Even after a stint as short as seven months in the forest, the culture shock of coming “home” caught me in a big way. These are a few of the top-most surprising challenges that I have encountered since re-entering the American atmosphere: 1) I keep forgetting not to talk to myself aloud in public. 2) On the other hand, I continually respond in my head instead of aloud during casual conversations without realizing it until the awkward silence has stretched on for far too long. 3) I have no idea what normal people wear, but I’m pretty sure I own none of that stuff. 4) Everything is distracting. Finding my academic footing and rhythm feels near impossible with so many other things happening around me. 5) I get anxious about talking to people, especially lots of people that I know, but that I don't know all that well. It freaks me out and I feel like I'm on the spot and don't know what to say to anyone about anything- except when I’m bartending, which I somehow like more than I used to. Enjoy that little morsel, psychology friends. 6) Crowds, which never used to bother me, suddenly cause some sort of acute, panicked, claustrophobia-like reaction (which I can only assume from other people’s description of claustrophobia because I’ve never felt that either). 7) At the end of a very productive day of computer work, I feel like I blacked out and have no idea what happened or what I accomplished. That problem is solved when I have the time to go home and cook something, and admire the tangibility of my fabulous and far superior accomplishment. 8) Everything is too quiet here until it’s too noisy in all the wrong ways. My ears ache for lack of colobine calls and cicadas and the sudden influx of trash trucks and barking dogs that aren’t my barking dog. 9) Why are there no animals in the forest here? It shouldn’t surprise me… but the magnitude… 10) Choice. I am so overwhelmed by choice. Everyone keeps asking me what I want to do or watch, or where I want to go to eat and what I want to have when I get there. At the grocery I’m surrounded by an insurmountable mountain of choices- which of the 45 different types of shampoo should I purchase? Do I want apples or peaches or pears or watermelons or cantaloupes or strawberries or ridiculously overpriced mangos and avocados? Which kind of the dozen types of lettuce do I want? I can’t process fast enough and then I realize I’ve been staring at a wall of choices for ten minutes with nothing but white-noise in my brain. I feel so berated by endless questions of preference and inquiries of want that I can’t answer quickly enough to satisfy. And then there are the constant check-ins and assumptions that I’m exactly how I used to be but seven months older and suggestive comments about why and how I should be. Am I back to normal? Do I feel normal yet? No. Ok, well how about now? The answer is still no. Field life has always been a catalyst for me. I’ve grown and changed and transformed a little with each project and each place. I’m not sure why, but I did somehow think that this time might be different. Maybe I thought that I was done growing. Maybe I thought Kibale had finished its work on me. After all, it was only seven months. I expected to be “back to normal” within a few days but I’m still not “back to normal” and maybe I’ll never feel that version of “normal” again. And the point is that I’m fine with that. I like that I come back from the field a little different every time, in fact I feel like I come back a little more me every time. Granted, I’m the only one who has been there through the whole process, experiencing the things that have shifted and refined who I am so I’m not surprised by the outcomes. I understand that for other people it is a bit more jarring. It can be difficult on both sides to resolve contradictions between the real me with perceptions of who I’m supposed to be. And I think it must be a little weird for the people who only see the before and the after. But don’t worry, I like the new me. And you’ll get used to me just like I’ll get used to being “home.” :)
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Well. That escalated quickly. Wasn’t I just writing “Exhilaration" from the runway at Dulles yesterday? The writer in me wanted to pen this post as I was touching back down on the same runway, but there were unforeseen oh-you’re-leaving-Africa-here’s-a-parting-gift circumstances that prevented me from doing much of anything really. As a result, the goals of this first post-field piece have shifted a bit. The flight experience tied together so many facets of what it feels like to leave the forest: the transition to “normal” society, walking away from your happy place, shifting from one sphere of your life to another, shifting from develop-ING to develop-ED nation, and so on and so on. It was such an excellent metaphor, but I’m not sure how to tell you why. Don’t worry- I’m not going to tell you the harrowing tale of how I violently vomited every half hour for 8 hours until we touched down in Brussels. I won’t describe the way that such a vicious departure was so ridiculous, and so appropriate to my emotional state, that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing- out loud- between puking bouts. Or mention the details of how I completely forgot the rules of normal public behavior and talked myself through the hilarious misery- out loud. It’s too graphic. If you had been on this plane beside me, like the model-gorgeous Danish dental hygienist who really was stuck beside me, you might have thought I was completely crazy. Ok, like, almost definitely thought I was bat-shit crazy. It all came down to a false sense of security and a rookie mistake. After so many months frequenting the same local haunts in Ft. Portal, I forgot that most Entebbe and Kampala restaurants do not take the sort of precautions that a small restaurant that caters to mzungu tourists will. So when I saw iced tea on the menu, my brain said “Ooh! It’s so hot out and that sounds delicious!” instead of “…Do they make their ice from filtered or bottled water?” Moving on… I’ve barely stopped moving since I landed, and, as such, have found neither the time nor the energy to focus all these feelings floating around into some sort of coherent framework. But don’t worry, it’s coming. Tomorrow I start the long drive to Albuquerque and always do my best thinking on the road. For now, some teasers. I’ve got quite a few blogger-balls in the air and I’m working on some interesting pieces. To start with, there are a few more stories to wrap up my field season- my trip to Ngongo, in particular, will include some fabulous photos and (spoiler alert) a short update on a certain Kanyawara female that emigrated some time ago… And after that, let’s get heavy. Let’s get into some contemporary controversies in science, conservation, social justice, all kinds of stuff. For instance, many of you have asked me about my opinion Cecil the lion and I’ve been fleshing out a proper response to those inquiries. My friend, K, is a marine biologist on Turks and Caicos and she recently posted a story on Facebook about a sea turtle that was discovered with a plastic drinking straw lodged in its nose. So I’m working on a piece about wasteful, harmful plastics. The kinds we don’t even think about. And I’m going to try not to use a single straw on my entire cross-country drive. I’m not sure how the experiment is going to hash out- but I am sure that I (and consequently you) will be very surprised to see how ubiquitous and unavoidable dangerous disposables are. The point is- stay tuned! I might be out of the forest, but there will be plenty of interesting writing to keep us occupied till I head back. More to come…. I wouldn't want you to think that I ignore our adult chimps or love them any less than the babies! These are a few of my favorite images of adults that I haven't featured quite as much this season. Enjoy :) This beautiful lady is one of our Northern-neighborhood females. She is very shy but has been spending more and more time with central group members since D and I got here in January. Her favorite social partners seem to be other Northerners like Y, shown here grooming Lady G. Some of her more notable features are those piercing light eyes and a snare injury, which you cannot see here, that left her fingerless on one hand.
28th June 2015
I feel like every field biologist longs for that rare moment to witness the thing that (almost) no one has ever seen before. This one may well have been mine. The moment could very well go down in my personal history as the rarest, most incredible behavior I have ever been so lucky to witness: Wallace grooming a redtail monkey. I have craved this moment, without knowing what it would be, for about a million years, you know, plus or minus. It is possible that some of you have already seen this on the KCP Facebook page (_)- I could barely stop myself from trying to post the entire FIFTEEN minutes of footage immediately after D and I witnessed it—it feels impossible to explain how rare and wonderful this interaction was. In fact I’ve been struggling with writing post (hence the delay in getting the words out with the footage) for that reason. Such a momentous occasion requires a careful touch to walk the proper line between telling the story and sharing some decent science. As many of you may already know, chimpanzees eat monkeys, albeit with varying intensity across communities. Yes, monkeys are food, not friends, for chimpanzees. Affilitative, or friendly, interactions between chimpanzees and individuals of other primate species are sufficiently rare that I have almost never read or even heard of such an encounter despite having searched for such a case on multiple occasions. The only previous report of a friendly interaction between a chimp and an individual of another species (that did not end in the demise of a monkey) that I have been able to able to track down is the personal observation of another graduate student involving the same juvenile, Wallace, engaging in a bit of play with a young baboon. Needless to say, witnessing such an encounter first hand was unexpected if not entirely unbelievable. In contrast with chimpanzees, redtails frequently interact with other primate species. Here at KNP, they often forage in mixed-species associations. I’ve read a few papers about mixed-species associations and, in fact, I often saw retails (mostly males) mixed in with the blue monkeys at Kakamega. I am by no means an expert on redtails, but luckily, my friend Maragret Bryer is! Maragret is a NYCEP graduate student studying redtail foraging and social behavior for her dissertation project (check out her website here: margaretbryer.wix.com/margaretbryer). I asked her for some a brief summary of mixed associations among redtails to help us wrap out heads around what we saw: “In a national park with 13 species of primates, interactions between species are often the most complex and surprising. Redtail monkeys spend most of their time in the company of other monkey species, specifically red colobus monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, blue monkeys, mangabeys and occasionally L’Hoest’s monkeys. In fact, we often observe redtails being far more tolerant of other species than of other redtails from neighboring groups. In the same day, we often witness grooming and play between redtails and other monkey species, followed by chasing and aggression between redtails of different groups when ranges overlap. Protection from predators like chimpanzees and eagles and/or improved foraging may be the reasons behind all of this redtail mixed species association. Despite this seeming tolerance between species, researchers working at Kibale have also found that a hierarchy exists among frugivorous monkeys: blue monkeys and mangabeys appear to dominate the redtails in feeding competition for ripe fruits. When in the same feeding tree, blue monkeys and mangabeys gain access to higher quality sugar-rich fruits compared to redtails. The relationship between redtails and chimpanzees is more complicated. Redtails and chimps feed on many of the same fruiting tree species, but, at its simplest, the chimp-redtail interaction is that of predator-prey. Redtails tend to have a stereotypical reaction to the presence of chimps less than 50 meters away: become extremely quiet, run like hell, then sit silent and mute, not feeding or socializing for at least 45 minutes. On days when multiple chimp subgroups are around, this sequence continues on repeat for several hours. Given this typical flee-and-hide reaction by redtails to chimps, a chimp gently grooming a redtail is especially surprising.” There are a few notable features of this video worth identifying and discussing. And tons and tons of questions, most generally, is there something different about Wallace? Something sufficiently different from other chimps that he is driven to engage with non-chimps in ways that other chimps don’t? Now, before we dive into this, please do remember that this is a case-study or observations from a sample size of one encounter, thus everything that follows may indicate anomalies as easily as patterns- mostly importantly, remember, as previously indicated, the encounter itself is likely an anomaly so there may be no pattern at all! Interesting feature number 1: Did you notice how Wallace is incredibly gentle as he grooms the redtail? You can see in the close-up how gingerly he brushes his fingers through the redtail’s hair. Chimpanzees are comparatively rough with each other- both with their hands as they comb through one another’s hair and as they push and prod their partners to access new areas that need grooming. Watching it, it sometimes seems as though chimps can barely contain their excitement about grooming. Sometimes when juveniles groom younger individuals, like infant siblings, the interaction ends with the younger partners escaping to their mothers when they can’t seem to take the roughness of their big brother’s or sister’s. However, in this interaction, Wallace’s restraint and fine muscle control is notable both for his age and his species. Interesting feature number 2: Wallace’s gentle touch becomes even more remarkable as he wraps his toes around the monkey’s red tail begins to play with it. Young chimps seem to be absolutely fascinated by monkey tails. I have personally observed several juveniles and infants stealing away with monkey tails after a successful hunt and playing with it for hours (sometimes even through the night and into the next day). However, gentle, is just not a word that I would ascribe to the way the kiddies play with monkey parts. In fact, I would tend toward the opposite. I’ve seen tails flung around and tugged upon, slung around necks like a boa, thrown down and stomped on- all in the name of good fun. I thought about posting a short clip to illustrate that point, but is a bit macabre. Considering it now, I think that I’ve seen them treat sticks and stones more nicely than monkey parts. You can see just how gentle Wallace is reflected in the behavior of the redtail- which brings us to interesting feature number 2: it might not seem obvious, but this monkey is totally relaxed and comfortable. When you watch the clip, do you notice how he exposes his neck and flanks to Wallace? The redtail is expressing a behavior called “present for grooming,” which is generally regarded as one individual showing the specific areas that he or she wishes another to groom. Its very common in guenons between same-species group-mates. In other words, this redtail is using the same behavioral indicators with Wallace that he might use with another redtail. Isn’t that remarkable- to be so comfortable with something that might eat you!? Humans often have close relationships with animals that we might eat, like goats or sheep or rabbits, but take domestication away and think about it from the other side. There isn’t a human-to-nonhuman-wild-animal example that really approximates the nuances of this particular interaction, but could you ever be comfortable enough to approach and play with a juvenile polar bear? Or a lion cub? When mom is close by? Field biologists spend their whole lives trying to understand natural systems, looking for patterns and rules of intricate and complex relationships. Discovering those patterns and those rules can be surprising (or not), ground breaking, and so so satisfying. The more time I spend in the forest, the better I know the animals that live there, the more in awe I am of the variation at every node of the system. Maybe it’s the truest scientist in me that loves such small violations in established ideas so much, after all the scientific method is fundamentally about upending and rejecting hypotheses. 01 May 2015 Our Bwindi trip was about more than gorillas, if you can believe it. Indeed, a major goal of the journey was to renew D’s Ugandan visa by hopping back and forth across the Rwandan border. This left us with an extra day and night of traveling. After a close examination of our handy-dandy map of Uganda, we decided that a stop-over in Kisoro and a visit to Mgahinga National Park would be the perfect addition to our trip. Quite conveniently, Mgahinga butts right up to the borders with DRC and Rwanada and Kisoro is the nearest city (less than 20k from the Rwanada-Uganda border). Second, D and I had heard, from two independent sources, that there was a marvelous little creature called a golden monkey that lived there and this creature could not be missed! Golden monkeys resemble blue monkeys nearly exactly in form and size but have vibrant golden flanks. For those of you who do not already know, I spent some time at the Kakamega Forest Reserve in Kenya working as a field manager for a blue monkey vocalization project. I quickly fell in love with blue monkeys on the basis of adorableness and my affinity for them grew daily as I catalogued their social dynamics and began to recognize individuals and know their social stories. The end result was a blue-monkey-shaped niche carved into my primatologists’ heart where I will always be fascinated by them. Honestly, all of the monkeys that belong to the group called “guenons” are just so damned cute- among my friends, redtails are often argued to be the cutest, but blue monkeys… I have so many ridiculous stories for another day and time. On the other hand, before this venture I had no knowledge of golden monkeys (and my impressions were not be substantially enriched through a brief review the very few available articles about their behavior and ecology). I assumed that they shared a number of similarities with blue monkeys and other guenons. But this forest was so different from other guenon habitats, who knew how different golden monkey diets and ranging and social behavior might be! Like Bwindi, Mgahinga is montane rainforest with patches of pristine, primary growth and patches of bamboo forest. The visual is absolutely stunning. Imagine a winding path up the side of a mountain. You cross over buffalo tracks, signs of elephants, and as you trek higher, you shift into new ecological zones. Each time you turn around, your take in more of the Congolese Virungas, shrouded in mist. You come to a cross-trail where you can turn right into primary forest, complete with hundred-foot-tall fig trees, or left, toward ancient caves once frequented by the Batwa before Mgahinga was a national park. Instead, you continue straight, and up. Finally, you reach the edge of a formidable wall of bamboo. The forest floor is carpeted with soft bamboo leaves and everything above the floor is glazed with soft moss. The softeness swallows sound so you can hear only whispers of the breeze between bamboo stalks and the songs of very close birds. The effect is somewhat like physically entering some magical corner of your imagination that you haven’t visited since childhood. The first sign of monkeys were a few tiny piles of bamboo leaf stalks like matchsticks. Then the sound of rustling just overhead in the thickest bamboo leaves. It could have been a light wind just as easily as a monkey or a bird or a leopard or a ninja. Indeed, as the group descended, heading for the tasty bamboo shoots newly emerging with the onset of the rainy season, the fluidity of their motions traversing mature stalks reminded me of scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Like the gorillas, we were allotted one hour in this magical place, but in many ways the hour could not have been more different. Bwindi was so crowded. The forest was thick THV tightly wound around narrow passages up the steep slopes and the thorny undergrowth grabbed at you as you passed. And there were so many of us- ten tourists, one guide, one guard, and four trackers- shoved into these tiny slanted spaces that were already full of gorilla. In Mgahinga at the start of the rainy season, only D and I, plus one guide, one guard, and two trackers were in the whole forest. No one was hiking any of several gorgeous peaks, or on a cultural tour with the Batwa, or even tracking gorillas (we had no idea you could even track gorillas there) that day. Bamboo doesn’t allow for much undergrowth, save for the odd firework-burst of thick-stalked flowers, but layers and layers of it gave the visual effect of a wall after so many feet. All at once the forest felt so closed and so open: closed like “enclosed,” like a safe space, and open like the opposite of claustrophobic and all the air in the world to breathe. At Bwindi, there was less than one gorilla per human and the touring crew ushered us between individuals one by one, embellishing gorilla factoids as we moved along. For the most part I tuned them out and tried to imagine what it would be like to be Diane Fossey seeing the for the first time. But at Mgahinga there was far less to tune out. They still tried to direct us: “You stand here,” or “Take picture from here,” but they let that go when I asked them if I could just explore on my own for a bit (granted I did have to ask a few times). With monkeys all around us, in every direction, at every height, I could hardly choose just one to watch! Similar to the visual differences between lowland and mountain gorillas, golden monkeys are extra-fluffy versions of their lowland (blue) counterparts. Clearly this bumps the cuteness factor to chart-topping levels. If you love puffy, squeezable cheeks like my friend, Katharine, you will love golden monkeys. When a few monkeys (first the male and then a few bold females and subadults) finally stepped to the ground to dig out bamboo shoots I actually squealed a little with delight. I could not stop myself from vocalizing my delight at the sheer cuteness of their tiny hands and puffy cheeks! Luckily for monkeys, it is highly unlikely that they can feel patronized. I spent the hour watching them munch. Between snapping shots of such gorgeous little creatures in such gorgeous surroundings, I contemplated bamboo and cyanide and whether golden monkeys, like bamboo lemurs, have super-primate abilities to process this toxin. Surely they must, given the prevalence of cyanide in bamboo- even if they are specializing on the shoots. SNAP!
I have the pleasure of including a number of incredible people among my friends. One of them, is Taylor Apostol, in fact, Taylor is one of my oldest and dearest friends- and she just happens to be an incredibly talented sculptor. I love her aesthetic- clean lines and beautifully minimalist mixed media. She has an eye for marble and a talent for finding the shapes it. I've included a photo of one of my favorite pieces- classic Taylor. Some other time, I'll tell you about the time that Taylor and I both left school with high fevers and strep throat- only she could make such a terrible day so incredibly fun. But more importantly, Taylor is insanely accomplished for such a young artist and I love bragging about her. She has trained in Italy and spent time in China on fellowship for her work. Just this month, she earns her MFA from Boston University! She will be showing her work all summer long in several outdoor spaces and galleries- please check out her website for show locations and dates! https://taylorapostol.carbonmade.com/about 6 April 2015 Everything about today was big. Big mountains. Big walk. Big steps. Big dreams. Big hopes. Big gorillas. No- I mean, like really, really b-i-g BIG gorillas. There are two aspects of my feelings toward today that I struggle to form into words. The first is that I realized the second of a short list of moments that I have been waiting for my whole life. I haven’t enough talent in molding words to even approach an accurate description of that to someone that has not felt it already. There were too many dimensions- the sheer size and weight of it, the taste of that last millisecond of anticipation, the color that doesn’t exist anywhere but inside my own chest, the infinite and endless feeling of waiting for the shortest breath of... Either my mind and tongue are too clumsy or language is a medium that can only truncate, prune and pare, something so deep and wide and big. The second is a sense of contented calmness that accompanied the realization that I am exactly where I need to be, doing exactly what I need to do. For a few brief moments near the top of a mountain in Bwindi, everything else- every source of stress and self-doubt- fell away and I sat staring at gorillas. Just watching and being happy. I cannot even continue on that because every attempt to force that emotion into words sounds exactly that- forced. So instead, I’ll just tell you the story. We chose to leave from Buhoma gate- for several excellent and valid reasons that I can discuss with you at length some other time if you’re interested. My labmate, D, and I headed up the mountain with a lovely American family, the Maizes (I changed their names), and an independent female traveler, Penny (name also changed). Penny and Mrs. Maize are in their sixties and moved a little more slowly than the rest of us- but I’m not ashamed to admit that I perfectly happy to use them as an excuse to climb slowly. The incline was far steeper than my usual Kanyawara trek, steep enough to steal my breath and get me sweating even in the chilly mountain air. About 40 minutes into the hike, I heard our guide on her two-way radio. For all the Luganda and Rotoro that I cannot speak, I was even more hopeless with her dialect. D and I laughed to each other as we substituted our own stories into the conversation. Every response from the other side sounded like a war-time command and he was takin’ serious heat…needed back-up yesterday…the gorilla ripped his arm off and was beating him with it! All was lost!!! Inspired by Congo and Amy good gorilla, we giggled heartily imagining what he might be (but certainly was not) saying. The true story was that the trackers who were sent into the forest ahead of us to locate the group had accidently followed the tracks of an unhabituated group. Upon realizing this the hard way (they had come too close and were charged by a silverback) they were forced to turn around and start from scratch. Our instructions were to wait for a half hour or until we heard back from their side. I found myself suddenly nervous that the group had disappeared into the mist and I would never see gorillas in my life. It seemed like a rational conclusion at the time. After 45 minutes of getting to know Mr. Maize (a physician who had spent time studying animal behavior in Germany and, now that he had retired, had come to Mbarara with his lovely wife to volunteer his expertise), Mr. Maize’s strappingly handsome sons who had come to visit their parents (along with a sister and brother-in-law who were less chatty), and Penny the retired Barclay’s banker who was taking a gap-year and heading back to the States after 15 years, we finally got the call to continue up the hill. The gorillas were close! TUGENDE! We hiked for another million years. Straight up the side of a mountain. Forever. And finally—FINALLY--- as Younger Maize #1 was telling me about his job at a small book publisher in Toronto-- we were standing at the edge of the top of a mountain, in a giant patch of brambles and nettles, and I saw the leaves in a gorilla-sized patch of the thick, herbaceous vegetation shake and rattle just a little bit. Then a stalk disappeared. Then I heard the munching and crunching and-- food grunts! We were upon the gorillas! In that moment I had another tiny panic- the vegetation was so tight that I could not see the crunching and munching and food-grunting adult female from 15 feet away- what if we spent our whole hour this close and never gazed upon the austere face of our silverback? Or spied one of the kiddies tumbling across the forest floor? Or an infant tightly clutching mom’s fuzzy mountain fur coat? Less than three minutes later I was posing to take a selfie with a blackback. No big deal… (OHMYGOSHHUGEDEAL!) Needless to say, the first few minutes were an incredible rush of innumerable and varied emotions. Again, these words are failing. Perhaps one day I’ll wake up as a Bronte or a Hemmingway, a Virginia Wolfe or a Cormack McCarthy, but not this day. The trackers led us to the edge of the THV and we ducked under a branch, emerging in a patch of forest that was much clearer of underbrush. There was a massive blackback just inside- barely five meters away, resting and staring our way as he chewed his brunch. Just a few meters past him, another blackback rested facing away from the group. And there, a dozen meters down the hill, the silverback. Surveying his territory, of course. Looking regal. And- oh! Out popped a seven-year-old male from behind our kings back. He peered through curious eyes at the Mzungus. As our King stood, turned, and headed for a nettley snack, our new little friend headed straight toward us- well, straight for Mr. and Mrs. Maize’s lovely daughter who stood very still as the juvenile approached, leaned against one of her legs, and reached up for her hand. Fully aware of how wrong this is, but I’m going to admit that never have I ever been so jealous of another human being. And yes, so wrong. On at least a million levels. However, it is the truth, and I would venture to say that any person in the world be completely thrilled to have such an experience. Even (maybe especially?) the primatologists. Can’t help it. It would be too magical. Gorillas are like leatherback turtles in that you can only truly appreciate their massiveness from close-up through your own eyes. No matter how many times the size of either has been described to you, or what metric they use in their attempt to relate such information, even when you are sure that you “get it,” you just cannot wrap your head around the gigantic scale of these creatures until you’re nearly close enough to touch them. Though the whole group was larger, we spent the visiting hour with the three blackbacks and silverback, and two mother-offspring pairs. One of the little ones was unweaned, nursing and snuggling into her mom’s chest against the impending rain. The other little one was the same playful juvenile that ran back toward mom after touching the Mzungu. He was a super model in the making who seemed a big fan of posing for the camera. After that magical hour, the guides started to usher us away from the gorillas just as the rain began to fall. We hid our cameras in the bottoms of our bags and suited up for the rain, heading back into the THV. As per the Ugandan rainy season, the rain continued gaining intensity and we slipped and slid, smiling all the way down the mountain. We ended up at our starting point for a quick debriefing, still in awe of our magical hour, still smiling, recounting. Finally we parted, 10 people heading in three directions carrying slightly differing memories of the same amazing minutes. |
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