23/7: While taking a photo of a tree, my sunglasses fell off my head. It wasn’t even a special tree, but I can’t control myself. And it’s happened several times that people have taken pictures of me taking pictures. I go all in, crawl around on the ground, climb up on chairs and annoy people for being so slow. I ruined a completely decent pair of jeans in Bolivia by rolling around on the salt covered ground of the salt flats in Salar de Uyuni. Eventually they were so stiff from the salt and mud and dust that they, kind of, like, snapped. Holes on my right knee and thigh simultaneously. But, the pictures were amazing.
Yeah, so, that my sunglasses fell off my head while I was taking a picture of my fivehundredth giant sequoia shouldn’t surprise anyone. What makes this a story, though, is the fact that, when they hit the sequoia needle covered ground, the sunglasses broke. Snapped, one glass falling out.
I bought these glasses in La Paz. It was my last week in South America and there was some kind of festival. People in glitter and feathers dancing on the street (for being such a macho culture, the Bolivians sure love their glamour). They were the fourth pair of sunglasses I bought in Bolivia, but what the hell, they were cheap and I was leaving soon.
They have seen me through many a sunny summer’s day, and by the time I reached California their original deep blue-greenish colour had been bleached into some kind of yellowish turquoise. Not pretty. I had been thinking for weeks that I really needed to get rid of them – I just didn’t have the heart to throw them away.
Maybe it was meant to be, them falling off my head. Still, I felt a little sad.
So I asked mom to take a last picture of me in these huge, cheap sunglasses – and then laid them to rest in a bear-safe dustbin in Sequoia National Park. A perfect last resting place for a pair of sunglasses as adventurous and faithful as these, I would say.
Katja Malmborg 