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Thread: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

  1. Link to Post #361
    United States Avalon Member James Newell's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    In the middle of night while out camping I have smelled a bigfoot but didn't see it, the sulfur smell was overwhelming. Enjoy your adventure, they keep you young. It is really great Mara has recovered so well.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Passes an anti-sulphur squirty solution, for a ‘just in case’ scenario, and are there any other squirty solutions advocated?
    Be safe, the happy pictures before are wondrous, just BE SAFE ❤️❤️❤️
    Last edited by avid; 5th July 2019 at 06:22.
    The love you withhold is the pain that you carry
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Hello, All:

    Mara and I went up once more today to the Haunted Lakes overlook, where we were a couple of weeks ago, and I took a great fun video of Mara galloping round in wild circles in the wind and rain.


    Today the weather was almost as foul, and I picked the hike because I knew it well, it's safe, and it's impossible to get lost up there.

    Ha.

    We made it up to the overlook — which is as it sounds: looking down on to the Haunted Lakes in the valley below, on the other side of the high ridge. I've been up there a couple times, and it always felt okay. Like, a safe distance from whatever it is that lives down there.

    So we arrived at the high point, and Mara would not go an inch further. Normally, she races ahead of me all the time. This time, she stayed right at my heels. That was a problem, because I wanted to take a photo of her and the lakes below. I had to trick her into a pose, which took about 15 minutes. Here it is:



    As soon as I turned round, she raced ahead of me again — heading back home. She did NOT like that place.

    And here's what happened next... but context here, first. (Do please forgive me, those of you who've heard this before. But it bears repeating, just to understand the strangeness.)

    I don't get lost in the mountains, I don't get turned around. I have an excellent sense of direction, and I know what I'm doing up there.

    I carry a compass, but I've only used it twice in 4 years — one of those times the LAST time I was down at the Haunted Lakes and got quite disoriented for a few minutes, nearly heading down the wrong valley. (That was such a weird experience, when Mara was totally freaked out at something I could NOT see, that I decided I never wanted to go down to those lakes again.) All that was documented on video, here.

    But now, today, that happened once more. On my way back, though I knew it all well, I got disoriented again, and suddenly realized I was heading in exactly the wrong direction.

    That totally surprised me. So I turned round, and within a couple of minutes I found myself in an area I just didn't recognize. That was REALLY weird.

    A few days ago I was listening to David Paulides talking about Hunters who've disappeared. Sometimes, those few who've been found again report that although they knew those woods like their own back yard, suddenly they'd found themselves in a place they'd never seen before — similar, but different.

    That was exactly what I experienced. I was walking past two small lakes — which was odd, because I didn't ever remember two lakes there before. They were definitely separated from each other.

    But I kept on going, as I pretty much had to. I knew which direction I should be heading now. I ended up fighting my way through some thick scrubby bushes, which again I'd never seen before. It was all weird.

    Then I emerged on the other side of that, and it felt familiar again. I looked back, and the two lakes weren't there any more... there was just one larger one.

    At that point, I really wished I had someone with me!!

    After that, it was all very uneventful, and I was back at the road an hour later. All this might easily have prosaic explanations...

    ...but that was my subjective, very odd, experience.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    There must be talented shamans nearby with revealing stories to tell about the haunted lakes.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    My gut feeling, for whatever it may be worth, is that the hidden lakes area is a stargate controlled by the dark team.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    I tend to think you should avoid that area!

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Some weird inter-dimensional portal, or unusual geology beneath. Were there any differences in sound - ie sudden quiet/no birdsong?
    Hopefully never to be revisited
    Last edited by avid; 9th July 2019 at 11:29.
    The love you withhold is the pain that you carry
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    "Chariots of the Globs" (apols to Fat Freddy's Cat)

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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Quote Posted by Ron Mauer Sr (here)
    There must be talented shamans nearby with revealing stories to tell about the haunted lakes.
    One story was shared by a local guide who accompanied me to the location of the condors a couple of months ago. He said that his grandmother, when she was a girl, had seen a staircase going down into the ground near the Haunted Lakes. She could never find that spot again, and no-one believed her. But she stuck to the story for the whole of her life.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Quote Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
    I noticed it's on the left side.

    I commented to someone once that all the hard hits, both physically and emotionally, that I have taken in life are all on the left side, with appropriate scars.

    This person asked me why I thought that was. I replied, "Because that's the side my heart is on."

    They can hit us, but they can't lick us.
    Interesting, Valerie A quick survey of myself indicates this is true of me also!
    If someone asked me that question, I would have cracked a joke and said "Because the left is the devil's side".
    I think your response is funnier, probably because it's true!
    Besides. If the left side belongs to the devil, then why the heck is my heart there?

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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    This has just made my day.
    ‘Monster of the Cajas’ won’t go away despite denials by scientists and park rangers
    Oct 28, 2019

    Despite the best efforts of Cajas National Park and University of Cuenca officials and scientists, the so-called Monstruo de las Cajas, or Monster of the Cajas, won’t go away.

    A 2013 sighting of Wawa Grande was reported in a snowy valley two kilometers from the Cuenca-Guayaquil highway. A three-man television crew from the U.S. was in town in early June, interviewing witnesses and filming high-altitude areas of the Cajas National Park where the monster has reportedly been sighted. The crew was accompanied by Quito tour guide Carlos Castro, who claims to have taken video of the creature in 1997.

    “We talked to two retired park employees, one whom has seen the monster, as well as local people who know about it,” said Castro, who assisted the Los Angeles-based crew.

    “We asked to see the evidence kept at the University of Cuenca but they continue to deny that it exists but we were able to talk to a former employee who took pictures of plaster casts of the footprints and who has prints of some of the pictures they keep locked in their files.”


    A University of Cuenca biology professor who asked not to be identified, describes himself as a monster skeptic. “I am not saying that the witnesses are lying or that they didn’t see something up there, but I think most of the evidence has been fabricated,” he said. “I have seen one the videos and two pictures but these could have been altered. But, maybe not.” He believes the box of evidence that Castro claims the university is keeping from the public doesn’t exist.

    “I explained this to the television people from [the television program] Monster Quest in 2009 but they seemed to think I was lying,”
    the professor said. “I also told them that the area where people say they saw this thing is often foggy and sometimes snowy and that the the high elevation can affect judgment.”

    A supervisor at Cajas National Park refused to discuss the monster. “This is something we do not talk about. Wawa does not exist,” he said, referring to the name Wawa Grande ["Guagua Grande"], used by people who live in the Cajas to describe the monster. “There may be something else but I haven’t seen it.”

    The most recent sighting was in April 2013, when two British hikers and a Cuenca guide claimed to have spotted the creature during a 3-day trek. The three said that they watched the over-sized humanoid for several minutes in a remote area of the park.

    “I have no idea what it was other than to say it was quite large, with light colored fur and had some human characteristics. It was able to stand on two legs but also came down on all fours,” said Sean Worthington, one of the hikers. He added: “I am a scientist by training and not prone to make fanciful claims, so I cannot deny seeing the thing.”

    Worthington and his companion, Roger Chrisma and the guide, reported that they watched the creature for several minutes from a distance of about 100 meters. The sighting was reported by a Quito television station and one of the pictures that Worthington said he took appeared in a London newspaper in October 2013.

    According to Worthington and Chrisma and their guide, who asked not to be named, the creature had thick, light gray or reddish gray fur.

    The monster first made headlines in July, 1988 when a Scottish hiker claims he was attacked by a pair of the creatures. Robert Burns, who sought shelter in a cave from a late afternoon snow storm, says he was mauled by the Wawa and tossed from the cave. Burns was treated for a broken arm, deep lacerations and bite wounds at a Cuenca hospital. His story was reported on television as well as in newspapers in Cuenca and Edinburgh.

    In 2009, two Swedish hikers say they saw the creature and reported that it stood between seven and eight feet in height and weighed 300 to 400 pounds. Their story, along with a picture that they claimed to have taken, appeared in a Stockholm newspaper in July of that year.

    Except for the fur color, most descriptions of the creature are similar to those of the alleged Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, in the U.S. Northwest.

    According to Castro, many Cajas guides are aware of Wawa, either from personal contact or through reports from hikers. “Most people don’t like to talk about it because their friends will think they’re crazy,” he says. “Even if they haven’t seen Wawa, almost everyone who has spent much time in the mountains has seen the footprints.”

    A retired national park service biologist, who worked in the Cajas Park when it was established in 1996, agrees that there is an official policy of denial and that park employees are told not to talk about the alleged monster.

    “It does not exist. That is what we told anyone who asked about it.” He also says that the science department at the University of Cuenca has some “objects” and photos connected to Wawa, but these are off limits to the public.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Yes there are No Wawa Grande's or bigfoot ape like creatures that could possibly exist at those altitudes says the museum curator who proudly claims he is going to leave the building one of these days, and go for a walk.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    I've not posted anything here for a little while, mainly because there's not been much of significance to share. And with so many important things happening elsewhere, all this seemed trivial and even a little self-indulgent. Never my intention!

    But in summary, Mara's coping perfectly with her one eye, my own eyes are doing perfectly with good glacier glasses, and my knees are perfectly strong again. (See this thread for an interesting discussion of all kinds of good remedies for joint issues.)

    Retrospectively, here are some photos from recent hikes:


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Mara_on_the..._July_2019.jpg)

    And the same ridge again on a second trip, without the great weather:

    A 360º panorama: (the same mountain on both sides of the photo)


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Mara_360_pa...9_Nov_2019.jpg)

    Soon after, it got really murky:



    Then Mara found a trophy:


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Mara_finds_a_trophy_1.jpg)


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Mara_finds_a_trophy_2.jpg)

    And at the end of the day, a solitary llama on the horizon, with the clouds below.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Llama_with_...ds_below_5.jpg)

    ~~~

    Here on our own, the day after tomorrow, Mara and I are heading out on Christmas Day for another big hike. We'll take a large bone and a tiny Christmas cake with us to celebrate between us.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)



    Have a very merry Christmas Bill and Mara!!! With love, Pam, Bodhi and Booh.

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    Ecuador Honored, Retired Member. Warren passed on 2 July, 2020.
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Have a fun and safe adventure in the Cajas Christmas Day, Bill. What is your destination?

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Quote Posted by wnlight (here)
    Have a fun and safe adventure in the Cajas Christmas Day, Bill. What is your destination?
    A high sawtooth ridge, several miles long, that I've done once before a couple of years ago. The route is from right to left, then (at the left hand end) down the steep slope to the valley floor and then back to the right to return to the jeep. It's quite steep and rocky and slippery when wet, so if it rains I may find a way down early. We'll see.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/The_long_ridge.jpg)

    Our combined Christmas treats are a bag of bones (not for me!) a small moccaccino, a tiny chocolate cake, a Cornetto (which may not survive! ), a bunch of dates, and some home-made chocolate, which looks a little weird only because it's got blueberries in it.



    That's a ton and a half of sugar, but it's a long energetic day. I'll start hiking before dawn with my headlamp, and if all goes to plan I should be at the right hand end of the ridge at about 8 am, ready to start the traverse. I'll report back on Boxing Day.

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Looks like Mara's going to be eating more than you Bill. Lucky dog, those bones look meaty and delicious!

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Hello, Everyone: all rather trivial here — compared with serious events in the world, and also among some well-loved members in the Avalon community — but I figured some readers might enjoy hearing about our Christmas Day hike. It was a long, strenuous, but fabulous day.

    In this and the next two posts are a bunch of high-resolution panoramas. If anyone has the time and interest, it's well worth opening them in a browser and zooming in to take a good look. There's a little video, too.

    I was up at 1 am, left the house at 3, and started hiking in the dark at 5. By 7 am, an hour ahead of schedule, we were up high at the start (the north end) of the long ridge. Half way up there, we were greeted by the Christmas morning sunrise. Mara can just be seen in the long grass to the right.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...e_panorama.jpg)

    This is what the ridge looked like, a sequence of rocky peaks that needed quite a lot of care. Here's the view looking back to where we'd come from, our start point at the rounded mountain on the horizon to the north.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...panorama_1.jpg)

    Then the mist started to come in. The next two photos were taken in the same place, looking south towards where we were heading next. Concerned about the weather, we started to go a little more quickly.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...panorama_2.jpg)


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...panorama_3.jpg)

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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    But then the weather cleared again, and we really started to have fun. Here's Mara, the one-eyed wonder dog, figuring out how to descend a steep little rock step.


    http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...;s_descent.mp4

    Here's an arrow showing where she was:


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...;s_descent.jpg)

    But then the next peak we had to descend, I could NOT find an easy way down. In the end, I did a tricky controlled slide half way down a steep 40 foot V-shaped gully, and encouraged Mara to follow me. But no matter how much I cajoled her, she flatly refused. (Smart dog! )

    So I had to climb back up again, which wasn't at all easy, and we retraced our steps back down the other side of the peak to circumnavigate it a couple of hundred feet lower. That took an extra half hour, but was absolutely the right decision.

    Here's what Mara refused to descend:


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...panorama_4.jpg)

    And here's Mara looking back at the peak.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...anorama_6a.jpg)

    Here's the a view to Cerro Arquitectos to the west (where we've been a number of times), looking down on the clouds below us to the left and right.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...panorama_7.jpg)

    It was pretty hot, so we rested up for a few minutes in the shade of the rocks to the right of the photo. There, to my amazement, we were visited by a beautiful hummingbird... the height was 14,400 ft.

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  36. Link to Post #379
    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Finally, we reached the south end of the ridge, and the time was 10.30. We'd been going pretty quickly. I'd planned that would be our synchronized lunch stop at 12 noon US eastern time. But there was the most idyllic of all idyllic tiny lakes, and so we stayed there for a full two hours.


    (large image http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri..._tiny_lake.jpg)

    I'd shared earlier that we'd be there at noon US eastern time, in case anyone out there wanted to join us vicariously.

    One Avalon member, anonymous by request — who I knew was a healer and a talented psychic — told me the next day that they'd 'seen' a very clear image of where we were. They described it exactly:
    "A tiny, beautiful lake below steep rocks, very high up, with the water either blue or green... I couldn't quite tell which color it was."
    Above, you see the water is blue. And in this photo, too.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...iny_lake_2.jpg)

    But it all depends on the angle to the sun and sky. Here, it's green — so our psychic friend was 100% right on all counts.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri..._tiny_lake.jpg)


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_Chri...green_lake.jpg)

    We waited till noon to break out the Christmas goodies, and I planned to make a little video. But then my camera failed , so I'm afraid I have no visual record to share. Apologies!

    I tore myself away from this most beautiful place at 12.30, descended to the valley below, and we were back at Pandora, my old jeep, at 3 pm. Our hiking time had been 8 hours.

    What I was particularly pleased (and surprised!) about was that while it was a long strenuous day, with a ton of climbing and scrambling up and down as well as the long distance and the altitude, I'd actually found it easier than the last time I did the same hike, two years ago. (I cannot account for that! )

    For anyone who's worked through these three posts, thanks. I do very much hope you enjoyed it. It was the most fun Christmas Day I've had for many years.


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  38. Link to Post #380
    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bill's searches for the Wawa Grande (Ecuador's Bigfoot)

    Hello, Everyone: this post isn't about the Wawa Grande (at all!), but about a little adventure I had with Mara the dog a couple days ago.

    I almost started a new thread called Maybe it's Safer in Lockdown. The interesting part starts after the four intro photos below.
    (For newer members: The Wawa Grande is Ecuador's Bigfoot, which has been sighted and reported very credibly a number of times. One hiker was even attacked by one, and was hospitalized with deep bites and scratches. The local name it has translates as "Big Baby".

    So I set out to explore the remote high mountains where it's supposed to live, and this thread is all about my various adventures. Some of them have been pretty interesting, and I did have one very strange experience in which my dog was highly alarmed and frightened, for quite a period of time, at something which I could NOT see. But apart from that, I've detected no trace of it.)
    So this thread gradually evolved into a kind of personal mountaineering blog. For any new visitors, there's definitely no need to read any of it! But you may enjoy flicking through the many photos. It's gorgeous, remote, high country, and I've almost always traveled on my own.

    But now because of the Covid-19 lockdown, I've not been able drive to the high mountains. So instead, I've been hiking locally, straight out of my front door. I'm highly fortunate inasmuch as I live in a very green rural river valley and it's quite easy to hike to some fairly remote areas here, as well, though it's all thickly forested and below the treeline.

    So with that preamble, here's what happened a couple days ago, on Thursday.

    First, some photos I didn't take on my last hike. These were from a similar hike on Tuesday, following a high Inca trail that sticks to the ridgeline at 10,000 ft. I can do a 4 mile circuit from my house that takes a couple of hours, first going high, then dropping down to the river and following that back home.

    Here's the ancient trail, climbing up to the ridgeline. It's become so eroded over the years that it's about 10 feet deep... you can't see over the top of it.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/The_high_Inca_trail_2.jpg)

    But up on the ridge, this is what it's like.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/The_high_Inca_trail.jpg)

    Then, I circle down through open trees and meadows. This was such an astonishing photo that at first I stared at it thinking it had to be a weird double exposure. But it was actually the real thing.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/Mara_in_a_green_wonderland.jpg)

    Then, here's this big meadow looking up the forested, deep V-shaped river valley. My house is a couple miles downstream, to the right of the photo. The Inca trail follows the far left skyline, going for miles and miles.


    (large image: http://projectavalon.net/looking_up_...ver_valley.jpg)

    So, I'm truly blessed, as all this is just a couple miles away form my house. I just walk out my door and there it all is, without anyone else around.

    Well, almost nobody else! Those photos were taken on Tuesday. On Thursday, when I went to repeat the same hike, I'd reached the large meadow above — and there was a local farmer, who wasn't happy. He seemed drunk, and was shouting at me, waving his machete around. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but he was clearly very angry at me. I guess he owned that land.

    So I apologized profusely (as best I could!), and backed off quickly. But now I had a problem, because I couldn't follow the trail any more. And I didn't want to climb 1000 feet steeply back up to the ridgeline.

    So I bushwhacked my way to fight through the very thick forest to see if I could somehow get straight down to the river. I had a 100 foot cliff right below me, but the undergrowth was so dense there was little risk of falling. I was just carefully traversing the top of the cliff. You can kinda see it in the distance to the left of center (the V-cleft of the river valley) in the last photo above.

    But then I turned my ankle, stepping over a log.

    I could feel the ligaments go crunch, inside. OMG. Nothing broken, but it was a bad sprain.

    Unbelievably (to me or anyone else), in all these many years of being in the mountains and forests, often on my own — all over the world, in some very remote places — I've never once hurt myself even the tiniest little bit. But I knew what I had to do.

    If you sprain your ankle in the mountains far from anywhere, and you're on your own,
    1. You do NOT take off your boot (or else you may never get it back on again).
    2. You keep on walking as fast as you can and DO NOT STOP, because you have a rapidly closing window of maybe an hour before it gets so painful you can't go any further.
    So, that was a new and interesting problem. And I still had the 100 foot cliff right below me. but I managed to navigate that and 15 minutes later I was down at the river, with my foot really beginning to swell up and hurt.

    So I waded through the very cold water of the river, soaking my boot and socks, and that relieved the pain a little. Where I'd descended looked quite impressive, so I reached for my little camera, which had been clipped to my backpack shoulder strap. But then I realized that I'd lost it in the thick forest. OMG again. I wasn't going to go back up to look for it!

    All I had to do then was wade down the river till I regained the proper trail, on the other side of the meadow where the machete-waving farmer had been. And after another 45 minutes, I hobbled through my front door, going exponentially slowly. But all was well.

    I'm now shuffling around my house rather like the 99-year old British Army Veteran who did 100 laps of his garden on a zimmer frame to raise $16 million for the health service. I'm applying a ton of homeopathic cream, and it's mending very quickly. So all will be fine.

    But this really gave me pause for thought. I realized how very fortunate I've been all these years. For anyone unfamiliar with this thread, you can flick back through the pages and see some of the terrain I've often covered with Mara the dog, always moving fast and light.

    But if I'd ever sprained an ankle up in some of those rocky places, I'd never have made it back down to my vehicle without crawling most of the way. And this is the first time I've ever sprained an ankle doing anything, even playing soccer when I was a kid. It doesn't sound like much — but I discovered it's really not just a silly trivial thing.

    So that's why I nearly started a new thread called Maybe it's Safer in Lockdown. (A deliberately ironic title!)

    And that gives pause for thought as well, because one can't lead a rich, fulfilling life without risk.

    It's just impossible. We can NOT eliminate risk from our lives. Risk is PART of life, whether one's hiking in the mountains, ocean sailing, starting a small business, emigrating to another country, or moving in with a new partner. And all the unknowns we navigate every day are precisely what make life so very much worth living.

    Last edited by Bill Ryan; 25th April 2020 at 10:56.

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