Tragedy on the mountain

Tragedy on the second day. I slip while crossing a stream and fall in the water. I don't get hurt but my clothes are all wet and my camera, which was in my pant's pocket, and not in the inside pocket of my waterproof jacket, gets wet too. The pictures I'd already taken are saved in my iPad, as there was no damage to the SD card. But the camera is dead, kaput, no matter the patient exposure to the heat emanating from the gas burner, the pleas, the prayers.

Being in one of the most amazing places on Earth without a camera might be good cause for despair. But after some reflection, no alternatives left, better to consider a camera-less life as something in the realm of the possible. Better to turn a fatality into an inevitability then into something else. Maybe it could feel liberating, no more stoping here and there to try the best shot, not having to worry anymore if the battery and its spare, impossible to recharge in the mountain, will last enough to catch the final moments of the journey, the summit.

Oh, the summit! I could always ask someone there, in case there is someone there at the same time as I, to take a picture of me smiling or with an expression of total exhaustion beside the sign that testifies to my reaching Uhuru Peak, the highest point in all of Africa. I could try to impress on my mind the images I see, in order to preserve them until my lucid years are still a reality, not worrying about showing them to other people, posting on Facebook or the like.

In the course of such thoughts, suddenly I realize that I still have an iPhone with me, and, after checking its battery life - at a healthy 2/3 - I come to another conclusion: a camera-less journey to one of the most amazing places on Earth is not a possibility I'm prepared to consider, if I can avoid it. How the iPhone's 2 mb camera will fare under less than optimal light conditions and with no zoom, is something to be found out. Certainly no match to the 14 mb resolution and 14 optical zoom of my dead Canon. At least the dead camera might be replaced by a new one, as the salesman at BH Photo managed to convince me, for the first time ever, to purchase an additional warranty that covered accidents like the one I had. If only I can find the receipt when I get back home...

Anyways, not that much of a tragedy. Not as disappointing as not reaching the summit, even a summit without a camera or iPhone battery. The first moments without the camera proved hard. I keep looking around as if framing the shots. The iPhone camera is limited but its major drawback is the battery, that will decrease faster as the weather gets cooler. I have to refrain myself, waiting for more stunning images in the four days ahead. I can't help but think that maybe if there were no cam at all, I'd be less frustrated than by having it at hand but "unable" to use it, like having a chocolate bar on the table in front of you when you promised yourself that you, for once, would not skip the diet. Better not to have the chocolate bar at all. Still, I'm happy to have the iPhone as a second best. All the while, Mount Mawenzi with its crested snowy peak looks so close, and so majestic. The iPhone will have to do. But there's more to it. As it is slowly enveloped by clouds that look rather like a diaphanous veil, there's a magic that also embraces me and that no camera, no whatever its resolution, could really capture.