Nine-Eleven
While We Were in the Mountains
Along a dirt road high up in the Andes, we rested against our dusty backpacks with ice axes and trekking poles stacked nearby. In the ten days since we were dropped off, we had only seen one motorcycle pass by on the road. A few local villagers also walked by herding llamas on the high alpine grasses. As far as the eye could see, there were no buildings, trees, or even towering rock outcroppings. Up close, there were tufts of ankle-high yellow grasses throughout the loose, rocky soil with the occasional petite wildflower braving the wind. Beyond the occasional clank of a rusty bell around the neck of a rogue llama lost from its herd and the trickle of the glacial runoff stream nearby, it was eerily quiet.
I passed around trail mix fantasizing about the real dinner that we would have in La Paz that night. There were no screens in which to disappear, no messages from friends or family to read, and no social media to update about our mountaineering expedition. We just had to trust that Jorge would make it up the 4x4 road to pick us up. I looked eagerly to the west, hoping to see signs of his Land Rover. I imagined the eastern route off this pass as suitable only for bold adventurers, drug runners, or local villagers. That direction led down to the Amazon basin, but the view was lost in low clouds.
As soon as Jorge parked, one of our guides jumped on top of the roof to receive packs. We passed each pack up and secured the load with old climbing rope for the bumpy ride back to La Paz. Jorge hopped out of the car, came around to the passenger side, and told our group that there had been a terrible accident in Miami: a plane had crashed into a football stadium, and 30,000 people had been killed. Both of us spoke Spanish as a second language, and neither of us was fluent. Jorge grew up in a village in the Andes speaking Aymara. I was a native English speaker. We all looked at each other, confused. How is that possible? How could one plane cause that much damage in one stadium? We asked him to try again or to tell us more. For four hours, I stared out the window in the back of that old Land Rover bouncing along a meandering dirt road. I couldn’t stop wondering what possibly could have happened.
It was September 13, 2001.
La Paz looked just as we had left it: cars, pedestrians, and businesses open as usual. We got back to our small hotel, which did not have TV service. It did have one lobby computer with dial-up internet that was painstakingly slow. The rhythmic sound of the connecting modem mocked us. News from the U.S. was difficult to obtain. Videos would not load. We went in search of sports bars, higher-end hotels with TVs playing international news, or internet cafés that might have faster connections. Eventually, our clients got through to family members on international pay phones with calling cards. Nothing had happened in Miami. No football stadium had been destroyed in an accident.
I eventually pieced together the events from fragmented still images, articles that would finally load, and phone conversations with my family. Terrorists had attacked the U.S. I didn’t think that I knew anyone who lived in New York City or worked at the Pentagon, so I wasn’t immediately flooded with fear about possibly having lost a loved one in those attacks. I was still a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. Would I be recalled to active duty?
We checked in with the owner of the guide service. All flights into, out of, and within the United States were suspended indefinitely. We still had one more peak to climb on this expedition. One client did not want to stay in Bolivia while his spouse was home alone, so he decided to travel back to California instead. He flew from La Paz to Mexico City and then took buses to Tijuana and eventually crossed the border many days later. After a resupply day in La Paz, the rest of us decided to head to Illimani as planned.
Our expedition climbed Illimani over multiple days, passing through lush green valleys, across scree and talus fields, and eventually moving onto glacial terrain. Our route back took us through a few isolated villages with no access to printed news or cable television. When we returned to La Paz the following week, locals started treating us differently. They expressed condolences and kindness: You’re American? I’m so sorry. I had previously traveled extensively in South America and found being visibly “American” wasn’t something to advertise. Some travelers from the U.S. would even go so far as to sew Canadian flags on their backpacks.
The other guides and I decided to continue mountaineering for several more weeks after our client expedition ended. Then we headed to Cusco, Peru, to attend language school and to stay with a host family. We didn’t consider heading home until late October or early November. None of us was that eager to get on a plane, but by that time normal operations had resumed.
The first thing I noticed when I got home was all the U.S. flags everywhere. Then people kept saying the phrase on nine-eleven. I didn’t get it. To me 911 was the telephone number we call when we need an ambulance. I had to ask what they meant. The double take was unmistakable. The look said, Have you been living under a rock? I suddenly understood. The event had acquired a name.
Almost two months after the attacks, I finally had access to my cousin’s digital video recordings from that day. For the first time, I saw the towers collapse and the people jumping to their deaths. Holy shit. That actually happened. What an impossible choice to have to make. My cousin’s wife didn’t want to watch it again. I don’t think my cousin really did either. I felt sick to my stomach. I looked away.
Twenty-five years later, I see this with more perspective than I could have at the time. I grew up in the '70s, in the heart of the Cold War. When the air raid siren sounded, we ducked under our desks at school, practicing in case of bombing raids. I frequently wondered if there would be a nuclear holocaust. When I think about what it's really meant to me to have missed the collective experience, not to have watched the towers fall over and over, 24/7 for weeks, I actually have a tremendous amount of gratitude for being in the mountains.
Author’s note: This essay is reconstructed to the best of my recollection from an expedition twenty-five years ago. Jorge is a pseudonym.
