Daughter of the Earth
August 21, 2026 - Kinsa Cocha (Quinsacocha), Peru
This is the hike that (almost) killed me, and somehow, at the same time, made me feel more alive than ever before. The first part was due to serious altitude disease, and the last part was possibly also due to lack of oxygen (lol) and the rush of adrenaline from my body being in survival mode, but even more so from the absolute beauty, majesty and wildness of the landscape.
The weather was rough. It was windy, cold and rain was constantly drizzling while sometimes turning into a downpour. I was badly prepared. First of all, I had no idea the hike was at 4,000m high, around 1,000m higher than where I was staying, which I was already struggling with. I had no idea about the cold and weather up there, and I was glad I had asked my neighbour for a raincoat, just in case. It was a purple, broken poncho that I ended up wearing the entire time.
A driver brought me to the starting point and would wait for me until my return. I really like to wonder around spontaneously instead of following a designated trail, which the place was luckily suited for. It wasn’t a long hike, just around a lake, hugged by mountains in all directions. There was nobody there and the landscape reminded me of the Scottish Highlands.
Being in places like that always makes me feel so alive. Like the wildness of the landscape stirs up the wildness in me, nudges it, stretches out its hands so she fully awakens within me. She, the wild one, my most authentic, most natural self. There is no better feeling than when she is around, when she takes the wheel and takes me through life. She knows where to go and what to do. She follows her joy and inspiration. She feels deeply, loves fiercely. She honour her desires, needs and boundaries and doesn’t question her own intuition.
She is a daughter of the Earth.
Unfortunately, our wild ones are usually tamed and banished from a young age. But they never dissapear. Meeting her again on this hike was absolutely worth it, even though my health quickly took a turn for the worse. I remember sitting down for a minute and standing up to continue, barely being able to breathe. I had severe asthma as a child, so the feeling is not new to me, and I unfortunately didn’t take it as a sign to stop. I also didn’t register the nausea, headache and dizziness as signs to turn around. It took an emergency ambulance ride and 4 days in the hospital + an intense burn-out for me to realise that the gear I had been in for most of my life was to ‘push through’ and ‘push harder when it gets harder’, no matter what.
She had been reaching out to me this entire time, speaking through my body, to stop or to slow down, but I had never heard her, because I didn’t dare entering that space, ‘my body’, feeling safer in my head, away from all the violent feelings and emotions I was so terrified of. But this year, when I met her again at the top of the mountains, she grabbed my hand and dragged me down the mountains, into the sea and swam to the depth of my inner ocean. A dark, terrifying place, with creatures (emotions, memories, belief systems) swimming around, attacking me unawares from all angles.
I am still there, at the bottom of my ocean, but I can see more clearly now, and I have even found some pearls and shells. I will go deeper into my time under water in another essay, but for now, before you watch the photos of the hike, I want to thank the land of Peru and particularly the spirits of the Mountains and Lake, for helping me face what I needed to face. For me, the spirits of landscapes always have a profound impact on me. They bring me to landscapes within myself that I have yet to discover, sometimes full of joy and beauty, or, in this case, a place that was dark, cold and barren. I have never been somewhere that touched the darkest corners within me like in Peru, and for that reason I am not eager to return (and hopefully never will haha), but I am very grateful nonetheless.
I love how the images turned out - dark, grainy and raw - a perfect visual representation of what the landscape triggered within me. I hope you enjoy them!
