In Which Claudia Goes on a Long Journey and Falls Off a Horse and Leaves her Camera Under a Tree and Finds it Again

This spring, I did some workshops with a group of jovenes in a community outside of Cuenca called Sayausí. Last week, I was invited to go with the priest from there and a couple of teenagers to go visit a remote community in the mountains, out of the reach of telephone service, running water or anything outside of the most basic electricity. There was a wedding and a baptism, and a meeting to talk about building a road. We went on horseback, which was interesting considering that I once went on a trail ride in, um 1994. Despite one or two moments where I was cantoring across a meadow in which I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings, riding the horse without any idea what I was doing was hard. And coming back, going down steep slippery rocks, the horse jumped and I leaned forward and over I went, right over his head. Fortunately I clung to his neck and didn´t hit anything. When I got back to the road, I had to make a pit stop in the woods to use the bathroom (bear with me here, its relevant to the storyline) which I did in a hurry because we were trying to leave. I had to rush back to my office to check in on a taller I planned, where I discovered that my much beloved camera was not with me. It took me a second to piece it all together, but I knew that it had fallen off my belt loop in the middle of Cajas National Park when I was squatted under a tree. So this morning, I bribed my friend Pablo, with a promise of pancakes after, to go out into the mountains. A quick trip by bus out there and back again. I didn´t want to think about how irresponsible and horrible I was going to feel if the camera wasn´t there. But it had to be. It took us two hours to find a bus out to Cajas, every second I was looking up at the clouds hanging over the mountains and imagining little water droplets condensing inside the plastic bag that held my camera. It was ridiculous taking a forty minute bus ride out in the wilderness to look for a camera under one particular tree. But we got a bus and it dropped us off right in front of the tree in question.

And there it was, lying right where I left it. It worked and everything. If it sounds too incredible to believe, I should mention that Cajas is a spooky often deserted place, and there are millions of corners in which things that fall could sit undisturbed for all time. Pablo and I rode back to Cuenca in a pickup truck and watched the mist covered hills go by, and give way first to high green slopes and then the hustle of Sayausí.

Now, I´m leaving out the real part, which was the visit to the community. The women cooking dusk til dawn for all the people that rode in for the fiesta, the smell of smoke from the wood fire on the floor. The incredible succession of food I was offered because I was a guest who came with the padrecito, the aguitas of cinammon and herbs that they gave us to warm us up, the grinding poverty that the community lives in, the stunning rugged land, the problem posed by a toilet unconnected to any sort of plumbing that at least 15 people had used. I want to say more, but I´m processing everything I saw, everything that everyone said to me, the people who were extraordinarily warm, the ones who were more guarded, how much of an outsider I felt, how much of a gringo I felt. How I ate chicken, beef, rice, yucca, guinea pig, potatoes, eggs, habas, everything fresh, everything made from scratch.

So more when I can.