7.26.23 // Favorite Summer Photo

This is one of my favorite photos of the summer so far...
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It was a humid and drizzly day in the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve in Ecuador. It was one of those days you can't quite figure out what to wear. Do you wear a raincoat and inevitably suffer the greenhouse effect of your own sweat? Or do you brave the brisk chill on the breeze and hope that while your fingers might be cold and damp, your core body temperature will eventually regulate?
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With a pack full of snacks and layers, we headed out into the unknown dressed as smart as we could, which because of my laundry situation, left me looking like a colorful pinata...
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But, the trails were inviting even if the weather wasn't. Bouts of rain sprinkled light and then heavy and then light again, while the trails wound their way up to about 13,000 feet above sea level.
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Each new turn in the trail left me breathless and not just because of the thin air. The wild nature and energy of Cayambe felt untouched, ancient, and awake. The grass rustled with each powerful gust of wind, the mud collected beneath our already dirt-caked trail runners, and the sun danced over the pristine land, creating pockets of warmth and moments of awe when the shadows contrasted just right to make the colors pop.
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"This is so beautiful," was the broken record we found ourselves on. Over and over again, we sang those words, almost giddy with disbelief in the beauty of our surroundings and the simplicity life had fallen into.
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But with each serious moment of losing ourselves in nature, we were never too far from giggles- maybe from the disbelief of our surroundings, maybe from the need to find humor in Amazonian rain storms, maybe from the sheer magnitude of the trip feeling so life shifting, maybe from the hilarious spraying potholes the muddy trails created...
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And that is when this photo was taken after a moment of accidental footwork landed both of us covered in the sweet-smelling earth. A moment of pure giddy, disbelief, giggles, captured on film.