Kimsa kocha

After one of our last lectures in the morning I gave everyone the afternoon off and hiked alone to Kimsa Kocha for the last time. I have to say farewell to the paramo and I want to savor the landscape, just the two of us.

It rained in the morning but by noon the mist cleared and the sun peeped out from behind the clouds. The way lies North following the ridge line until you reach the remnants of an ancient Canari road etched deep into the hillsides, overun now with puya grasses and wildflowers. At the ridgetops white collared swifts sumersaulted by me keeping company with me through the high meadows. SWOOSH! They propel through the air with the audible finesse of acrobats and the speed of jet fighter planes close enough almost to touch.

Along the journey I went birding of course, I´ve almost up to 100 species I´ve IDéd since I arrived in Ecuador six months ago. With this goal so close it gives me more reason to get out and geek out on natural history. There were mountain wrens, many striped canasterso, puna hawks, and bright red mountain tanagers all along the way to keep me company. Really though I´m holding out for bears. The plateau surrounding Kimsa Kocha is full of huge flowering giant puyas and one of the best spots around to glimpse Andean bears. They come up here to eat the sweet pith of the spiky puya leaves and gorge on the tall stalks saturated with sugars. I went silently upwind the whole way scanning the ridgelines with my binoculars but alas the bears are elsewhere today....

Descending through a copse of gnarled trees one on ridgetop I startled a mixed flock of flowerpierces, brushfinches, and tanagers, all the while my imagination expectant and hopeful for bears around each corner and shadow. When I arrived to Kimsa Kocha I laid down there in the paha grasses and listened to the silence long and hard. Andean cosmology attaches great spiritual importance to lakes and mountians, they are apu´s. Spirits that must be respected and appeased who hold great powers. Here just above the lakes in the cradle of this high plateau there is an ancient burial site, presumably the burial spot of Canari royalty. Now long since looted.

Today not many people ever come to this place. The echoes of the wind sound like voices though and the whisper of the breeze through the paha grasses is like a siren song lulling you to drosiness. Here in this holy place I said a prayer for the past, present, and future to the four directions. I gave my thanks and then I fell asleep in the grass and dreamed strange dreams. Dreams of mountain royalty and bloody rites. Dreams of sacred lakes and holy mountaintops. Dreams of bright colored birds and dancing bears....