra hour this time. Our descent reverted us into monkeys swinging from tree to tree, using the mud to slide and cover more ground.
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| The Fellowship (l-r): Brian, Seth, Eric, Matt, Anna. |
My toes and feet were in utter pain from jamming into the front of my shoes all day. Upon arrival at base camp, the workers were in shock at our accomplishment. All they could do was laugh in respectful disbelief, and offer us food, beer, and cigarettes. We ate, bathed, and passed out.
That night we wearily reminisced and traded stories and emails over dinner, and then passed out once again for a hard night’s sleep. Six random people from entirely different backgrounds, spanning the ages of 18-32 and three different countries, came together by some twist of fate and made this march up Volcan Maderas. Wonders never cease.