Stepping back into the light

That's what it feels like at least, emerging from the tangled dripping labrythine maze of the moss jungle. The name I've dubbed for our newest transect we have been making for mammal sign. Climb 400 meters straight up from the pasture, follow the ridge about 100 meters more in the paramo and dive headlong into the cloud forest and you'll found it. All the moisture from the Eastern trade winds blowing mist and moisture constantly over this ridge top. Hence the forest here is truly a moss jungle, a green monster of vines and ferns, gnarled half rotten branches and a bog like mat of moss over everything. The whole ridge near vertical at times dropping off at points into sheer cliff.

Coral and Tim are sick from overworking the day before and so we are four, waiting now in the truck by the roadside for Don Jose. He never shows and Elizabeth and I spent the morning tracking him down in Colepato. Passing quizzical amused looks from bundled up Kichwa woman, and empty huts, the families up in the nearby fields. A riot of barking dogs and many confusing conversations for directions and we finally we found Don Jose perched on a rock in his pasture. Falling off his horse the day before and his ribs are bruised, his wrist twisted. Talking, sympathizing, up there in the pasture and feeling so bad. "Nos vemos en dos semanas ya?" and we leave him with our sympathies and regret.

...and so we find ourselves short two people and minus our tracker in the moss jungle. Charting a line and rolling up the string, 100m X 4 in this green maze. Hard work with as much climbing as hiking, and even an epic hoist up and near fall into oblivion at one point(!) But, despite all the things going wrong for the day this place is beautiful, mysterious, and otherworldly like no where I have ever been. A respiration of green life pulsing under the weight of moss and fern, tunnels and caves between boughs and branches, and the spongy spring of the moss underfoot everywhere. Sometimes firm and sometimes giving way. Hold on!

I left my camera on the ridge before I plunged in not trusting the weather, though I don't think any photos I could take of the moss jungle would come close to capturing such a fairy land. Emerging from out a tunnel it seems into the high horizon bound expanse of the paramo. Stepping back into the light from another universe entire I feel.

Oh and I almost forgot. 200 BLIPS!