Poco a Poco
– by Mario Crescibene
I held the kero in my hands, a traditional ceramic cup of the Quechua people. Inside was a thick, pale green liquid: huachuma.
I looked up from the kero to the Shaman. He stood before me at the base of Pumahuanca — the portal of the puma. Somewhere near its summit, buried in the mountain since before anyone can remember, sits an enormous meteorite. The Shaman and I had tried to reach it before, but each time, something had turned us back.
“I’ve talked to you so much about climbing
mountains, little brother,” he said, “that I thought it was time we actually climbed one.” He smiled warmly. “I am very happy to be back at Pumahuanca with you — and to be sharing this sacred medicine — our abuelito huachuma.”
I lifted the kero to my lips and drank. It was bitter but not strong. The texture was the difficult part — warm and thick, like chugging a cup of green sludge. After finishing I grimaced and handed the kero back to the Shaman. Then we began the climb.
The path wound through a forest of eucalyptus trees, their cleansing smell filling the mountain air. A small stream flowed alongside the path, winding down from somewhere high above. Behind us, the Sacred Valley spread out in every direction — ancient and vast.
The huachuma came on quietly. Nothing like ayahuasca — this was subtler. I noticed how my feet felt on the gravel first… the way each step landed… the small shift of rocks beneath my weight. It was as if with each step I was kissing the earth with my feet. A bug flew past my ear, but what I heard wasn’t a sound. It was a pulse, a small unit of energy entering my field and then moving on.
The Shaman glanced back without breaking stride.
“You’re entering the experience,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s gentle. But I can feel it.”
We kept climbing. The Shaman had brought me to Pumahuanca before. Several times. And each time, the meteorite had stayed just beyond my reach. Something always forced us to turn back — the medicine, the mountain, my own body. I had never made it all the way to the meteorite.
“We’ve walked this path before,” the Shaman said.
“More than once.” I kept my eyes on the trail ahead.
He nodded slowly. “And yet the meteorite has always eluded you.”
“Each time.”
He nodded, acknowledging without sympathy or judgment. Simply observing a fact. As we climbed further the eucalyptus trees gave way to rockier and more open terrain.
“And how does it feel,” he asked, “to be back here — not knowing if today will be different?”
I thought about it. I could feel the nervous energy coiled just below my sternum. The excitement with an undercurrent of anxiety.
“It feels like watching Chase DeLauter,” I said.
The Shaman didn’t react. He simply kept his steady pace and waited for me to continue.
“He’s been one of the most highly touted prospects in our system for years. And then every time injuries derail things. We can see the possibilities with the start to his season… but in the back of my mind I fear for that update on my phone saying he’s being placed on the IL. George Valera is already starting the season injured. So to be starting a hike I’ve tried and failed to complete — multiple times — feels a lot like that. And yet here I am,” I concluded. “Back at the base of this mountain. Again.”
I paused.
The Shaman stopped and turned, looking at me with those eyes that always seemed to see beyond.
“Every time you walk this path, you walk it as if for the first time, little brother. The only question is whether you can be present for the walk you are on today — or whether you spend the whole climb carrying the weight of the times you didn’t make it. You may never reach the summit, but you haven’t failed this time. DeLauter may get injured again, but he’s healthy right now. So enjoy what you have in the present moment, in every step on this path.”
He then took out a cigar of Mapacho and lit it. He gently rubbed my sternum and blew the tobacco smoke over the area several times. Something loosened in my core. And then he began to sing quietly, almost to himself:
Caminar el camino, poco a poco. Un paso después el próximo. Llegar al destino.
Walk the path, little by little. One step after the next. Arrive at the destination.
The words of the Shaman’s icaro moved through me, transforming the anxiety I felt into a sharpened focus. The anxiety hadn’t disappeared; what had hindered me had converted into a tool that now rooted me in the present. And with that spiritual work completed, we kept climbing.
The eucalyptus thinned and the terrain opened up, becoming rockier and steeper. The medicine was still quiet but something had shifted. The colors of the mountainside felt slightly more saturated than they had at the base. The greens were greener. The warmth of the sun somehow warmer.
Then the Shaman stopped.
Nestled into the mountainside was a natural indentation in the stone — a huaca. The Quechua believe these pockets of power are places where energy collects. Pilgrims leave offerings here, prayers, and coca leaves.
The Shaman reached into his bag and produced a small bundle of coca leaves. He arranged them carefully in the hollow, speaking quietly in Quechua — words I didn’t understand but didn’t need to. Then he looked at me. He reached into his bag again and took out the second kero.
I received it from him without hesitation and drank deeply. The sludge was no easier the second time, but the resistance was gone. I handed it back and we stood there for a moment in silence.
The Shaman took out a flute made of bone and played it for the huaca, his fingers dancing deftly over the whittled holes. When he stopped, we stood in the space of the silence that followed. But there was more work to do, and so, we kept climbing.
The second cup came on differently than the first. The first had been sensory, but this dose was more emotional. I could feel the medicine drawing my awareness inward, forcing me to confront something I didn’t want to acknowledge. I tried to push it aside as we kept climbing.
But then the trail divided into three separate paths, and the full effect of the second dose hit me all at once. I stopped at the fork, staring at the three paths, frozen by the choices in front of me. The mountain, the rocks, the sky, the three paths ahead — all of it pressed in on me at once.
The weight of every decision that takes place in a season bore down on me: roster moves, lineup calls, in-game decisions, the accumulation of all the choices made and not made over the course of a long season. All of it swirling. I stared at the three paths. Paralyzed by the fear of choosing wrong.
The Shaman turned and looked at me.
“You’re frozen,” he said.
“I don’t know which way to go,” I said. “What if I choose wrong?”
The Shaman was quiet for a moment. He looked at the three trails, and then back at me.
“Which one leads to the summit?” I asked. “I don’t know which one to choose.”
“All of them lead to the destination,” he said.
I looked at him.
“The fear of the wrong choice is what stops you. Not the choice itself.” He turned and started up the right trail without hesitation. “Make a decision and then keep going, hermanito. Poco a poco.”
I took a breath. And followed.
We climbed in silence. The medicine was fully present now. The fear had loosened its grip — each step forward was its own small answer to it.
The air grew thin as the trail wound higher. I could feel it with every step, my lungs working harder and harder to keep pace. And with each labored breath, something rose: frustration.
Frustration that this is probably Kwan’s last season in Cleveland. Frustration that Ramírez signed an extension, but the front office did nothing to help him in the offseason. Frustration at the upcoming labor strike and a shortened season.
I was huffing now. Then suddenly, I heard it. Having lost myself in my thoughts I had stopped paying attention to the babbling creek that had run along the path. But now I saw that it had transformed into a flowing river tumbling down the mountainside.
The Shaman stopped by the side of the river. Without a word he reached into his bag and produced the rapé.
“Sit down, hermanito,” he said softly. I sat cross-legged and tried to calm my mind.
“This will help you find clarity,” he said, filling a long wooden tube with the rapé powder. “This is tobacco powder,” he explained. “I am going to blow this into each of your nostrils. It’s important not to hold your breath. Just relax, and nod your head when you’re ready.”
I closed my eyes as he lifted the end of the tube to my right nostril. I slowed my breath, concentrating… and then nodded. The Shaman blew — FFFFT.
It was like a pistol shot straight to the center of my brain. There were no more thoughts. There was no more anything. Just void. I hunched forward. The world spun. A wave of nausea came on fast and I leaned to the side to release it.
When it passed, I stayed seated there, sitting cross-legged with my head down, breathing slowly, as my senses slowly returned. The Shaman said nothing and just waited.
Eventually, the spinning lessened, and the world began to reassemble itself around me. I straightened up, elongating my spine. The Shaman lifted the tube to my left nostril for the second blow. I nodded and… FFFFT.
The second application didn’t have nearly the same intensity as the first, but it was deeper somehow. The first had blown me apart. This one pulled me down — into something older, quieter. I don’t know how long I was there, but when I finally came back from wherever I had been, the Shaman was standing at the edge of the river, waiting.
“You need to submerge yourself in the river and cleanse that energy you’ve been carrying,” he said to me.
I entered the river slowly, holding onto the rocks. The cold numbed my feet and hands, but I knew what I had to do. I steadied myself, and went under.
I couldn’t have been under the water for more than a millisecond. The frigid cold felt like an arc of electricity tearing through my body. As I surfaced, I let loose a savage roar. I stood there in the river, chest heaving, hands clenched, every muscle flexed.
And then the sun found me. It moved across my skin slowly, warming each surface it touched. My shoulders dropped… My hands unclenched… And the tension that had been locked in my body since the base of the mountain released itself.
The Shaman stood on the bank watching me. “Good,” he said. “You needed to cleanse that. Some energies can be transformed; others must be released. Come, we’re close.”
The Shaman walked beside me now, and as we climbed, he spoke.
“Everything you have carried up this mountain today,” he said, “has two sides. The excitement of watching DeLauter — and the fear of losing him. The gratitude for still having Kwan — and the grief of knowing this is probably his last year in Cleveland. The joy of finally having baseball again — and the fear of its absence next year.”
He let that sit for a moment as we continued climbing higher.
“This is not a problem to be solved, hermanito. This is the natural state of things. The light only exists because of the dark. Joy only exists because of sorrow. You cannot have one without the other. The question is not how to eliminate one side — it is how to walk the path between them.”
The path narrowed as the mountain closed in on either side of us until we were moving through a natural corridor of stone. But then, ahead of us, the corridor opened to reveal something unexpected.
As if rising up from the mountain itself stood a pre-Incan ruin — ancient stone walls fitted together, still standing after millennia. The roof had long since been reclaimed by mother nature, but the structure of the entrance was still intact. The Shaman and I stepped inside.
Inside, the stone walls rose on either side of me in perfect symmetry, each side of the ruin a perfect reflection of the other. A narrow path ran between the two halves toward a light on the other side where the exit was.
“This is the Temple of Duality, little brother. Notice the two sides, perfectly balanced. And the only way through is the narrow path that runs between them. Equilibrium. That is where peace lies — where you find balance between the two.”
He finished as we stood in front of the exit — the final portal — and then we passed through.
As we came out the other side, I could see that the mountain split into two ridges rising up on either side, and between them lay a wide flat puna — a plain of grass and wildflowers stretching out under an enormous Andean sky. We were standing on original land.
And lodged into the mountain on the right side of the puna… was the meteorite.
It was an enormous black rock rising twenty stories high and stretching as wide as a skyscraper. A single unbroken mass. No fractures. No seams. An ancient rock that had fallen from somewhere beyond our world and buried itself into this mountain thousands of years ago.
I looked at the Shaman. His eyes peered back knowingly.
We walked together to the base of the meteorite and sat down.
“You’ve arrived,” the Shaman said. He reached into his bag and took out the third kero. He said nothing more and simply handed me the cup. I drank, handed it back gratefully, and leaned back against the ancient stone.
We sat in silence and waited.
The warm Andean sun shone down, its beams warming us. But then the rays began to move — slowly at first — rippling like waves across the plateau. Little by little they took form, the waves resolving into twisting strands forming rays of double helices. The code that runs through every living thing on this earth, encoded in the light itself, connecting the grass of the puna… to the wildflowers moving gently in the wind… to the mountain… to the stone at my back… to me.
I closed my eyes and red filled the darkness behind my eyelids — deep, warm, and alive. Ancient Quechua symbols slowly flowed, forms I didn’t recognize but instinctively understood in my core.
And then everything dissolved and I could see every possible outcome of the Guardians’ season simultaneously. Every path the year could take. There were more than I could count. I saw success and failure. Hope and loss. Victory and anguish.
And then I understood: with infinite outcomes, they all became equally likely. No single outcome was more probable than any other. And with that clarity, the visions shifted again.
The medicine showed me Cleveland — the city, the people, the long and painful history of a fanbase that has longed for a championship for decades. The traumatic memories flashed one by one, but with each one came a single internal response: “That was another team. That isn’t this team.”
And then, from the embers of those Cleveland traumas, rising like a phoenix, soared the Guardians’ flying G. As it climbed higher, the wings began to open, stretching outward, the feathers extending and multiplying until the G itself fell away and what remained was an eagle — talons wrapped around a baseball: the American League eagle.
And screeching in from the other direction, rising to meet it, came another raptor — the National League eagle.
They clashed mid-air with an eruption of flame and lightning, clawing savagely at each other, spinning in a battle that saw both plummet towards the earth. They tumbled out of the sky, and disappeared behind the horizon… but it was the American League eagle that rose triumphant, flying into the sunset.
And then like a knife cutting through the vision, I heard a distant song:
Caminar el camino… poco a poco…
I came back into my body, eyes still closed.
Un paso después el próximo…
I opened my eyes slowly.
…llegar al destino.
The puna spread out before me, grass and wildflowers still gently waving back and forth in the fading light. To my left was the temple and the path we had climbed, winding down toward the Sacred Valley far below. The sun was setting over the valley, painting everything it touched in amber.
The Shaman sat beside me, quietly.
“Savor it,” he said softly. “All of it. We don’t know where the path will take us.” He paused. “The only way forward is one step at a time. Poco a poco, hermanito. One game. One at-bat. One pitch.”
The Andean sky deepened.
Poco a poco.
