Altitude offers some perspective

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the last time i went from close to sea level to over thirteen thousand feet without oxygen in something other than a commerical airline, i was skydiving for a rush and to feel alive - today it was to go to the neighboring state to ica (where nasca is located) into ayacucho - where at a little over 13K feet, the air is clean and pure, the landscape oposite to the coastal town of nasca, climate went from dry and 90 to wet - cold and 40...

vicuñas are the most prized fur for spinning cloth of all the animlas in the andes and perhaps in the world - and the worlds largest reserve of vicuñas is where i ended up at the end of my road today. the herd, of incredible beauty with a diminutive, camel-like physciology.

amidst the vicuñas grazing on the sparse and coarse vegetation, the magnificence of the condor de los andes made his presence known as the blanket of the inca - the sun - peered in and out of the clouds

as suspected, once again, my reality proved to not be real... arriving from such a disinfected, higenically and hermetically sealed, isolated and insulated test tube as that of the so named ´developed first world´, i had forgotten the direct relationship between the rain in the mountains feeding the ocean. Along the way, the other members of this world in the form of other people, all of the magnificent and rare flora and fauna which in escence create and maintain the closed circle of life. perhaps it was the thin air or another catharsis of thought, which serves to transform me into a simpler and in my estimation more complete temporary inhabitant of the planet.

God willing, this weekend i will be able to share some of the over 1500 digital captures of a point in time and place.

life is filled with such a plethora of carnage, suffering and general desparation of mankind. yet there are those precious moments such as falling in love for the first time, or for the last and final time, having a child, etal. - sitting on the ground, next to a shack with a tin roof, dirt floor and three generations of peruvian women preparing wool from a sheep into thread and then weaving it into a negotiable item of clothing will be one of those rare and precious moments in my psyche, perhaps not an earth shattering, nor zeitgeist level moment - none the less one of the peaks in a road filled with valleys and some plains -

washing you dirty clothes in the shower with bath soap is not a good way to get them clean, nor to keep them from smelling like dirty - stinky - used clothes...

to my dear mother, yes, all my love to you first and foremost

peace and love from the S74 degrees latitude

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