I awoke to being awake, as I was most of the night. While I was excited about the day’s itinerary, I was beholden to a mood besotted by a rootless weariness. The lake, so azure, transformed that. Big water has a mysterious way in its flow to soften the stones we carry within, for flow is about the only real law. Its molecules contain a key, which upon ingress opens floodgates.

Stepping onto one of the 28 Uros islands, I slid back to my early years, playing among the reeds of the Delaware River. These are familiar margins. There used to be less than 28 islands, but after a dispute some islanders literally tore themselves asunder, to drift as a smaller island, hacking their homeland with a saw. Yet these people have made a permanent home upon the reeds, floating atop tides and currents, this is no memory like water's memory. This is their sanctuary; it floats, and is mutable. They must be content with ripples, waves. Unfortunately, the missionaries got to them… the lives we see now may just be a shell, a show, while they are held in the strings of an alien god. We boated along the reeds, on a solid vessel made of the same. It was utterly quiet, as a little boy dragged his finger along the water.

The motor boat picked us up and we began the two hour trek to Taquile island, out in the open water. I stayed atop the boat most of the time, breathing in the blue and optical illusions played with distant islands, bending their shorelines, bobbing beads on the deep. I savored the slow ride, and the bit of chop. Along the way, families were out in their row boats, fishing, and there was no indication in this scene that this was the twenty-first century.

The island loomed, or wove, before us for what seemed an eternity. We trekked up to a path that local villagers take to circumnavigate the small island, still clinging to gender-bending traditions of men knitting and women plowing. It was steep, but easy. And I made a discovery about the capabilities of my body versus the capabilities I perceive my body to have; I can do what I want. I have freedom. I make-believe that I can’t do. But I scaled Taquile with little effort. Alas, a discovery to note.

We stumbled upon a poor family, and our guide gave them bread. They invited us to watch the matriarch, Lucia, weave. With her sharpened llama bone, she deftly an minutely managed a pattern coming right from ancestral memory. She offered to show other weavings, not really, it seemed, having hope that they would sell. My eyes immediately alighted upon a coca leaf bag made by her daughter Juana Cruz Wata, and I bought it for 30 soles. This combined with a scarf that Terry bought gave the family 70 soles more than what they had expected to come out of the sky that Thursday afternoon, and being very poor it made a world of difference to them. That was far more a motivation for me than the coca bag, to see lights behind the eyes well up in thanksgiving.

The island lives on in a sea of liquid emerald. The ways of life have only slightly been changed by tourism and modernity. The stone gateways are gravity-defiant and bold corridors between this world and that. I love it there, and hope to be able to go back when I need it. Taquile could be a mantra for peacefulness, openness, perspective. May it be so.

The boat ride back was harmonious. I laid out atop the boat in the sun, and let the choppy waters rock me into deep-cocooning, metamorphic thinking, or non-thinking. A boat in trouble hailed us, and we swung around to latch the two boats together for a slow, conjoined ride to the boundary of reeds, where we loosed the mostly happy crowd and literally, made course for a dramatic yellow sunset.

Dinner at the same queer restaurant as last night, and I enjoyed the wittedness the beers gave my tongue. In dreams: hasids and rabbis cock-fighting in the street, worms going in circles, black veiled women pronouncing undecipherable secrets.

(9 June, last full day in Puno)