When Mother Earth made Peru, she was not messing around. She told Papa Earth to turn the volume of the game down because she needed to concentrate and he did it immediately because she had that serious look on her face.
Along the coast of Peru, desert meets the Pacific Ocean, laying down sandy beach after beach, uninterrupted except for a precious little mangrove reserve near the Ecuador border. Year round, the sun ignites the ocean at sundown, like a match to oil.
Moving inland, the Andes mountains tower above, high enough to harbour glaciers despite being three degrees latitude off the equator. Clouds pour in and around the steep vertices, playing peekaboo with snow capped summits. Mountain and water cooperate, roaring off cliffs with reckless abandon or bubbling down rocky streams, dancing jigs around sharp bends, occasionally pooling in lakes and lagunas, cold and clean enough to drink and live to tell the story.
Within 30 minutes at llama pace, you can go from being blanketed by humidity, squidging around in mud to squinting from the reflection of the sun on an expanse of snow crunching beneath your feet.
I often find myself at the back of our hiking group, trying to take in all the beauty. The change in altitude makes my head pound and I hang back, letting the group move further away. I close my eyes, breathe deep and open my eyes again. I'm hoping it will become clear why these mountains are so good. Nothing ever happens. I see deep blue, blinding white, fresh green. I think about how billions of years ago and thousands of miles below, massive tectonic plates coming together push these mountains towards the sky. I wonder how many million newtons of force are involved. But these words are too small, even factorialed by infinity and the universe a trillion times. I don't know why these mountains are so good, so beautiful.
But they are, and photography sure is easy with cooperative subjects.
East of the Andes lies the Amazon Jungle. I haven't been there yet but I'm sure Mother Earth won't disappoint.
Along the coast of Peru, desert meets the Pacific Ocean, laying down sandy beach after beach, uninterrupted except for a precious little mangrove reserve near the Ecuador border. Year round, the sun ignites the ocean at sundown, like a match to oil.
Moving inland, the Andes mountains tower above, high enough to harbour glaciers despite being three degrees latitude off the equator. Clouds pour in and around the steep vertices, playing peekaboo with snow capped summits. Mountain and water cooperate, roaring off cliffs with reckless abandon or bubbling down rocky streams, dancing jigs around sharp bends, occasionally pooling in lakes and lagunas, cold and clean enough to drink and live to tell the story.
Within 30 minutes at llama pace, you can go from being blanketed by humidity, squidging around in mud to squinting from the reflection of the sun on an expanse of snow crunching beneath your feet.
I often find myself at the back of our hiking group, trying to take in all the beauty. The change in altitude makes my head pound and I hang back, letting the group move further away. I close my eyes, breathe deep and open my eyes again. I'm hoping it will become clear why these mountains are so good. Nothing ever happens. I see deep blue, blinding white, fresh green. I think about how billions of years ago and thousands of miles below, massive tectonic plates coming together push these mountains towards the sky. I wonder how many million newtons of force are involved. But these words are too small, even factorialed by infinity and the universe a trillion times. I don't know why these mountains are so good, so beautiful.
But they are, and photography sure is easy with cooperative subjects.
East of the Andes lies the Amazon Jungle. I haven't been there yet but I'm sure Mother Earth won't disappoint.
PS. On a different scale, I am moving to Tumbes to get more involved with our mangrove project. Work here in Lima has picked up as of late and it has been a valuable experience, writing expansive funding proposals or concise Letters of Inquiry, maneuvering between Spanish and English words and concepts. It's a good feeling to go home every day knowing you accomplished something. Of course, I am excited to be spending more time in the mangroves and less in the office.
PPS. Obama becomes President today?! I'm guessing yes and so is everyone else.
4 comments:
Yay: I always happen to check your blog on the days you update (although I stumble by on days without updates, too).
Great post! Amazing pictures (was the water actually aquamarine? Wow.), poetic prose -- thanks for the mini-travelogue. I should pitch you as a travel writer to the Globe.
Noa's purring. Do all babies purr? Is this a morphemic ability we lose when we begin to talk? In any case, she purrs hello and Thom says hi as well. (He's in Chicago, as you know, and I'm trying to convince him to come up with a post like this about the Obama mania.)
heeey liang!!!
as i already said, i like your way of writing :) nice post again!
and yessss, so happy that obama won!
so, tumbes it is? leaving your nice new family in lima?? ;) or you come back to lima every once in a while?
and how is your spanish?
bye bye and go visit the jungle because mother earth won't disappoint you, it will be amazing!!!! :D
chao! wendelien
Okay, shit. I have to go to the Andes. Now.
A whole other world there in terms of nature and wildlife.. I was out in the nearby countryside with my father to talk to locals about a plan to grow rice there which we hope would help them prosper, and I found myself horribly unprepared for the forests here when going through the village's territory looking for suitable areas. Tell you more later.
Nice pictures. Wonderful scenery. Good stuff.
DOOOOOOOOOD.
i should just drop out of school now and visit you in peru. so beautiful everything!!!!!!
it seems like you're enjoying your time there. I'm SO jealous. have lots of fun. be very safe and remember lots of stories so you can share them with me and I'll die of jealousy.
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