Cabin fever

Slow day. Rainy day.

Coffee and homemade banana bread with the last of the bananas.

Solitude--our cabin a metaphor. Reading Thoreau. Transcendtalism. The paramo is our Walden pond.

Economy of nature--individualism, experiental knowledge, self reliance, anti materialism. yeah

Break up the cabin fever.

Your coming with me! Hike down and follow along. Grab your gumboots and notebook.

Descend the trail through the pines to the cloud forest below.

100 years old Stu told me. Huge gnarled Podocarpus trees and an ancient Canari road buried somewhere deep down organic in the riot of vines below.

Here wild orchids, there I spot signs of a bear foraging. Necron grass and forest bamboo--Poaciae, Clusiaciae, Melastomaciae....

We pass mosses and lichens sending up little blips of colorful sporophytes--before Angiosperms ruled the Earth....

Geeez, the orchids are like weeds. Really!

....and finally the trail dead ends in a chaos of green nearly impassible. A dense ravine full of Podocarpus trees droopy with bromeliads.

Climb back up just in time to hear the first frogs begin to chorus in the clammy wet mist.

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These are the cabins we sleep in. Rustic but cozy.