50 km and a bucketful of joy later--

It’s gonna be a long one, so hold onto your hats.

Occasionally I have what can be considered the best possible sort of travel experience: the sort where you read about it in a guidebook, you go there, and then can’t decide whether to tell the whole world about the spot, call the Rough Guide and tell them to play it up, or savor it and keep it oh-so-secret. Talk about it only with your favorite people, in the hopes that it will remain exactly as you left it—unmarred by the push and pull of the conflicting pressures of development, of money, and of time and modernization themselves. Call me selfish, miserly, conservative.

In the Fall of 2005 I discovered the Santuario do Caraça in the mountains of Minas Gerais. I was traveling alone for two months as part of my master’s research (a rather peripheral part…), and needed to come to Belo Horizonte to meet with Britaldo. I planned a trip to Caraça, because it seemed like the kind of place that just might strike my fancy. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had come from the far western part of Brazil, the state of Acre, where the countryside was literally up in flames during the drought of 2005. My throat was itching, my sinuses screaming, and my lungs were thanking me profusely when I arrived in Minas Gerais. By the time I got to Caraça, I was thinking I might truly have arrived at the gates of heaven or somewhere equally pleasant.

Disbelief pretty much summed up my first trip to Caraça. From the summiting of a peak with João (who has been guiding in the mountains of M.G. for 35 years) to hiking with Lucia (who reminded me a little bit of my mother when I was alone in a foreign land), the only thing that lacking from my first trip was photo-documentation. My camera was lifted from my room in a cheap hostel a week or two later during a stay in Belém.

Photo-documentation will not be lacking from this account.

So, to sum up the history in a way that does not do it justice, Caraça was, for hundreds of years, a school run by an order of the Catholic church.

(Sidenote: I did also want to be a monk for a while as a child. Monks did all the cool things—chanted, gardened, got to live near cloisters. My parents tried delicately to tell me that women could not be monks and probably also noted that I was lacking in the self-discipline necessary to be any kind of devout religious individual, let alone one of the wrong gender. So maybe this could account for some of the appeal of Caraça for me—all the pluses of cloisters and mountains with none of the implications for personal self discipline.)

Moving on…there was later a fire in the school, and at some time after that, the area was turned into a Sanctuary and private reserve with a working hotel of sorts. It continues to be an active Parrish. Forgive my lack of the correct Catholic terminology here, somebody (Laura? Antonio?) leave me a comment to alert me of my slipups. The park itself is not enormous (10000 ha or so), but has areas of Mata Atlantica (atlantic forest), successional pasture, and great mountains and waterfalls! There is a particular type of wolf that lives in the park, the Lobo Guará, and who has become somewhat habituated to being fed on the church steps every evening. Aside from the rather sketchy ecological implications of this, it is kind of a neat thing to see. And fun to sit around with everyone in the evenings waiting for her (in this case) to show up.

Ok. So, to sum up: My first trip was so amazing, that I needed to go back.

I arrived at Caraça in time for lunch on Friday. Contemplating whether to be solitary, or outgoing. No choice—Caraça seems to attract people seeking solitude, but friendly ones. I gravitated towards some young-looking people who I had seen arrive with mountain bikes at lunch, and by the time we were done with our first plate of food, we had decided we were going to do a peak on Saturday. João the guide shows up (who rocks my world) and says he will take us to the Pico do Inficionado on Sat. Right on!

I decided to go to the Cascatona (literally, the big waterfall) on Friday afternoon, and my newly befriended mountain bikers (Anita, Marcelo and Dinei) headed out to get some biking in. This, my friends, is the Cascatona:

It is pretty darn big. And, get this: I was the only person there. The only person on the trail, the only person at the waterfall. My friends in wilderness recreation know that, if I were taking their surveys, solitude would be an important part of my wilderness experience. And, along with my love for solitude, comes a love for skinny-dipping in waterfalls. Here I am, ¼ of the way to being completely solitudinous and naked.

There was also a beautiful little shrine that I discovered on the hill near the Cascatona.

Friday night we drank a bottle of wine and saw the wolf. Pretty sweet.

Saturday morning was looking foggy but beautiful--we toasted our breakfast sandwiches on an enormous wood-fired cast iron cooking stove, and talked about the plan with João. Nine o'clock and we were on our way--the first four km or so of the hike were through the valley.

Anita is a photographer, and we quickly discovered that this meant it was not to be a rushed sort of expedition. I like tough, outdoorsy people that don't rush.

We drank from streams, and stopped at every photo opportunity. The flowers that grow at elevation in Brazil are spectacular, which you might have also noted in the trip report from Britaldo's fazenda.

These guys really don't smell at all, but I could not resist sticking my face in them.

Somewhere between kms 4 and 6, our stroll turned to bouldering. Probably 2 km of that, and then it got slightly more manageable. Here we are, running for the timer:

We ate lunch on the peak, and then went to check out the largest quartzite cave in the world. We went about 50 m into the entrance--enough to let me know that I want to go back again--just to cave!



We were the definition of 'beat' by the time we got back for dinner. Despite this, Marcelo and Dinei made it up to mountain bike this morning, and I set out for a hike pretty early in the rain. We crossed paths in Campo de Fora...they were moving faster than I was.

I was drenched and grinning when I made it back for lunch, and we all traded email addresses and plotted our picture exchanges. João gave me lots of lift-off-the-ground hugs, and I promised him multiple times I would come back for another peak. Nothing like a weekend of good people, good food, mountains, and being battered by the elements.

Dinei saved me a taxi ride back to Santa Barbara, and I am stiff and sore and ready for a hot shower, in Belo Horizonte.









Hope this made up for my lack of postings, and that you now are wanting to go to Caraça. Note that I'm only telling you about it because I like all of you...

Shhhh. Just promise to keep it our little secret.

An april without a season.

I think it is becoming winter here, but everything manages to feel like summer. I am quite sure, however, that it is April--a fact that reminds me that time is passing quickly despite my seasonal confusion. Something tells me the seasons on Cape Cod next year will be more clearly delineated.

Apologies upfront for having left you hanging in the past weeks with my lack of funny anecdotes about cultural differences or colorful pictures about my adventures. Truth be told, I've been busy, and been enjoying my work!

I have been becoming reflective, however, as my time in Brazil is drawing to a close. If I think long and hard enough, I can remember what it felt like to transition in September: the whirlwind of thesis-finishing. The excitement and sense of independence I tried to project (and the fears that I shared less readily). The occasionally paralyzing sense of self-doubt when I found myself in a country that was not mine, without a place that felt comfortable, and detached from my support network of friends and family to buoy me in those moments.

The manic highs of cultural contrast--the blissful moments when I have felt that I have completely captured what it means to live, freely. Warmly. Always growing towards an unknown, yet grounded in my relationships and my experiences. The conversations with strangers that sometimes put things into perspective so quickly and strikingly. The exploration of what it means to make my own work schedule, set my own goals, and be a member of a research team (often by Skype or over coffee or beers in airports or hotels).

The introspection that comes with an overabundance of alone time. The anxiety and projections of insecurities that fill the empty spaces, that I have learned, more frequently, to toss away. Or to share...and then to gently release. There are bigger and better things to do with my mental energy. My inner tug-of-war: do I let the people and events of my life wash upon me with the tide--or do I grasp tightly to an oar and paddle...paddle hard?

As always, it can usually be summed up in one word for me: balance. But without a sense of my limitations and boundaries and a renewal of my concept of the vastness of possibility, it is a difficult concept to entertain. I need these times that shake me up to find those lines. To lean against them, push them outward, and find that the fear of falling is not enough to keep me from returning every-so-often to an edge that, in turn, may help me find my equilibrium.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that it was a good idea to be in Brazil this year. Those of you that know me well know that I seldom will retrospectively address any decision with regret, so this could hardly be an exception. But beyond my general sense of unwavering optimism, I feel, at the same time, that I have become more tough-skinned and sure-footed--yet more susceptible to eerie chills in moments of beauty, and more prone to smiling for no reason at all. Always, always, I become more appreciative of my family, my friends, and the people who choose to tie their lives up with my own, in varying degrees. I am looking forward to being able to share time with and do tangible things for the people who are close to my heart, but who have been geographically distant. Argue, banter, hug, make music, stare at campfires, be silent.

Loyal followers of my ramblings, I promise that after another weekend and week of work this week, you will have fun pictures from my adventures next weekend, if not before. Know that your patience is contributing to the quality of a cattle rent model predicting patterns of Amazon deforestation. And, since---guess what? Have you heard the world is warming? (You would have had to have buried your head in the sand of late to avoid being enveloped by the news media in their unfurling of banners and climbing enthusiastically onto the climate change bandwagon.) Send all contributions motivated by guilt for culpability of global warming to the Woods Hole Research Center. I can promise you more concrete results than your contributions to Al Gore's campaign fund ;)

Whatever you do...don't plant trees in Canada. Or Greenland. It seems new research shows that the world might have no change in temperature, even if we clearcut the entire planet! And that you might especially be contributing to global warming if you plant trees in the arctic (something to do with albedo and reflection of solar warmth, cloud cover formation, etc) How's that for mind boggling?

Você pode casar.

Me, to Sara as she returns from her Easter vacation:
"Hey Sara--I made enough shrimp risotto yesterday for at least six people, so help yourself---"
Sara: "I will accept some of your shrimp risotto...let's see if you can cook."
Sara, while eating my shrimp risotto, points at the dish and exclaims:
"Você pode casar."
(Translation: "You will be able to marry.")

I didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or be deeply relieved.

The slightly-out-of-focus beautiful lagartixa who hunts on my ceiling

*

Hopefully I didn't traumatize him too badly or ruin his night vision with my flash. I can just see him having an off-night of hunting...missing all those dengue-carrying mosquitoes with his lightning-fast tongue by an inch and cursing my name....so far, so good. He's still moving stealthily about, upside-down on my ceiling.

Our spokesperson.

An interview with John Holdren that summarizes the work of the WHRC and his perspective on climate change.