I’ve returned to my sit spot, but it looks a little different this time. I am fortunate that at this moment it is not raining, but for the past few weeks it has been, heavily. The torrential downpour has inspired flood warnings for the area, and while my homestay is safe, my sit spot is underwater! We can still hear and feel water dripping from the last hailstorm, our shoes are still wet, but for the few dry hours this afternoon, the riverbank is more alive than I’ve ever seen it. While the people scurry between dry shelters, between work and home and school, distrustful of the brief respite and not wanting to get caught in another waterfall, the birds, butterflies and other wildlife are out, singing and searching for food and playing. Though I like to believe I am in community with the nature here, this behavior reminds me otherwise. We both depend on nature and her wellbeing, but the wildlife more immediately so. When it starts thundering, I am able to hole up and separate myself from the elements, venturing out again only when I please. These birds cannot afford to retreat and stay inside with hot cocoa and jazz! Though they feel the brunt of the storms, this also seems to inform how they celebrate even our short views of blue skies between clouds. While I sit with them, or when I hike or pick up trash or watch the sunrise, I feel connected, and they let me. However, when I go back to my room and my heater, they remain in community with each other, taking the climate’s highs and lows in stride as they ‘weather the storm’ brought about by humans believing we can operate independently of, out of community with, the natural world.

I also think about Córdoba’s unhoused population and hope that they have found dry, warm, and safe alternatives to their now flooded developments on the riverbank. It is terrible to consider that the only livable place provided for these people, and for the cats in the “protected feline sanctuary”, is the place now rendered completely unlivable (I did find two cats on slightly drier ground, see if you can spot them in the photos!).

Now that I’m back at my computer, I’ve calculated the carbon footprint of flying from SFO to BOS, to MAD and finally to AGP. My total was 2.18 metric tons of CO2e! I was surprised to see that my flight to Boston was actually quite a bit harder on the environment than my international flight. To offset this, I try to do small daily tasks, such as picking up trash when I see it (though I don’t pick up cigarette butts…), buying bulk when I can to reduce my plastic use here, and supporting local businesses instead of chains. On a grander scale, though, I would want to improve the public transportation system here. While there is an affordable bus system throughout the city, and a more expensive train system that takes you to other cities, the buses don’t reach the more historic parts of town, nor do they bring people to many natural sites. I might add a regular route that would bring people to the parks on the outskirts of the city. I would also love to implement a program similar to Blue Bikes that could function all throughout the city, but with more stations in the historic, cobblestone, windy parts, so that those residents could access and utilize the public transportation already available and get where they need to go without clogging the tiny streets with more cars. There are already residents with electric scooters, but not only is this a method of transportation that doesn’t move the body at all, it is only accessible to those who can afford the expensive personal vehicles. Though I wouldn’t know exactly how to complete this project, I know that the local bike store offers biking tours of the city, which could be a great place to start!