Inca Trail

My second camping trip ever was the Inca Trail in 2011.

My time studying abroad ended up being incredibly formative in shaping my identity and my relationship with the outdoors. This trip specifically faced me with the strangeness of traveling and recreating as a brown American. I felt more at ease just simply looking more like the local people, but my clothing and travel companions always gave it away. This is the opposite of my existence in the US.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the inner conflict of having indigenous blood that created such beauty and colonizer blood that destroyed it. Latinx identities in the US are typically seen as immigrant identities, and people seldom stop to think of the original theft and dehumanization of our indigenous and black ancestors by non-British colonizers.

I’ve also been thinking about what my melanin means to me, and will be unpacking that more it in future posts.

Machu Picchu. Fall 2011.