Quemado

Today was a day.

Romero told us that some campesinos from higher up had seen a huge fire raging across the paramo the past three days and our high camp at Rumi Loma looks quemado, burned down. That is pretty bad news, but we'll see. It the driest it has been here, through all of Ecuador it sounds, for almost 20 years. The rivers are so low there are power and water cuts back in Cuenca, but I know now they are all over Ecuador. The paramo grass is dry as kindling and just a spark is enough for an inferno up on high fanned by the winds.

While Coral and the students went ahead to clear another transect we need to create up on the mountain I am staying behind to go check on Rumi Loma with Romero. Though it is not that far, and only a days (steep) hike up from here, the road journey is long and roundabout. Based upon Big Blue's record so far Romero and I decided to head up by horseback instead. Excited, anxious for news, and happy to be free of the group for the day. I am ready to go, but then...one of his two "good" horses foot is bad right now I soon find out. Deflated, I have to stay behind...

Grading papers and writing lectures waiting for his return. A drizzle of cold rain beginning to mist over the near hills. Only a few hours later Romero gallops past and I go to meet him. The verdict. "Casi veinte seis hectares quemado, pero tienan mucho suerte". Two kilometers, almost 26 hectares burned. And our camp: the fire line died away right at the edge of our camp and miraculously only one of the buildings burned. The bunk house near the kitchen Coral and I sleep in. Unbelievable. The kitchen, the two bunkhouses down the hill, the bathroom and the shepherds shed up the hill all survived.

Bad news but making the best of the situation. A situation that could be much worse though. After all, what if we had been at the high camp instead of here? Later, as the rest of the group trudges back after a wretched day lost in the moss forest bombarded by cold rain on the ridgetop I break the news. We're all curious to see Rumi Loma and the landscape now burned black. Our studies of the fire ecology of the paramo actually played out this year before our eyes...