The Topography of Memory

As we climb my ears begin to pop and the physical sensation of riding up the mountain awakens memories I have to filter through and connect to their proper places.
“This reminds me of that bus ride I took into the Peruvian Andes,” I tell him. Liz is still listening to her headphones in the back; I have forgotten that she is even with us.
“We climbed all night long; up, up, up, circling the mountain.”
“That’s a pretty steep drive,” Dad says. No doubt he has the elevation numbers somewhere in his head, he may even have a map.
“Especially in a two-story tour bus.”
Dad makes a noise that is intended to resemble “yuck,” or “yeah, that’s rough.”
“But the stars were amazing,” I tell him. My friend Stacy—Estacio they called her in Spanish—had woken me to see the stars outside the window. Thousands of them in the wide blackness. It was too dark to even see my hand in front of my face, and there were so many more stars than I had ever seen that I became confused and disoriented. My ears were popping and the bus rocked as we climbed the steep slopes. I wondered if we were still on Earth, if I was even the same person.
“Pass the bag,” I had told Stacy, “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“No, you’re not,” came her voice from the darkness beside me, “just look at the stars.”
-from Mapping Hemlocks