A Quest. Our Move to the Forest

We didn't know what we had signed up for.

The move to be immersed in nature was a path that I had heard in my dreams for a decade. A floating concept that would be about to become very real and tangible when we moved our family of 5 to the Cloud Forest near Machu Picchu. I haven’t shared much about it to this point. Only tiny fragments here and there as they unfolded. Why? Because it’s been such an intense initiation and I’m still gathering what happened.

I will try to give an overview and context of a three-year pilgrimage into this sacred land so future sharings make some sense. Much of this is the hard part. I will get into the beauty too.

my littlest, one with the forest.

My inner world

Being in the jungle this last year feels like I have dissolved into a million little pieces. I'm a mist of existence almost invisible to myself, pretty lost and even confused. Somehow I know those old parts of me are still there somewhere. Do I need to grasp for that which was a speck of what I was? I’m in a form now that I don’t even recognize. Not solid enough or recrystallized into a different or new sense of self. Why fight the dissolution, the breakdown, the old identities or personas?

Old facets of who I thought I was are now in shards. Ever so small. Too small to see. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist It’s just too small to matter. I just feel like ether some days. Or the solvent itself.

I can see more, sense more, and hear more here. It feels like a lot and some days it's completely overwhelming to my senses. Overwhelming to the ability to do practical things. Which is a lot because the practical things feel like the most pressing.

I quite literally can’t see straight at all some days. I can’t tell if something is solid or an energy pattern in the wind. It’s like layers of new things that I couldn’t see before but have always been here. This place so close to Machu Picchu holds a completely different energy that feels like it's surfacing all the old to be seen, broken up, and discarded while also having an awakening quality to things I've never seen or experienced before. I’ve felt like dying, I may have died. I’m not even sure what’s real some days.

such beauty all around keeps our eyes up to what is alive and lush.

I heard, “Walk knowing who you are.” And then I felt a glimpse of the knowingness of what I AM. But then poof. It's broken down and dissolved again. It’s like a wind that kicks up a sense of knowing myself but then gone again. Where am I? Where are we? Who are we? Who am I? Where do I end and others begin? I know we are one having an individual experience but these days it seems unclear. Like I’m in an undulating turbulent tide of time and space collapsing on itself. (written in 2023- 1 year in)

Jump here, jump there. With just your own two clumsy feet and a candle that only illuminates a few feet ahead. You trust the greater universe who’s shown you miracles in the past that feels kind of far away sometimes. You get a glimpse of a dream which you can't quite hold onto as the morning comes with all its noises. That somewhere you are aiming vanished. The reality in front looks pretty insane and unfamiliar. I know you feel completely lost, useless and unequipped. You’ll land. I promise you’ll land. Keep going.

Planting a seed of Eden. A myth of happiness connection where heaven and earth merge at the horizon. Paititi, shambala, something new. Something old. I forgot.

Sometimes doing what I believe is the right way for us feels really, really unbelievably hard. It feels like walking in the absolute inky darkness hearing a whisper that I can only hear when I can slow down enough to listen to the rain, watch the fish appear from the murky water after a stressful morning, or see my boys play in the plaza with their hair lit by the flickering street lamps in the quiet evening.

I kept hearing “Chop wood and Carry water” through these chapters and “You are doing it right,” it says. It feels surreal. It feels unworldly, like how did we get here? Some days, living feels so harsh, so weighty to take the responsibility of basic needs in your own hands.

never thought the Buddhist idea it would be so literal..

A Brief Timeline

My family (my husband and I and our 3 little boys now (9, 7, and 5) have lived in Peru for almost 12 years. The first 9 were in a large town with many modern conveniences, but still way less than many would consider normal in the developed world. 3 years have been outside of a tiny village in the mountains (10km from Machu Pichu).

a sense of remoteness. We moved our family and belongings up this hill. my husband hauled our stuff in wheelbarrows.

We have moved 3 times in 3 years since moving to the area.

Dec 2022. We had a tiny adobe house with one bedroom for sleeping and one room for our kitchen/playroom/workshop/everthing else: there was a compost toilet/outhouse. The old aluminum roof had rusted through and we would be rained on in our sleep. I slept under an umbrella for weeks at at time with my babies, until the rains let up and we could patch the old roof. There were no screens in the window just gaping holes in the wall, and the walls didn’t even reach the roof which meant a gap. The electricity stopped working 3 months into living there and stayed off for 8 months because too many crazy turns of events to count. We had every challenge known to man. We had no shower, the sink was far outside the house. It was a 45-minute hike up the mountain into town for a quick grocery run. Life felt hard and filthy.

My kids however loved everything about the lifestyle and kept saying, “Thank you for bringing us to the jungle!” They were vibrant, healthy and happier than I ever saw them. It is the only way I stayed through this first year. I had many breakdowns through the process. The year of acclimation through bugs, heat, humidity and the removal of all modern conveniences and infrastructure was nuts.

Next in Feb 2023, we moved to a local Ecoproject where they needed assistance with the benefit: they had electricity and water. We paid a small rent for one bedroom with a patio for our family to live in. We had to trek 1000 meters to a shared kitchen 3 meals a day from scratch. We’d run down that path for laundry, filtering and hauling water. We had a small bathroom with a solar shower that worked on the days when it was sunny. We learned a lot about the history local community in ways we couldn’t have imagined during this time. We had experience living with hundreds of people in a shared home during our time in the Sacred Valley (where we originally lived in Peru for the first 9 years) and this was the most challenging shared living environment we ever encountered. It was incredibly complex, political and sad to see mishandled resources. The electricity and water was also limited for a number of infrastructure reasons and would go out for months or weeks at a time. This was however much easier than our first year and had the incredible benefits of duck ponds, fish ponds, flowers and river access.

March 2024:

dirt floors when we moved in. most modern eyes would be horrified. But this is a well maintained newer structure here in the campo. we’ve since put a lotta love and sweat in

We found an independent, 2 bedroom house closer to town (which is a huge difference when you don’t have a car or money to pay for rides into town) We’ve now put in a bathroom, laundry machine, hot shower and screens. We installed a concrete patio kitchen, and outdoor office which makes this place feel like a mansion after living in very close quarters. Life has become exponentially easier and more doable. I was sharing with friends my unbelievable excitement and enthusiasm for our bathroom sink and hose hook-up. I was like, “Guys, guys, We have a real toilet, and an actual hot shower. There is even a sink with a little table! Can you believe it?” They responded with “Megan, you are literally just naming things in a bathroom.” I nodded like a maniac with a huge grin.. “I know! I know! We have one!”

We have learned that if everything, the grid, infrastructure, and distribution stopped and the world ground to a halt. We’d be fine. This was not my plan but now we know we’d not only survive but thrive. I’ve become more aware on levels I never knew were possible. I literally thank the water and toilet every time I use them. I thank my washing machine that saves me 4 hours of scrubbing clothes in the hot sun with sore, red, weary hands. My perspective about life will never be the same.

still rustic- but we have a bathroom!

Why was it so unexpected and hard;

Gosh. This one is so multilayered. We had less than 100 dollars to our name because of many financial turns of events that left us flattened. There is a much larger backstory of how we got to such humble means from once being able to charge 275 dollars an hour for consulting… But here we are. Starting again from ultimate poverty has been a lesson in itself. and this is a story for another day.

Many unexpected rug pulls meant that we had to find our resourcefulness, resilience, strength (mental and manual labor) when water, electric and internet would go out. We came together as a family but I won’t pretend it didn’t push us to our breaking point many times.

The cultural norms of our new environment had to be learned slowly, and revealing themselves as we had to figure out what the heck was going on logistically and culturally in a very remote community in a second and third language. Things unfolded slowly as things do in South America, and even more so in remote areas. It took time‚ longer than I would have wished and is still continuing to clarify now.

The universe was like, “Oh, you want to live in nature? Here’s what it is like in the most raw and truthful (brutal) way. We did not plan any of these things but had them all come up.

While it was at times harsh. I has been so beautiful for my family. I will share the brightness as well:

Snapshots: the Physical Reality in its darker times.

It’s hard to explain our life to people out in the modern world because it’s so far removed now from what most people consider normal, possible, or real. It happened slowly the first 8 years after moving to Peru and now the chasm of difference feels greater than I could have imagined now that we live in remote jungles in the mountains just 10 km from Machu Picchu.

It looked like living in one bedroom with a family of five for playtime, sleep time, eating, working, and homeschooling in the middle of the jungle without any real tangible plan or strategy yet. Mostly we were trying to figure out how to live again day-by-day.

Many local families are leaving the area so the old structures are 50-80 years old and abandoned. There is no Airbnb. There are really only a few available crumbling structures out here and old failing infrastructure. Even locals thought we were nuts for moving to the campo / countryside (which took us a while to realize)

Glimpses:

I sweep out copious amounts of mud and try to keep crumbs out of the house so we don’t get a new infestation of bugs or even rats in the house but it was their habitat before we ever showed up and the second you give them a food source they swarm in for survival. Learning to colive with nature has been surprising and challenging. A bat flies through at night, a lizard is hanging out in the bathroom, and your boys bring in their new friend Mr. Millipede to wake you up in the morning.

It has it’s incredibly beautiful moments too.

my middle son who has a special way with animals.

Some months we go without electricity for whatever new crazy reason—a lightning strike nearby, a pole falling down on the property, a contract or handshake agreement between people who were now dead was null and void, or the fact that the municipality and businesses simply don’t invest their time and energy in the campo/countryside because most people are running towards the cities and towns. We are left to fend and find a way on our own. We completely went without electricity for 8 months during the first year. Refrigeration, computer work, a charged phone, lights to clean out your home when your kids go down to sleep, a washing machine, a light to wake up to use the bathroom outside in the middle of the night. Gone.

For a year we ran back and forth between the shared house 100 meters down a blazing hot path, usually muddy, dusty or raining on us, to wash dishes, clean, do laundry, bring bags of laundry to hang, filter water, and haul it back to the room to stay hydrated. Usually with our hands full of heavy things with dogs or kids at our feet asking us to wait for them as we try to not spill dirty dishes covered in ants biting our hands. We walked miles daily just to do basic life needs.

Some days the water was cut off for weeks or even months and we scrambled to set up hoses and piping from a stream, which means the shower didn’t work (we went without a shower for a year), or we had to shift our day to go hunt down a leak on the mountain for hours because there is no map or guide for old pipes hiding in the jungle just to try to get water back on to flush toilets, drink, clean or cook with. We carried buckets of water over weeks for filtering, and boil water for a bath for the boys. We poured water out on our toothbrush from a bottle to keep our teeth clean. Scrimped with water to be able to wash our dishes with the least amount possible.

Water is life and I have never valued it more after having to haul it from a stream or go without for weeks. Hours to fill tubs for boys, only to have it storm when they are full. Or sponge baths and jumping in the stream. When I was especially desperate or I walked 15 minutes to a neighbor's house with my shower stuff and asked if I could clean myself.

Sometimes the internet stopped working because of a big rain, or a growing tree blocks the one signal coming into our area and we have to figure out which tree and how to trim is so we get an internet signal to work and have access to the outside world. Days or weeks, we wouldn’t know when it would come back.

We had no reliable internet for the first year. That meant, if we had meetings, we did our best to explain our situation, that we weren’t trying to be disrespectful of anyone's time, there are just so many things simply out of our control.

I still have to travel on public transportation an hour away to get a solid internet connection in the city and even that can be hit or miss. I’ve lost many clients who feel like that type of unknown doesn’t fit with their busy schedules. My ability to make money just disappeared one day without knowing when it would come back.

No electricity means we lit candles for a couple of hours at night to read to the kids and make dinner, try to clean up before it gets too dark. We try to use our food wisely with no refrigeration. It was purchased at the 1-day-a-week market, hauled back usually on Eric's back once (or maybe twice a week) through the jungle mountain. Figuring out dinners with whatever we have left when food is rotting was especially challenging. Meat and veggies early in the week, dry stock, potatoes and yucca at the end of the week.

We would boil water for tea and try not to spill it as we walked down the path in the dark and hope to God there was still enough charge on the computer for the boys to watch a movie or get some writing done.

There were just so many unexpected lifestyle things I once took for granted, that now I know.

These were some small snippets. The hard parts, the weird parts, the challenges. None of them lasted forever, but in the moment, time did seem to stop. Just a painted picture of some of the daily hills to climb when infrastructure disappeared.

I will get to some of the wondrous and amazing parts. I’ll get to the reasons why. But for now some backstory and context of the unexpected and hard stuff. Things have also smoothed out enormously in the last year as I’ve mentioned. Work space, more beds for my kids, a working kitchen with a sink and oven, electricity and way more reliable internet. The last 6 months is the reason I’m able to get back to a sense of routine and work. Which I’m enormously grateful for. I believe everything happens for a reason and my perspective about life is forever changed from the 2 years of challenges. I feel like I died and am just coming back alive. I’ve never been more grateful.

Disclaimer.

This is NOT a normal situation in the towns and cities of Peru. There is a massive range of lifestyles here in Peru. This is specific to remote areas and people crazy enough to live in the jungle in an undeveloped area.

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Some of the magical parts and reasons for being here;

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What came before our journey to the jungle: