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Two paths taken

Coming up on a shift. Up until now, I’ve been on the journalism train. I still want to do journalism. But I want to mix it up with local political activism. The housing crisis is something that we must fight. Too many families are circling the drain toward complete economic ruin. We need to do better.

Don’t worry about it

Life outside the window is stormy. Clouds are gathering. Lightening strikes on the mountainside. Rain splashes the glass in big, fat droplets that go splop splop splop. Guess I’m going to have to wait for this one to pass.

Or go out to play!

Puzzle pieces

Life feels a bit like a puzzle. There are quite few pieces. My job is to fit them all together. Does this piece fit with that one? That’s the question it comes back to.

The puzzle I’m building is an adventure.

Colombia's national police force is facing allegations that it wiretapped a high-profile journalist investigating the involvement of cadets in a prostitution ring.

An article of mine that was published article in the Intercept!

Another post

It’s been a minute --- or a year. Sharpening swords. Gearing up for war. Do you self-censor yourself? These days you never know who’s on the other end.

All you need to do is respond to these questions.

Compassion

Trying to change behavior through focused attention or will power is like trying to dig a canyon with a spoon. The tool doesn't meet the job.

That's because the prefrontal cortex (will power) isn't activated at many times of the day (whenever we're tired or distracted). To change behavior, we must dig deeper into the brain and start rewiring our neurons on an emotional level, changing our conditioned impulse responses.

Negative emotional response patterns are responsible for many problems we find among interpersonal relationships. Even though we may consciously want to do better, conditioned emotional responses will lead us into the same conflicts time after time. To change this cycle of conflict, we must change the negative emotional response.

It takes effort, but emotional responses can be changed. The secret is eliciting Compassion, a powerful prosocial emotion.

To change a negative emotional response pattern, follow this formula:

Notice the initial feeling that precipitates conflict

Empower Compassionate thought to alter the feeling

As we feel more compassionate, practice a new response that builds a prosocial habit within your relationship

Following this method, we can develop new habits that are incompatible with the negative habits we're trying to break.

Morning Medellin

A dark room. Stagnant air. Thudding bass from the all-night weekly rumba rattles through my skull.

Run to the bathroom. The taps undone. My body purging shit and vomit. Sweat. Chills. Pain. Thoughts wander to West African children, afraid and alone, snarled in internment, unravelling in Ebola's icy grip. Death.

My girlfriend awakens to disturbing news. I've shit the bed.

No te preocupes mi amor.

She leaves her dreams to care for me. She puts on her clothes. She gathers some change. And she heads off into the night, looking for pills to calm the fever and hold back the flood of shit and vomit.

She returns. I take the pills, drink some gatorade and start to feel better.

6:50 a.m. The alarm clock rings. Dogo (the pup, the dog) needs to pee.

We open the door to the cool morning light. Wispy clouds rise from the pavement.

Dogo in youthful excitement pulls on the leash as we move past mechanic yards down the road. On the other side, unleashed dogs play among the riverside shacks made of recycled wood and plastic.

One block away in the barrio, all-night partiers, high on cocaine, continue to dance into the dawn's early light.

We pause. Cops in green uniform stretch yellow tape across the road. What's happened?

As cops and passersby pile up at the scene, a man and a woman hold each other, in pitiful and anguished wails. Death.

A "beautiful" car, silver with tinted windows, is parked by the curb. There's a body inside.

At the scene of the crime, appears a mom and her two children, dressed in scout uniform. What's happened?

See that "beautiful" car. There's a body inside.

The girl scout, who's about nine-years-old with light hair, glasses and intelligent eyes, says, "at least there wasn't any damage done to the 'beautiful' car."

A body wrapped in plastic. Left for 48 hours. Most likely cut into pieces. There's a body inside that "beautiful" car.

Along the yellow tape, families emerge from their riverside shacks, a mother moans in grief and despair, and a man in a wide brim hat walks past the tape, leading a cow to rest by the river.

Love someone

When you really feel good about someone. Your mind smiles. Warmth beating back the chills of space. Orbit into organization. The uncorrelated and unconnected comes together into a structure that is beautiful.

Because to someone—it's matter.

Round the block

Live a life unexpected. Adventures in love. Money is nothing. Unless shared with someone.

Compost in a pile. It starts to rot. A pile of peels, smells bad in this spot.

1,000 stairs later, I haven't come down. Not that I'm high. I'm just floating around.

People look at you, what do they see?

People look through you, what do you mean?

A window the soul a spirit is free. Come back tomorrow today is a dream

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.”

Emerson

Computer programming my mind

Started programming. A conversation with logic. Compared with journalism it's so clean. Writing is messy. It never fully makes sense. The picture is always missing pieces. Truth is a slippery fish.

Not so with programming. There's something to hold on to. The answer is defined. And the horizon expands.. into the infinite.

Programming: I'm stoked.

Ascent to Ritacuba Blanco in Cocuy National Park

#colombia

Colombia Travel: How to climb Ritacuba Blanco in Cocuy National Park

Trip Slideshow

Cocuy National Park is not easily accessible. But for the intrepid, the park offers a surrealist high-alpine dreamscape combined with a chance to climb Colombia’s tallest accessible peak: Ritacuba Blanco.

Located in the state of Boyaca near the eastern border with Venezuela, Ritacuba Blanco (17,749 ft) is the tallest mountain in the Cordillera Oriental and the second highest peak in Colombia.

While Pico Cristobal Colon (18,950 ft) located in the Caribbean state of Guajira is the tallest mountain in Colombia, the peak has been reportedly inaccessible for years due to local indigenous groups who consider the mountain sacred and reported paramilitary activity.

Cocuy National Park and Ritacuba Blanco up until ten years ago was also inaccessible to foreigners as the FARC guerrillas claimed the area as a rebel stronghold. However, much has changed in Colombia over the past 10 years, and today the mountain can be climbed.

Here is a trip account from me and my father on our journey to the top of Ritacuba Blanco.

Getting to Guican:

The best access to Ritacuba Blanco is through the town of Guican in the state of Boyaca.

From Bogota there are at least three daily buses with direct service to Guican. The first bus leaves at leaves at 8 am. Under optimal conditions, the trip lasts 12 hours and will pass through the town of El Cocuy before ending at Guican.

Upon our arrival in Guican, we were greeted on the bus by locals who gave my dad and I shots of arguadiente (fire water) as our arrival coincided with a weekend celebration of the the town’s patron saint.

In the town, we found a highly recommended hotel called Cabaña Hotel El Eden. The hotel had very clean rooms with charming wood paneling and excellent views of the mountain hamlet. Tinto (black coffee) was provided as room service, while breakfast, lunch and dinner were also available at additional charge. Our gracious hostess Rosa also offered guests full laundry service.

She also provided us with a number to Posada Sierra Nevada at the border of the park so that we could make reservation for the following nights.

In the morning we made our way to the Cocuy National park office to pay the mandatory entrance fee, which ran at around $25/person for foreigners.

Getting to the Park:

From here we made our way to the park located down a rural country road. While there was a shuttle service, it cost $40, and we decided it would make more sense to walk. The leisurely walk, made slightly less leisurely by our backpacks, took about 5 hours and led us through some beautiful mountain countryside. For me, the rural scenery with cattle pastures on lush green hillsides set against jagged peaks was reminiscent of the French Alps.

There was another option to catch a ride on an early morning milk truck, which leaves at 5 am and costs $5, but it left before the park office opened. With patron saint celebration, Rosa told us all her rooms were reserved for the night, leaving us no option but to set out along the road.

Although we got lost a couple times, the walk was scenic and meditative.

At 2 pm we walked into the park, and after showing our visitors’ passes at the ranger's station, we made our way 5 minutes down the road to the Posada Sierra Nevada. We were shown a room, which was rustic, clean but not in the least bit modern. The room with two beds cost $20/night. There were also hearty country meal options available for $3/person per meal in the communal dining space.

Located directly on the trailhead to Ritacuba Blanco, in our stay at Posada, we enjoyed socializing with the constant stream of Colombian hikers making their way up the glacier.

The only down side to the Posada was a lack of heating compounded by adobe walls and no natural lighting in the room. Consequently, we spent most of our day out on the deck or meandering the mountain roads.

Getting to the summit:

For the most part, the approach to the summit of Ritacuba Blanco is no more than a long walk. However, the glacier for the last 1,000 ft or so up to the summit does include crevasse exposure and a handful of minor technical sections requiring mountaineering equipment and preferably a guide who knows the mountain.

While at the Posada we made arrangements to hire our guide. If we were on a tighter schedule, we might have done it sooner as we had to wait a day for him to become available. Our guide, Hilberto, provided strap-on crampons, ice axes, with ropes and harness along with his guiding service. The guiding cost $50/person and the rental equipment another $30/person.

Our expedition left the trailhead at 4 am and the hike up the steep slope was guided by flashlight until dawn splashed color onto the mountain ridges at around 6 am. Near 14,800 ft we reached the edge of the glacier, where we stopped to strap on our crampons and rope up before heading up the final stretch to the summit.

After more than an hour of slogging up the long glacier, with two minor technical terrain features, we reached the summit. From the top we could see the peaks of Pan de Azucar and Ritacuba Blanco’s gnarly twin Ritacuba Negro.

While the guide provided the technical gear, I was happy my dad insisted I bring an extra warm layer on the trek up to the summit. The low-oxygen air and technical features presented a challenge, but the most difficult aspect for me was the dawn’s icy temperature that left my nose and fingers numb.

On the top we took a minute to snap a few photos and catch our breath before heading back down the mountain as the sun turned the glacier snow into mush.

Aftter exting the glacier, the trail down illuminated by the morning sun reminded me of a rugged version of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, with the park’s signature shrubby fraijelones standing in for the Truffula trees.

By 1:30 pm we returned to the Posada. After organizing our equipment, we decided to fork over the $40 and spare our legs the agony of walking back to town.

That night we stayed at our favorite Hotel El Eden, and after succumbing to involuntary sleep by 7 pm, we passed a dreamless night, stirring not a muscle, until the sun’s golden light broke through our window early the next day.

Adriana Maria will pass another year in “the Canyon” of San Cristobal, a conflict-ridden rural neighborhood of Medellin where she has lived her entire life, again recounting a year where Full Article »

A winter's eulogy

I'm back after a year away. Everything is just about where I left it. Here I am again and the feelings flood my being, rushing through me, like water falling from the sky. A smile involuntary. My eyes soften. A tear drop breaks like a crashing wave. And the tides they rise.

Winter's here, yet the sun's light still shines. Heat flow from my heart as the winds blow. In the meadow under a winter's snow, the flowers rests waiting to blossom into a wash of color.

With my mind clear, my focus burns. And from here, I know where to go.

In the cityyyyyy, the city of Panama

#panama city

Gay rights proponents in Colombia have contested the legitimacy of a court order annulling the marriage of a homosexual couple and vowed to appeal the ruling in higher courts. Colombian Full Article »

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