← Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Llama Trek to the High Valley - A Peaceful Journey through the Andes
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Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on Support to learn more.
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Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Hello friend. Welcome back to Listen to Sleep, where ancient wisdom meets deep Rest. I'm Eric, and each week I bring you a new original story designed to soothe your body, quiet your mind, and restore your spirit. I have always dreamed of traveling to South America. The Andes in particular. Those ancient mountains that run like a spine down the western edge of the continent. I imagine what it would be like to walk those high valleys, to breathe that thin, clean air, to follow paths that have been walked for thousands of years. Tonight, you and I will travel far from my tiny mountain cabin here in California to the other side of the world. We'll join a llama trek into the high Andes, a day long journey from a stone guest house in the foothills all the way to a secret valley where we'll sleep under the southern stars. In this peaceful guided visualization, we'll be taking this journey together, following the steady pace of the llamas, resting when rest is needed, and finally arriving at a place held safe by mountains and starlight. Before we begin, a quick word about how you can help to keep these bedtime stories coming. When you support the podcast by subscribing to listen to sleep plus, you get over 500 ad free episodes, bonus audiobooks and early access to news stories, all for less than the cost of a fancy coffee each month. And now you can join directly in Apple Podcasts. And when you do, you'll get a free seven day trial to see if it's right for you. You'll find the link in the show notes thank you so much for your support. Let's take a deep breath in and out. Just letting go of the day, feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down down into the mattress. Another deep breath in and out. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. This is your time. Quiet time. One more deep breath in and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay, just let yourself drift off. Llama trek to the high valley. You wake without an alarm to the sound of water trickling in the courtyard below. The room is simple and clean, thick stone walls that hold the coolness of night, wooden beams overhead darkened by decades of wood smoke and mountain weather. Through the small window, the first light is just beginning to touch the highest peaks in the distance, painting them pale gold against a sky the color of faded indigo. You lie still for a moment, listening. From somewhere below comes that steady trickle from the stone fountain. Birds are beginning their morning conversations, soft calls echoing between the guest house walls. The air smells clean and cool, carrying the faint scent of wood smoke and baking bread. You rise slowly, dress in comfortable layers, and make your way downstairs. The courtyard is bathed in gentle morning light. Potted geraniums line the stone walls, their red blooms bright against the weathered gray. The fountain in the center sends water trickling over smooth river stones. A wooden table sits beneath a grape arbor already set with simple breakfast things. Fresh bread still warm from the oven, honey in a clay pot, a pitcher of milk and tea steaming in a worn ceramic pot. You pour yourself a cup and sit. The tea is herbal and slightly sweet tasting of mountain flowers and something you can't quite name. As you sip, you watch the light move down the mountainside across the valley, illuminating terraced fields in bands of green and gold. You are not rushing. The bread is dense and good, the honey local and dark. You eat slowly, feeling the nourishment settle into your body. There are footsteps on the flagstones. You look up to see an older man approaching, weathered face, eyes creased at the corners from years of mountain sun and wind, gray hair pulled back beneath a woven cap. His movements are unhurried, economical, the movements of someone who has walked these mountains all his life. Good morning, he says, his voice quiet and warm. I am Tomas. You exchange greetings. He pours himself tea and sits across from you, cupping the warm ceramic mug in both hands. For a few moments, neither of you speaks. There's no need. The morning holds you both in its gentle rhythm. The llamas are ready when you are, he says eventually. No hurry. We have the whole day. When you finish your tea, you follow him across the courtyard and through a low wooden gate into a stone walled corral behind the guest house. There they are. Seven llamas stand waiting in the morning light, tall, elegant creatures with thick wool and long necks, their large dark eyes watching you with calm curiosity. Some are white, some brown. One is black, with white patches across her face. Each has a woven blanket across their back, secured with braided ropes, small packs already loaded with supplies. The lead llama stands slightly apart from the others, a tall white male with a bearing of quiet authority. His wool is thick and clean, his ears alert but relaxed. That is Blanco, tomas says. He sets the pace. He always knows the way. The other llamas shift and hum softly to one another, a sound somewhere between a song and a sigh. One of the younger ones approaches you, extending his neck to sniff your hand with a soft, velvety nose. That is Cielo, tomas says, smiling. He likes people. You stroke Cielo's neck, feeling the thick wool beneath your palm. He leans into your touch slightly. Tomas checks each pack with practiced hands, adjusting a strap here, redistributing weight there. He hands you a walking stick, smooth wood worn by many hands, comfortable in your grip. He places a woven hat on your head to shield you from the sun. It looks like everyone is ready, he says, looking at the llamas. More than you. Blanco shakes his head once, ears flicking forward. He turns toward the gate and begins to walk, calm and unhurried. The others follow in a loose line, bells on their packs beginning their gentle rhythm. Tomas follows them and you follow Tomas. The guest house falls behind. The valley opens ahead. The sun climbs higher, and the day begins. The path leads away from the village through terraced fields, ancient agricultural platforms carved into the mountainside. Some are planted with potatoes, their leaves dark green. Others hold corn, the stalks tall and rustling softly. Small irrigation channels run between the terraces, carrying water from higher up the mountain, the same water that has flowed here for hundreds of years. The llamas move in a single file now, Blanco leading each animal, knowing exactly where to place their feet. Their bells create a rhythm, a soft, irregular music that matches the pace of walking, breathing, being. You fall into the rhythm easily. Step, breathe, step, breathe. The walking stick in your hand becomes an extension of your body, finding its place on stone, on earth, on root. Your breath deepens naturally with altitude and the effort of the incline. But the grade is gentle, the switchbacks generous. This is a path made by people who understood that mountains are climbed slowly. Tomas walks ahead, but he glances back, often reading your pace, adjusting his own. If you slow, he slows. There is no schedule here, no timeline, but the sun moving across the sky. The terraced fields begin to give way to wilder landscape. The path becomes rockier, winding between boulders and scattered patches of tough mountain grass. Wildflowers appear, lupines in shades of purple and blue, small white daisies that grow in clusters among the rocks, Bright orange flowers you don't know the name of. You notice details now that might have passed unseen, the way the morning light catches on quartz embedded in the rocks, making them glitter. The sound of water somewhere nearby, invisible but constant. The smell of herbs, wild thyme, perhaps, or sage crushed beneath the llama's feet and released into the air. Above, a condor circles, enormous wings held motionless on the thermal currents. It wheels once, twice, three times, then drifts higher and disappears beyond a ridge. The valley behind you is opening now, spreading out below in patterns of green and gold and brown. You can see the guest house as a small collection of stone buildings, smoke rising from one chimney. Blanco stops ahead. The path widens into a small clearing where someone long ago built a stone shrine. Just a pile of rocks, really, but shaped with intention. A trickle of water emerges from the rocks beside it, clear and cold, gathering in a small pool. The llamas immediately move to the shade of a large boulder and graze a bit. Then they lower themselves to the ground with a series of folding movements, first the front legs, then the back, settling with small groans of contentment. Tomas kneels by the water and fills his cupped hands, pouring it over the stones of the shrine three times. The water darkens the stone then soaks in. He says nothing, but the gesture itself feels like a kind of prayer. You drink from the spring. The water is so cold it makes your teeth ache, and it tastes of stone and snow and something ancient. We rest when the animals rest, tomas says, sitting on a flat rock in the shade. They know when the body needs to pause. They know you sit. The stone is cool through your clothes. Your legs are grateful for the rest, though you hadn't realized they needed it until you stopped moving. This is something the mountain is already teaching you, how to notice, how to listen to what the body knows before the mind does. The llamas chew their cud, their jaws moving in that slow, meditative way. Blanco watches the path ahead with calm attention, always the guardian, always aware but never anxious. You close your own eyes and just listen. Wind in the grass, water trickling. The soft sound of the llama's breathing. The mountain holding all of it. When Blanco stands, the others stand too. Tomas rises. You rise. The path continues. The switchbacks grow tighter now as the path steers upward more deliberately, but they're still gentle, still patient. Each turn reveals new perspectives. A different view of the valley below, a different arrangement of peaks. Above, you pass another traveler coming down, a young woman with a heavy pack and sun darkened face. She smiles and nods. Buen camino, she says softly. Buen camino, your reply. The air is thinner here, cooler. You notice it in your breathing, the way each breath feels slightly more precious, more intentional. But the pace is too wise for struggling. Small alpine flowers appear in crevices between rocks. Flowers no bigger than your fingernail, pink and white and yellow, clinging to life in places where it seems impossible anything could grow. Yet here they are, thriving, beautiful. You walk and walk and walk, but it doesn't feel like effort. It feels like meditation. Ahead, the landscape changes. Strange rock formations rise from the mountainside, tall spires and rounded domes and massive boulders balanced impossibly on smaller stones. Tomas glances back at you. The stone forest, he says. The rocks close around you like the walls of a roofless cathedral. These stones are ancient, shaped by wind and ice and the patient work of millennia. Some are smooth as river rocks polished by weather. Others are rough and pockmarked or layered, like pages in a book. They rise in pillars and arches, lean against each other in arrangements that have somehow stood for thousands of years. The light here is different, sharper, clearer, as if the altitude has stripped away some film. And now everything is more itself, more stone, more sky, more present the llamas move between the rocks with confidence. Their bells echo off the stone surfaces, creating layers of sound that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. Tamas leads you to a sheltered spot, a natural alcove where the boulders lean together to create a small room open to the sky. The ground here is sandy, comfortable, protected from the wind. The llamas settle immediately. One of them yawns hugely, showing all her teeth, then rests her chin on the ground with a contented sigh. Tomas unpacks food. Bread, cheese wrapped in cloth, fruit, water. He arranges it on a flat rock. You sit together in companionable silence and eat. The bread is still so soft from the morning baking. The cheese is sharp and crumbly, an apple, crisp and sweet. Everything tastes better here after the morning's walking. Or perhaps everything just tastes more like what it really is. The mountain shows different faces, tomas says quietly, looking at the rocks around you. From below, it looks one way, from here, another from above, another still, and all of them are true. After eating, Tomas closes his eyes, his back against the sun warmed stone. The llamas are already dozing. You have a choice to rest or to explore the nearby formations, and you choose to rest. You lean back against a boulder, feeling the warmth of the stone through your jacket. The sun on your face is strong but pleasant at this altitude. You close your eyes. The wind sings through distant rocks. Somewhere a raven calls. Your own breath slows to match the rhythm of the place, the stone, the sleeping llamas. Cloud shadows move across your closed eyelids, alternating light and brief coolness. Time seems to slow or perhaps stop, meaning anything at all. You are resting deeply, resting in the middle of the journey, not yet at its end, enjoying this part of the path. When you open your eyes again, you don't know if minutes or hours have passed, and it doesn't matter. The sun has moved slightly. The shadows have shifted. The mountain has held you while you rest it. Blanco stands and stretches one leg at a time. The others follow his lead. Tomas opens his eyes, smiles slightly, rises without hurry. Ready? He asks. You are ready. The path leads out of the stone forest, winding between the last great boulders and emerging onto an open ridge. The landscape ahead is different now, softer somehow less dramatic, but no less beautiful. The path levels out, following the contour of the mountain. To your left, the peaks rise, still distant, still gleaming with snow. To your right, the land falls away in into valleys you cannot quite see, only sense. Ahead, the ridge continues for what looks like miles. The ridge path is scattered with tiny alpine flowers growing in the sparse soil between rocks. Some are no more than a single bloom, rising from a tight rosette of leaves. But each one is complete, perfect, exactly enough. The ridge begins to descend gradually. At first, you're not going down the mountain, you're going around it, following the contour to a place that waits on the other side. The rocks are giving way to grass. The grass is becoming meadow, and beyond the meadow, the high valley walls rise. The path emerges from the rocky slopes into a vast alpine meadow that spreads out before you like a golden sea. The grass here is tall, knee high in places, moving in waves as the afternoon wind passes through it. The seed heads catch the light, turning the whole meadow luminous. Wildflowers scatter themselves throughout, purple, yellow, white, red, each color distinct and brilliant against the gold of the grass. The llamas seem different here, more playful somehow. One of the younger ones suddenly drops to the ground and rolls, legs kicking in the air, scratching its back against the grass and earth, making small grunting sounds of pleasure. Cielo trots ahead, then back, then ahead again, as if he can't quite contain his joy at being in this place. He hums, a sound of pure contentment rising from deep in his chest, and you smile because their happiness is contagious. The meadow is crossed by a stream wider than the trickles you've passed before, moving with purpose over smooth stones. When you kneel to refill your bottle, you can see every pebble on the bottom, every ripple of sand. The water tastes different than the spring water from this morning, softer somehow. You splash some on your face. The cold is shocking and wonderful, waking something inside you. The meadow is enormous. It must be a mile across, maybe more. The grass ripples and flows. Butterflies drift by. A bird sings, a cascading series of notes that tumbles down the scale and then starts over. The sky here is impossibly wide, impossibly blue. A few clouds drift across it, their shadows racing across the meadow floor, darkening the grass for a moment before moving on. Tomas has stopped to let the llamas drink from the stream. He's sitting on a rock, watching them, his face peaceful. When you approach, he looks up. You set the pace now, he says. The valley is close. You know your own rhythm and you understand. This last crossing is yours to make as you choose, fast or slow, with pauses or without. There is no wrong way, so you begin walking. The grass is soft underfoot, yielding and quiet, each step releasing a faint scent. Grass and flowers and earth, the smell of growth and summer and life continuing. You walk slowly, not because you're tired, but because this meadow deserves slowness, because beauty of this magnitude asks for attention, for presence, for the kind of looking that only happens when you're not rushing past. The sun is lower now, moving into late afternoon. The light is becoming golden, taking on that particular quality, warm and thick like honey poured over everything. The grass glows. The mountains ahead turn amber and rose. The llamas are spread out across the meadow now, each finding their own way, but all heading in the same direction, toward the valley walls that rise ahead, toward the destination that waits. The meadow begins to slope upward, gently. At the far edge, the grass grows shorter. As you climb, the path becomes clearer again, climbing toward a gap in the valley walls. As you follow it, breathing deeply, you feel your heart work, but not strain. The llamas are ahead of you now, Blanco leading as always. Tomas walks beside them, one hand occasionally touching a llama's shoulder, a gesture of connection, of care. The gap in the walls grows closer, two walls of stone leaning toward each other, leaving just enough space for the path to pass through. You step through the gateway. The high valley opens before you. The valley is smaller than you expected, more intimate. It's a secret place, a pocket of level ground held between mountain walls that rise steeply along on three sides. But what draws your eye immediately is the stone circle in the center of the valley floor. Someone long ago built a circular shelter from the native stone. The walls are perhaps waist high, just tall enough to offer protection from the wind, with gaps left open on the south side to let in light and warmth. The stones are weathered and covered with orange and green lichens, but the structure is still sound, still solid, still serving its purpose. Tomas leads the llamas through the entrance gap. He loosens the ropes and lifts the bundles away, and each llama shakes itself vigorously, making small sounds of relief and pleasure when they wander off to graze and spread off across the valley floor. Blanco finds a spot near the eastern wall and lowers himself down with a groan. He looks like a white guardian statue, watching over the valley, over all of you. You help Tomas unpack. There are wool blankets woven in patterns of brown and red and cream. A small bundle of food, a kettle for tea. Everything simple, everything. Exactly what's needed. You arrange your sleeping spot against the stone wall on the western side, where you'll be able to see the sunset. And later, the. The blankets are thick and soft, still warm from being carried by the llamas. You layer them over the grass and moss, creating a nest. Tomas builds a small fire in a Ring of stones that has clearly been used for this purpose many times before. The wood is dry scrub gathered from the valley floor. Gnarled, twisted pieces that burn slowly and fragrantly, releasing a scent of mountain sage into the evening air. Water from a small spring near the rocks goes into the kettle. Tea leaves are added, dark and fragrant. The kettle is hung over the flames. You sit on your blankets and simply watch the valley transform in the changing light. The sun is approaching the peaks to the west, and as it lowers, it seems to slow down, to stretch out these final moments of day. The valley walls turn rose, then amber, then a deep purple gold. Shadows lengthen across the grass. The air begins to cool quickly, but the stones of the circle wall still radiate the warmth they've gathered all day. Tomas pours tea into two cups and hands you one. The tea is hot and fragrant. You cup it in both hands, feeling the warmth spread through your palms. The valley has held many travelers, Tomas says quietly. Some come to rest, some come to remember. Some come to forget. All are welcome. You sip the tea. The valley holds you in its silence. The sun touches the peak and seems to balance there for a long moment, a perfect sphere of gold against the purple mountain. Then it begins to slip behind, and the world changes again. The sky above transforms into bands of color, orange near the horizon, fading to pink to lavender, to the first hints of deep blue. Overhead, the stars are beginning to appear, faint at first, just suggestions of light. Tomas adds more wood to the fire. He serves simple food. Bread, cheese, dried fruit, more tea. You eat quietly, grateful, tasting the day in every bite. As full darkness settles over the valley, the temperature drops sharply. You wrap yourself in the blankets and lie back to look at the sky. The fire crackles softly. The llamas breathe. The mountain holds everything in its ancient embrace. And the stars begin to emerge in earnest. As the sky starts to darken, the stars begin to appear, not all at once, but in a gradual unveiling, as if the darkness is slowly pulling back a curtain to reveal what was always there, always waiting. First, the brightest stars, the ones that punch through. Even the last hints of twilight. Single points of light scattered across the deepening blue. Then more stars appear, and more and more still. The Southern Cross emerges above the eastern valley wall, four bright stars forming a tilted cross, smaller than you imagined, but unmistakable, brilliant. And beside it, the two pointer stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri, shining like beacons guiding travelers home. The darkness becomes complete, and the sky transforms into something beyond comprehension. There are millions of stars. They fill Every space between darkness turning the sky into a river of light, not the ordered constellations of children's books. This is chaos and beauty together, wild and ancient and overwhelming. And there, like a soft haze caught in the blackness, are the Magellanic Clouds, two irregular patches of luminous mist that aren't clouds at all, but entire galaxies, neighbors to your own, so far away that their light has traveled for eons just to reach your eyes. Tonight they glow softly like breath on a cold window. Like ghosts, like memories of stars, like long dead whose light still finds its way here, to this valley, to you. You lie wrapped in your blankets, looking up, and feel yourself growing smaller and larger at the same time. Smaller because the universe is so vast, larger because you are here, Conscious, awake, able to witness this, to feel this, to be part of this moment that has never existed before and will never exist again. In quite this way. The stars wheel slowly overhead, following paths they've followed for billions of years. The Southern Cross rotates. The pointer stars hold their positions. The Magellanic Clouds drift like ancient memories through the darkness. You hear Tomas's breathing from across the fire, slow and even. The llamas breathe softly. Cielo makes a small sound in his sleep, a gentle hum that fades back into silence. The fire crackles, then settles into embers that glow like small red stars against the earth. The cold cannot reach you in your nest of blankets. The stone wall at your back still holds some warmth. The grass beneath you is soft. Every part of your body that touched the path today, your feet, your legs, your shoulders, all of it relaxes now, releasing, letting go. He walked today. He climbed. You rested. You crossed meadows and stone forests and ancient paths. You followed the llamas who know the way, who set the pace, who understand the rhythm of mountain and body and breath. And you chose your own pace when it was time. You rested, when rest was needed. The journey held you, carried you, brought you here to this valley, to these stones, to this sky. A shooting star traces a brief line across the darkness. There and gone in a heartbeat, but real, witnessed. Another follows. And another. The universe is full of motion, full of life, full of light, traveling impossible distances just to arrive here now, in this moment. Your breathing slows to match the rhythm of the night. In, out, in, out. Each breath carrying you deeper into rest, into peace, into the kind of sleep that happens under open sky when the body has worked well and the day is complete. The valley cradles you. The mountains stand guard. The llamas keep their quiet vigil. The stars pour their ancient light down onto the grass, onto the stones, onto your closed eyelids. You are held. You are safe. You are exactly where the journey was always leading. Rest well, friend. The mountains will keep watch while you sleep. Good night.