February 8th - 10:31

Title: February 8th - 10:31 Medium: Super-8 film Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Resolution: 2880 x 2160 File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4. Comments: I visited the Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary in Pisac to meet the largest flying bird in the world native to the Andes Mountains, the Condor. Their wingspan is as large as a human. They can can glide hundreds of miles with almost no wing flapping. A curious and kind bird when you get up close. It was my muse for the day. Alongside some small monkeys and other critters being rehabilitated to rejoin the wild once they heal up. The condor is a messenger between two worlds. The sky in its divinity & the Earth in its humanity. There is a story about a hummingbird and a condor that I learned on my travels and thought it was a beautiful lesson. "Long ago, when the sky and the earth were closer than they are now, a great imbalance came over the Andes. The winds grew confused. Seasons arrived late. Humans forgot how to listen. The Condor, guardian of the high world, was called to carry a message from the mountains to the heavens. But the journey was long, and the sky had become dangerous—storms, ice, and silence thicker than stone. The Hummingbird, small but relentless, insisted on coming too. The Condor laughed. “You are too tiny,” he said. “The cold will break you. The distance will erase you.” The Hummingbird answered: “Then let me fly where you do not look.” As the Condor rose into the thin air, the winds began to tear at everything light and fragile. At the first great storm, the Hummingbird vanished. The Condor thought the bird lost. But the Hummingbird had slipped beneath the vast wing of the Condor, resting close to his heart, where the wind could not reach. There, the Hummingbird listened. It felt the Condor’s slow, ancient rhythm. It heard the silence between heartbeats. It learned how the sky breathes. When the Condor finally reached the highest place—where words are too large to speak—the great beings of the sky asked: “Where is the small one who dared follow you?” The Condor searched the empty air, ashamed. Then the Hummingbird emerged from beneath the wing, alive, trembling, radiant. And the sky understood."