Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It Read Online Free PDF

childlessness. After several years of infertility treatment, shots, surgeries, in vitro fertilization and miscarriages, my husband and I were at a crossroads. There were other things we could try—donor eggs, adoption—but we were never going to have a child that was part me, part him. That possibility was over, and I felt it was my body’s fault.
    So my husband and I set out for the remote and rugged,little-touristed Caribbean island of Dominica. This wasn’t going to be a lie-on-the-beach-and-drink-all-day kind of getaway. I planned to embark on a physical challenge that would prove my body was capable of accomplishing something. I hoped it was, because this journey wasn’t eating or praying or loving (although it involved all three). It was hiking.
    Every day, we would be doing challenging treks through the jungle. Although I had enjoyed the occasional jaunt before, I was not a regular-exercise kind of girl. I booked the trip with only a couple of weeks to spare, so I spent what little time I had to train on the stationary bike in our bedroom. But I knew I was woefully unprepared.
    I noticed that the local people walked slowly but surely up the steep inclines of the countryside, miles from any town. How could they make hiking look so easy? Still, the first hike I’d planned was a seven-hour round-trip trek to Boiling Lake, the second-largest flooded fumarole in the world and the crown jewel of all of Dominica’s hikes. But when I told Nancy, a yoga instructor at our eco-resort, she grew concerned. Visitors to the island shouldn’t attempt it on their first day, she said; it was meant to be the hike you worked up to. I started feeling a little scared, but I was determined to stick to my itinerary.
    At seven thirty a.m. I was already drenched in sweat. Our local guide, Brother, was missing several teeth and wore thin, worn leather sandals. Our small hiking party of tourists climbed into a pickup truck fitted with eight seats in its bed for the hour-and-a-half drive to Morne Trois Pitons National Park. Mist covered the tops of the craggy peaks, like something out of
King Kong
. The road wound higher and higher into them, until finallywe reached the starting point: the pool at the mouth of Titou Gorge.
    The first part of the trail was a gentle incline up into the forest. Then the stairs began, a harbinger of the real climbing ahead. But what did I expect of an island with no flat land? I pushed on determinedly, encouraged by my more athletic husband. We descended to Breakfast River, so named because hikers usually stopped here for the first meal of the day. But being already well-fed, we only paused briefly before crossing the stream and beginning a more difficult ascent, all the way to the top of Morne Nicholls.
    Short of the peak, a young couple from Guadalupe decided to turn back. If they couldn’t make it, how would I? But eventually, huffing and puffing, I reached the summit with the others. Brother presented us with slices of pineapple, which we ate right off the rind. The view across the mountains was lush and green, more like the South Pacific than the Caribbean. I did it! I thought to myself. I climbed a mountain! Except that there was still a long way to go back down.
    We made our way down into the Valley of Desolation, where steam rose through vents in the earth, mud bubbled and streams of warm water flowed through a landscape of yellow and orange rocks. We scrambled up over the rocks, staying close to Brother, who knew where it was safe to step, until we emerged above the sunken lake. Sheer cliffs around the rim plunged down to the water, heated to boiling by volcanic cracks in the earth below. Marveling at the sight, I suddenly forgot everything that had happened to me. Although my husband stood next to me, this moment was mine alone. The thought came to me that this lake,like me, was a freak of nature. I had the same bubbling turmoil inside myself, and I was seething with