the inca bridge

Some paths must be finally walked alone. They are too narrow, one can only go single file. I watch my friend take a solo journey that we others can only accompany on for a little way. And then we must perforce let go our hands and keep walking. On what I would call the backside of Machu Picchu is a sheer cliff of some several hundred feet, with certain death at the bottom. Cut into the face of that cliff is a narrow path of stone-presumably done to make it impossible for an invader to approach undetected and in force from this direction. What it means is that the traveler must walk single file, no one can walk side by side along this stretch of the path, even though before and after it is a wider path that will accomodate them. We all have Inca Bridge experiences in life, and on the other side of them, we are not the same person who began. My friend will be forever changed, and will have experienced something we can't know. I know we all have some piece of this in our lives. Each has their own private burdens and joys, that no one else can really know. And yet.