Ecuador Adventure: Part 1

As I take each steep step closer down to the small rock ledge below, I struggle to rid my brain of the image of myself tumbling head over heels straight down. I lean back, keeping my weight evenly spaced and my arms out. I move slowly and deliberately, grasping the coarse grass in fistfuls, my hands white from gripping so hard.

“You okay?” Henry asks.

“Yeah,” is all I can muster, trying to keep my voice steady, but hearing it waver regardless.

We are in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, and at the present moment I am crouched haphazardly on the side of the Pichincha mountain some 4,500 meters above sea level. The air is thin and my breathing is shallow. My ears popped three times on the cable car ride up the side of the mountain.

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NY H2O

By KEITH LAPAN

I leave it to historians to name this new era we live in. It began long before the election of a new President. We waged a war of choice in Iraq; economic stability at home faltered and we saw the first signs of deep faults in the bedrock of our financial system. The world called for American leadership on climate change; we gave them unilateralism disguised as foreign policy. The world looked to us again as drought and political instability abroad worsened an already tenuous global food supply, resulting in shortages in developing countries; our agri-troleum producers sold their subsidized harvest to make ethanol, using more energy in its manufacture than it actually produces for use as fuel. Now, we respond to the call for sustainable, carbon-neutral forms of energy with an old-era non-solution: natural gas production. It’s not news that America has gone to war to secure oil supplies. The news is, this time the war zone might be in our own backyards.

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