Last week was interesting. I think I'm finally recovering and catching up with work. And writing. I almost didn't write at all, although I had so many ideas in mind! And now so many of them are just gone! It's a shame...
I do have many pictures though. Most of them adventorous, from fighting the fires high up in the mountain. I have two favorites from that. The first one is the one above. That was around 5.45am, at the antennas, at around 4000m height. It was so cold. Smoke everywhere above the mountain. And then the sun finally started coming out.
The second one, above, is the brigade that I climbed up with,patiently waiting for the fire to burn down towards the trench the we had hacked. As soon as the fire got to it, we would start bashing it with bushes, jeans, sticks with rubber mats, whatever we had. The fire would go out, and we'd move on to the next part, leaving someone every 10m to watch for re-kindling.
What was left by the fire reminded me of the pictures from WW1. Verdún and such. The haze in the air, the earth barren, everything dead for miles. No craters, though, at least that.
The panorama view turned out beautiful, but I'm not sure if it works on PeakD. The top of Mama Cotacachi, as Mt. Cotacachi is called here, is on the left. The sun was already way up at this time, and we were preparing to get to another point of departure, as the fires at the antennas had been extinguished and not rekindled since the day before.
This one I like because I got the angles almost perfect. Half of the picture is slope, half is sky. We started our fighting journey right in the middle, at the tri-crossing of burned dirt, sky and alive vegetation. If you zoom in, you can see the watchmen and -women stand on the line, watching for everything close enough to start the fire again.
But it's not all fire today. This is a nice one I took on Sunday 9th. Since I didn't make a "Favorites" post last week, I'll leave it here. The palms align perfectly with the crosses from the graveyard. That's why I like this shot.
It was Muyu Raymi, Seed Festival, here in Cotacachi. It's always wonderful to see all those varieties, and if I had more land I'd probably buy a lot of them. But I can't even seem to make dill grow nicely, so... I wanted to write a post about this in the Garden community. Maybe I will, one of these days.
Here I played with Shutter speed. 1/6000. I had the "Cocktail herbs" that Ellie had put in her white wine spin at high speed, and then try to get them without blur. It worked! The light in the afternoon definitely helped.
And to top it off, a pigeon. Because, why not. It had landed on my tent at the market, so I tried to play the light right and get it on. Didn't work out perfectly, next time I have to make it brighter so the bird shows better.
As always, any feedback and especially tips and tricks are very welcome! As long as it's not AI generated content or comment spamming... 😅
Thank you for stopping by!
All pictures are taken by myself with a Motorola Edge 60 Pro and I reserve the copyright - but you're welcome to ask if you'd like to use one of the pics!
5 comments
I use the "Drafts" feature of PEAKD for that very thing. If I have an idea, I try to get to PEAKD before I forget it and start a draft of a post. Just a few words, or a photo, anything to help me remember the idea I had. Then, save the draft and rest easy that my idea is captured. You can have many drafts at once, not just one; last I checked, I have 30-something drafts. 😂 You can return any time, even a couple years later, and finish the post! 🙂
Those fire pics are wonderfully captured, but so sad... 😢 Do they know what started the fire? Was it a natural thing, or carelessness on someone's part?
The seed festival post is lovely! So colorful and full of bounty! 💞
yeah I try to make notes, but a lot of times the thoughts come while driving or doing something that impedes taking notes right then. And I still know what I wanted to write about - but the flow is gone. The emotion in it. The urgency and passion.
The fire can be whatever. Probably some garbage.
Man, just so much destruction of nature. But sometimes nature does it to itself so it can refresh. Hopefully it was nature and not manmade fire. YOu had some good photos that captured the burn and work of the locals well. Can't imagine all the hard work put into fighting that fire. Just amazing!
Most likely caused by humans. Probably through garbage like glass, or some spark from burning agricultural residue on the fields. Unlikely that someone goes high up there to set fire... But still, negligence.
That’s too bad. Hate to hear that.