just as I am

Each day with Lisa could fill a blog entry. I’ll recount some of our fun as the afternoon rain pounds on my roof. In Brasilito we stayed four nights in a not-so-well-kept hotel. Howler monkeys were our alarm clock early each morning. Mostly we were at the beach just south of there, Playa Conchal. We used our snorkel gear to visit the underwater realm of colorful fish. During the mid-day hours we stayed under the shade of the trees, talking and reading our books.

The public buses to and fro the Pacific coast gave us the opportunity to talk with strangers. Maria, in the back of the bus with us on Saturday, introduced us to seven family members sitting around us. Her uncle cradled her beautiful sleeping daughter, her mother’s first grandchild. On another bus I met a third grade teacher from Alejuela. At the Las Juntas bus terminal I started a conversation with someone I recognized as an employee in my local grocery store. Later, I called out to one of my former students who stopped his bike to greet me and meet Lisa before continuing to his aunt’s house. I enjoy the culture of Costa Rica where people acknowledge one another.

In Monteverde I invited friends to my cabina for a song circle. We were a musical dozen, raising our voices above the din of rain on the metal roof. We sang rounds, show tunes, spirituals, folk songs, and other selections from Rise Up Singing and our memories. On the second day Lisa was here we hiked in the Bosque Nuboso de Monteverde. After lingering in the hummingbird garden, we arrived at Mill’s house for yummy salads and brownies. Then we continued into Monteverde central to visit the bat museum. (One quarter of all of the mammals on earth are bats. Seventy-nine percent of bats consume insects, twenty percent are fruit and nectar eaters, and the final percent eat blood, frogs, rodents, birds, or fish. Here in the tropics, bats are the main pollinators and seed dispersers. Bats share more characteristics of primates than do any other group of mammals.) Several species of bats thrive at the museum. The day we set out for the waterfalls in San Luis, we never reached the end of the trail. The increasing rain has washed torrents into the San Luis valley, bringing huge boulders and tree trunks down the mountainside. The log bridges that Liam, Silas, Emily and I used three weeks ago are gone. Instead, the frayed and torn anchor cables hang in the hillsides above the thundering impassable river.

Last night Lisa and I walked up to the meetinghouse for the English country dance, called by Heather and Jonathan. Some visitors swelled the attendance to two full sets and I enjoyed every dance. (sometimes a gent, sometimes a lady) Lisa was welcomed by Monteverde friends and she purchased a signed copy of Walking With Wolf. After the last scrumptious waltz, we walked home by the light of the nearly full moon glowing through the thinning clouds.

Lisa was packed and reading to depart before sitting at the kitchen table to see the photos on my computer. Savoring the final hours of our visit, we slept only three and a half hours before rising to walk down the hill to meet her 4AM taxi to the bus station. She left with detailed notes for the bus transfer at the Inter-Americana Highway and her final taxi to the airport in Liberia. I will be following this same trek down the mountain and to the airport in eleven days.

All sorts of emotions are swirling round, a swollen rushing river. I am excited about my forthcoming return to New Mexico and I am sad to leave my Monteverde home. I hold possibilities of continuing my habits of walking where I want to go, learning Spanish, dancing, singing, and finding pleasure and beauty in the natural world.