Peace

From August to December this site has sat missing the touch of new thoughts and experiences.  Now in December with 7 months left of my service, I am determined to finish how I started, with more frequent updates on my life in the Peace Corps in Ecuador.  So, looking back to August, here is an update.

Julie and Dad

Sunrise from TODARO with Gettysburg Friends

In August my sister Julie got married.  In my visit home to the states for her wedding I felt like I had stepped into a mystical land filled with unimaginable sweets and goodness, like the land presented in the film “Big Rock Candy Mountain” that I used to envision myself in as a little girl.  In the film, you enter into the land of the Big Rock Candy Mountain by going down a slide, and once there, you are surrounded by trees that grow candy and lakes of soda and everywhere there is amazing food, creatures and colors.  The sweets I found in my visit home where not all edible as the land of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but they were just as delicious.  A few of these treasure where:  Sitting on the porch in Maine with Gramsie enjoying the quiet, watching the sunrise out of the ocean with some of my closest friends, meeting my cousins beautiful daughters Kaia and Penny Brown, seeing my Dad escort my sister Julie down the lawn toward Kevin... never in my life have I been so startled by someone´s radiant beauty as I was at the sight of Julie.  I had an amazing two weeks home and at the end of it I was ready to travel back to Ecuador.   

For the duration of the flight from Miami to Quito I wrote in my journal.  An excerpt from the rambling of my pen… “Being home felt different then I thought it might.  I kept telling people it was easy to be back because my life in the US and Ecuador where so distinctly different.  I had my life in the US and my life in Ecuador and I could not relate them in that moment.  But was this really true?  Was the ease I felt in transitioning born from the stark contrasts I experienced in the two places or the blunt fact that these two places where not that different from one another.  I did not leave one civilization to enter into another.  You can find in Ecuador and the United States many of the same material things… in both of these places people live their lives with similar routines and aspirations. 

Feeling at peace, I landed in Ecuador refreshed and inspired.  But, a week into my return to Lloa I hit my worst slump yet.  On my 26^th birthday I found myself reflecting on a year’s volunteer work in my community and I felt I had not accomplished all that I had wanted to and I felt in a very real way the passing of a year of my life in which I had spent too many hours alone in my thoughts.  I had left for the Peace Corps when I was 24 and I would be returning home weeks away from my 27^th birthday.  My head throbbed with difficult questions.  I missed proximity to family and friends and I missed the freedom and options I felt to develop who I was living amongst a culture in which I knew how to better manage my actions.  I felt sad and I reflected very intensely on all the other times I had felt sad the previous year.  I was in a bad place, and then I went to our mid-service training.

Talking with all the other volunteers and taking time to think about my goals and motivations I realized that my negativity had completely dominated my being and I was not thinking rationally.  In one of our mid-service training activities we presented for the rest of our group all that we had accomplished in the previous year.  Showing pictures of my life in Lloa I realized I had had a year full of activities and joys in new friendships... and while I felt fulfilled with all that I had done, I wanted to be even more involved the following year.  Sharing these thoughts with my program manager, the Peace Corps helped me find further work in Quito at an orphanage.  I now split my time between volunteering at an orphanage in Quito and the Faro del Saber in Lloa.  

Working in the orphanage has been an amazing experience providing me with hope and a much needed boost in my feelings of motivation and positive energy.  At my third day working in the orphanage I walked to the gate to find a 6 year old boy standing anxiously with a little gift bag filled with toys.  The woman standing with him told me he was waiting for a car to pick him up which would be taking him to meet his new family in the states who had adopted him.  He seemed very excited and nervous and kept looking down at a book his new family had sent him filled with pictures of his new home, community, and brothers and sisters he would soon meet.  It was an amazing moment to stumble upon, and I think about it every time I walk through the gate into the orphanage to work with the kids.  

Creating the Shield of Arms

October flew as most months have, except that I had a surprise visit from my college friend Tara.  She came on Halloween which in Ecuador coincided with the day in which they honor the shield of arms on their flag.  The school in Lloa put on a program presenting the significance of the shield of arms and Tara and I whipped together a quick presentation on Halloween.  I realized in the moment I didn´t completely understand how Halloween transitioned into what it is… something to investigate.

Yolanda and I at a Crisfe Workshop

November was a month I will remember for developing a stronger relationship with the staff and kids in the orphanage and for a three-day workshop I participated in with my Lloa counterpart, Yolanda.  November also brought a great joy as my host family received verification that Mayra (my host sister who has lived with my family for the past four year, but who is neither adopted or related by blood) would be allowed to continue living with my family.  Looking back again to September… my host family received difficult news that Mayra’s legal siblings where going to be sent to an orphanage on account of Mayra’s real families inability to properly care for the children.  Mayra was going to be looped into the deal, as she was not legally adopted into my family.  My family fought hard to be able to adopt Mayra legally as she really is a part of my family here, and Adamaris my 5-year-old host sister looks up to Mayra as her older sister.  I supported my family from the distance that I could, and am now overwhelmed with happiness knowing that Mayra will stay.

Now December… Christmas is on the horizon; I LOVE Christmas.  I love baking cookies, being with my family, and creating interesting gifts.  I love familiar music, the smell of pine, to wish for snow… Last year in Ecuador and in the past few weeks Christmas has been celebrated in Lloa as different organization have come into the schools and given plastic bags filled with sweet crackers, caramels, and chocolates to the kids.  Christmas lights fill the windows of a select few homes so that I am not missing twinkling Christmas lights, but the overwhelming warmness that has marked the holiday season I grew up with in the states I cannot feel here.  The illusion of Santa Clause, the North Pole, and elves working hard in their workshop to make gifts for all the good girls and boys… they do not adventure to Lloa, Ecuador.  But that is not to say that it is a sad.  It is just a day leading to another day.  Joys and peace are found in the day as they can be found in everyday.

Adamaris, Mayra and I... a day at the movies

So the holiday season is much more mellow here and I find myself missing the dazzle of the Holiday season despite my efforts to give into the peace that Christmas provides in Lloa.  There are so many Christmas songs that speak of peace.  Here it is peaceful.

Speaking of peace, have I mentioned that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer?  As is the case, the word “peace” pops out of songs and conversations and hits me in an interesting way.  I have thought a lot about this word, and now around Christmas time I see it EVERYWHERE… “Peace” “Paz” “Peace on Earth”…   

This word is complicated.  I have tried to break it apart and get a better grasp of it so that I can better embrace the role of a volunteer in an organization whose mission is to promote world peace and friendship.  I have come to realize that maybe I have taken this word for granted, I talk about peace but do I understand what it means and if I can’t understand it how can I promote it.  So I have had to take a step back to first understand what peace feels like within myself.  That has been a major part of my experience.  Finding internal peace so that my work and interactions are ones in which peace can naturally flow.  

Last year at this time I wrote that I was making it a life resolution to never lose sight of the potential, imagination, and unguarded love that I knew as a little girl.  I have kept that thought close to my heart all year and because of this I have been able to understand on a deeper level who I am and a new understanding of peace has blossomed within me.  I have gained a self-awareness to know what makes me happy, what inspires me, and what challenges me in a compelling way.  Knowing this, I have thought about my future and what comes next.  The fact stands that throughout my life, in all my pastimes, travels, work, and studies, I always end up working with children and art.  Becoming a teacher by profession has always loomed in the back of my mind as something I was meant to do.  Now, I really believe this with all of who I am.  As is the case in October I was accepted into Antioch University of New England’s Masters in Ecuadation with a specialization in Waldorf Education program.  So, what comes next is what has always come next, becoming a Waldorf Teacher.  Knowing this, I really do feel at peace.

I wish you a happy holiday season.  2014 marks the beginning of my last quarter of service.  I can promise AT LEAST one more post.

PEACE,

Becky

Peace Corps Friends visit Quilatoa after Mid-service Training

Mayra bakes some bread

Recycled arts crafts

Recycled art workshop I helped with in Guayaquil

You never know what you'll find in Lloa

Halloween activity with Tara and the schools in Lloa

More from our day at the movies, my Christmas gift to my beautiful sisters!

Ecuador is beautiful

Tara in Lloa for Halloween

Home, Home, Home...

I arrived to Ecuador on May 17^th 2012, I arrived to my site in Lloa on August 1^st 2012, a year ago from today.  I have lived in Lloa for a year… could this be right? 

Seconds tick away faithfully on my watch and my calendar is filled with x’s going back for over a year, but I do not feel inside me that I have weathered a year.  Has my host sister Adamarís grown an inch?  Has my relationship with Mayra bound itself stronger?  Adamarís looks the same height, and I love Mayra with the same sisterly love I did from the beginning.  I feel frozen in time to the day I first arrived.  My calendar is my evidence that this must not be true.  My calendar and my hair, which seems to fall a little further down my back.  Maybe it is because it is harder to distinguish the passing of seasons here, maybe it is because the sun rises and sets in the same hour of the day every day of the year, maybe it is because Isabel and Alonso’s routine never changes from day to day, maybe it is because Lloa is so small that there is no surprise or variation in who I see in a day… it is because of these things and others that I am now perplexed to realize that a year of my life has passed.  I was 24 then 25, now I face 26 in a matter of weeks. 

People often look at how fast a child has grown and they say, “Where has the time gone?”  I have said this before, but then it was always a statement provoked because there was an obvious difference in the child, it was visually apparent that they had grown.  Now I ask the same thing, “Where has the time gone?” but instead of asking it because it is clear something has changed, I ask it because today seems the same as it did yesterday and yesterday seems the same as it did the year before.  I look in the mirror and I see the same face looking back that I did a year ago.  Is there something more to my eyes?  Maybe… I cannot tell.

If you have been someone who has followed me in this blog, maybe you could point out something I have stated previously that would remind me of the passing of time.  And I hope anyone reading this would know that I am not trying to be so dramatic as to say that in this year I have accomplished nothing.  I know this is not true, when I go through the picture on my camera, I am reminded that it has been a full year...  But, the truth of the matter is, that in this moment I feel that I went to bed last night and woke up this morning, in the flutter of my dreams, a year passed by. 

From these words, you can probably gather that time has been prominent amongst my thoughts recently.  While it might be obvious that I might reflect on this now as I approach my year mark in Lloa, I think this is also largely due to the fact that in a matter of days I will be heading home to the states.  My sister Julie is getting married, and I of course will be standing beside her as she says, “I do.” 

It has been a little over 14 months since I have been in the USA, this will probably mark the longest stretch of time I am ever away from US soil in one stretch.  So, I am getting myself ready to insert myself back into the rhythm my life played living in the states.  As I am doing this I am trying to find the right words to use to explain what I have been doing while I was away… 

To all of my friends and family in the states, I have followed your stories the best that I have been able to while here in Ecuador.  It has been like watching a TV series whose cast is made up of my family and friends.  I have heard of or seen weddings, cousins pregnant, engagements, births, wedding planning, new boyfriends… even my parent’s dog Honcho who was a puppy when I left has not only grown, but also obtained the status of a therapy dog.  All of these things have unfolded before my eyes through the Internet.  It has been an exciting series to watch.  And now, I get to step inside the screen and be a part of the show, for two weeks anyway.  So, while I am immensely excited to be visiting home, I am also a little anxious because I don’t know where to find my script.  How do I jump back in?  How will I know what to say?  How do I put my feelings into coherent thoughts that I can then organize into words?  I can’t. 

While it might be next to impossible to describe the feelings and thoughts I have day to day in this experience, I can do my best to paint a picture of what the environment I find myself in looks like.  I can describe the people, the smells, and the sights… I can describe what I do and where I go.  I feel it is my responsibility to do this. 

SOOoo, here I come USA!  I am ready to shock my world back into a balanced perspective of who I am and where I came from.  I am ready to push the refresh button on this experience.  While I do this, I am ready to share with anyone who will listen where I’ve been and who has been there with me. 

If you are interested in hearing a more direct account of my experience in the Peace Corps thus far, I will be giving two presentations while I am home.  One in CT at the Weston Public Library, Tuesday, August 13^th at 10:00am…. And one at the CCIA in Christmas Cove, Maine, Thursday, August 15^th at 6:00pm.

Lastly, I have to say… I am so happy that the reason I am coming home is because my sister Julie is marrying the stupendous Kevin Posman.  So much happiness!

In the beginning of July I traveled by bus 15 hours south to  Loja where I helped give a recycled art workshop at one of my PC friends host organization.  On the way down I stopped in Cajas National Park outside of Cuenca, it was beautiful!!

This was the most excited I have ever been to celebrate the Forth of July!  I was lucky to be in Loja to celebrate with good friends.

Ratoncita Sisa

“In the middle of Lloa there is a park lined with red, yellow, and grey bricks.  In the middle of the park there is a fountain, usually empty.  In the middle of that fountain there is a spot light which is unfortunately broken.  Under that spotlight there is a hole, and in that hole there is a little mouse.  A little mouse named Sisa.”

Ratoncita Sisa, or Sisa the little mouse, has become the current focus of my service.  Sisa is the creation of a group of kids I am working with in a project to write and illustrate a Children’s book about Lloa.  Above in quotations is the first page of the book that the group wrote.

Characteristic of most mice, Sisa is very nervous and skittish.  Sisa has been this way all her life, but she doesn’t want to remain this way any more.  Sisa knows she wants to do great things, but she does not know what those things could be.  Sisa thinks that if she had more self-confidence she would be able realize her dreams.  Telling this to her grandfather, he tells Sisa that if she really wants to overcome her nervousness she needs to eat a magic wedge of cheese that will give her confidence and vision… he gives her a map to find it.  Unfortunately, the map is very badly smudged so Sisa decides she is going to have to explore every destination on the map in order to find the cheese.  In the course of her journey, Sisa discovers all kinds of stories and legends about Lloa.  She learns more about herself and more about where she comes from as she searches for this magic cheese.  When she finally finds the cheese, Sisa realizes that maybe she does not need it after all… through all her traveling around Lloa she finds she has lost her nervous nature and has found clarity in her dreams which she is motivate to work toward.
 

The premise for this story might sound familiar.  It is an age old lesson on realizing the potential that is in each and every one of us.  But, no one can be told this lesson.  We need to realize this for ourselves.  I am hoping that the self-knowledge Sisa gains though her journey to find the magic cheese will be paralleled in the children as they create her story.

I am very impressed with my group of kids for thinking up all the details of this story.  I coached them a little, giving them example of other stories, talking about their own goals and dreams, helping them interview people to discover more about the history of Lloa... but in the end the group collectively created the characters and framework for the story. The group decided on the name “Sisa” because it shows a bit about their heritage, Sisa in Quichua means, flower.  They also decided that a mouse would be a perfect main character because mice generally like to eat cheese.  As Lloa is primarily an agricultural and dairy producing region, many families and larger community groups make and sell cheese.  So, there is lots of cheese for Sisa… it will be tough for her to find that magic wedge.

In the weeks to follow I will be sure to add more of Sisa’s story here!

Besides this project with the kids I am gearing up to start working more seriously with the youth and women to create crafts/jewelry from recycled materials.  This comes after a great event we put on in which the senior citizens had a fashion show for the entire community to show off different accessories they made from recycled materials.  I was a little worried for how the event would go, but in the end it turned out to be one of the happiest moments of my service so far.  The seniors proudly strutted their stuff in their creative outfits and afterwards invited all the spectators to join them as they danced to some hoppin’ Ecuadorian beats.    

Tomorrow I head to Loja, the southern most province in Ecuador, to help a friend do a workshop in recycled art with her organization.  I am excited to see more of Ecuador, and mildly excited for the 15-hour bus ride.  When I come back to Lloa in a week the countdown begins... on August 7^th I will be in the states for my sister Julie’s wedding.  More on all of this to come!

Imagine

First things first… sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted something here.  As life in Ecuador feels increasingly more 'normal,' my motivation to record my day to day has decreased. 

Where have I been?  What have I been up to?  Maybe you are wondering these things, I am stuck pondering these things too. 

I last posted to this blog in January.  Since then I have had visits from my sister Molly, cousin Tom, and my Parents.  Since then I have made more friends in Quito, started to regularly teach art classes in Lloa, perfected a carrot bread recipe with Mayra, injured my knee, explored farther into the hill sides of Lloa, found waterfalls a three hour walk from my home, been to the jungle, been higher in the mountains, gotten fed up with the packed buses in Quito, written pages upon pages in my journal, cut my hair again (not my best work), been frustrated with the process of getting projects started, felt on top of the world when part of a project works, I have missed home, missed Maine, I have been swallowed by the internet, I have been consumed by the TV series “Dexter,” I have been shocked by hard to swallow news from the states, I have been immensely happy that I am in no other place than here…

Time stretches and I continue to face every day with a range of emotions sometimes feeling defeated but more often then not, feeling that the world is getting bigger as I question the infinite possibilities of my imagination.

Ecuador is amazing.  It is filled with things that you could scarcely imagine.  Have you read a story or heard of one in which a tree talks to an ant, where trees walk, where vines grow flat like a piece of paper, where vines full of vanilla beans dangle lush and gleaming over a pristine river, where a lake glows green then brown then blue in the mouth of a volcano whose throat tunnels downward into the core of the earth, where clouds spill like waves against the mazes of green valleys in the mountains, where the cure to a sickness is made by collecting things in the forest or garden, where a people exist that have never contacted the outside world, where a people exist that do not know that they live in a territory we have named Ecuador and a planet that we know as earth.  This is a place that makes you appreciate that stories of fiction may have more truth than those that are based in facts.  It makes me think that the imagination is not transparent, it is tangible and its sources can be traced to the mixing of realities we see and experience. 

Ecuador then is one of the most fertile lands I know where the imagination can grow.  Animals, nature, people that you thought only existed in stories, exist in the dance of the sun and the moon every day.  My heart flutters as I try to understand the part of me that is my imagination and then I stumble and fall as I try to convey the importance of this in my daily dealings with people.  Whether I glide or I stumble, I feel fortunate to be here.            

I feel fortunate but I also find myself very often confused.  Time widens the gap to my connection with the US.  I miss friends, family, and places, but not because I think my life in the US was better.  Life in Ecuador is good.  It is comfortable and I am happy.  I have less clutter of things, less desire to consume, and with this more clarity in my thoughts.  I saw a tea pot in the store the other day and thought… “o wow, teapot, your awfully pretty but unnecessary in my life.”  A little further down the isle I saw stacks of popcorn bags (the kind you put in the microwave)… how wasteful this seems… why not just put some kernels in a pot, crank the stove to high and let them pop, doesn’t this make more sense then all the trash that comes from the thick popcorn bags. 

Less is more.  Maybe you have heard this before.  But, less of what?  What kind of things?  For me this would be less clutter in material things and words that don’t need to be spoken, this gives me more room to imagine.

I love the United States, and I love Ecuador.  I appreciate that a teapot is unnecessary, but I am also excited to pull my teapot out of storage when I get home in another year so that I can hear it's whistle pour some tea and sit on the porch to weave different realities together… continuing to imagine.   
  

Molly, Tom, and I at lake Quitatoa

Painting and Drawing workshop

Holding up our self portraits.

Taking a moment to breathe after Saturday morning yoga.

Vanilla Bean Vine

Rhythms

I have had a good start to the New Year (pictures included below):

•  I spent New Year´s Eve with my Spanish tutor and best Ecuadorian friend, Diana, and her family in South Quito.
• New Year´s day my host family from my time in Tumbaco (Rocio and Pedro) surprised me by showing up at my home in Lloa.
• Julie and Kevin visited for a week; we hiked volcano, Guagua Pichincha, saw toucans in the cloud forest of Mindo, and caught up on the nitty-gritty of our lives.
• My counterpart Yolanda came back to work with me in the Faro!!!
• I was lucky to have visits from friends both from the Peace Corps and the United Sates.
• I went to the jungle, Tena/Puyo, to give a recycling art workshop to a group of volunteers in the region.

As you can see, things are happening and I have a lot of reasons to be happy and grateful.   I am starting to appreciate a rhythm to my day to day; a rhythm to my steps and words and a rhythm to the world around me.

Without fail at 3:30am, through the colors of my dreams in the darkness of the night the rhythm starts where it ends in the shuffling feet and muffled bickering of my 70 year old host parents.  3:30am is when Isabel and Alonso leave to milk the cows.  They close the door behind them and with it the darkness of the night slips away and again I melt into the colors of sleep.  By 6:30am shuffling and bickering returns, they are always in a hurry, this time to catch the bus to Quito where they will sell their milk.

Then I am up, peeking out my window.  Sometimes fog, but more often a clear sky is the picture of morning.  And the mornings are cold.  My feet sting when they leave the warmth of my covers for the ice covered lake which is my cement floor.  Breakfast, coffee, turn a few pages in a book and then I am on the streets of Lloa.  Walking four blocks to my “office” I smile passing neighbors draped in numerous wool shawls and more than one hat, then I grunt and frown at the dogs whose persistence in following me and barking at my heels has strangled any desire I might have had to go for jog.  

Work is a place throbbing with potential, potential for projects, potential for failure, and potential for success.  These are the projects I am working on supporting with my counterpart:

• With my Kids Club, create a book, the story and illustrations - focusing on themes of creativity, imagination, teamwork, goal setting, art, and to strengthen their desire to read.
• School and community garden.
• Running and yoga club – we meet in the park Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6:30 (why I picked 6:30 I have no idea, I regret it, this is too early).
• Supporting efforts for a youth group.  It is hard to motivate the youth!
• Recycling arts and crafts workshops.
• Teaching English classes in the school through the arts.
• Secondary project – supporting an amazing branch of my counterpart organization in Quito, CREO Arte.

Like I said, throbbing with potential… ideas upon ideas of things to do, but to be sustainable…  These ideas are like tiny seeds within my hands that I wish I could toss into the wind like the Lupine Lady, letting them fall to the ground on their own will, letting the natural order of the sun and the rain turn them into something real, something beautiful.  But these ideas come from seeds that will not sprout from the ground and continue to grow unless they are planted by the hands of my community.  I have to force my hands into my pockets being the motivator whispering again and again that maybe it is time to plant the seeds they have identified as important for the continued beauty of the community. 

Rhythms continue.  Conversations will only get me so far in efforts to motivate, so my ears take in the dull rhythm of my fingers on a keyboard.  Every key pressed twists the knife a little deeper into the heart my expectation that the Peace Corps would be a place that would provide me with the relief of being unplugged from the virtual world.  But the pounding of computer keys becomes the music of my days because in order to motivate I need to prove that something is possible; I need to prove this through written words.  Words and words fill project proposals and progress reports, emails to Peace Corps friends, emails home…

Like I have to force my hands into my pockets to keep myself from imposing ideas on my community I also have to force my eyes from locking on the smiling faces of my friends and family which I find on social media networks through the internet.  It takes a significant effort to peel my eyes away from the screen.  When I finally do, I look outside.  And there my eyes find the most beautiful, the most alarming thing I have ever seen and I see it every day.  The clouds and the mountains…    

I don´t know of any place in the world where the relationship between the sky and the ground is more apparent.  This is a rhythm you cannot predict, born from the footprint of the day before, every day is completely distinct.  In the morning, clear blue skies and a sun to the east fill Lloa with shadows stretching westward toward the cloud forest of Mindo through the rolling green Mountains.  By noon shadows have receded into their hosts and large cotton ball clouds form to the west, a magical sea contained by green walls.  Magical is the perfect word to describe the feeling because you look down onto the top of the sea of clouds, as if you were in an airplane.  My imagination has grown roots here and as such I have at times imagined what it would be like to be in Captain Hook´s ship when it is has freed itself of evil and sails up and through the clouds.  

Sometime after noon the cotton ball clouds ooze forward.  (Can you believe it?  Cotton can ooze!)  Characteristic of something that oozes; the clouds get stuck in the crevices of the mountains.  This gives their procession forward a strange longing and watching this I have found myself at times felling anxious.  Before you know it you are face to face with the cotton ball clouds.  You don´t need to lift your chin up to look into its eyes.  It is right there, eye level with you.  You can put out your hand and touch its face.  In the moment that you try to do this, you suddenly find you are in it.  The rest of the afternoon you remain in the belly of the clouds.  

Days I have spent working in Quito I often find myself looking toward Guagua Pichincha which shelters my home in Lloa.  As the clouds greet Lloa first, I see them then spill out over the ridge that divides Lloa from Quito.  

The rhythms of my steps and the world around me continue; consistent and even and completely unpredictable.  Time ticks on.  I can´t believe more than a quarter of my service has passed!

New Years Eve with my spanish Tutor Diana (furthest on the right) and her family.

New Years Eve Turkey

At midnight on New Years it is good luck to eat one grape for every month of the new year... hard to do in the minute before midnight!

Top of Guagua Pichincha, looking toward Rucu Pichincha.

On New Years everyone burns "Años Viejos" (dolls that represent everything you wish to get rid of in your life) at midnight.

Julie and I, at the crater.

Julie and Kevin almost at the top!  Feeling the altitude, nearly 15,000 ft.

Mountains, Clouds, Me