Another early morning. The torrential rains last night have cut down the humidity, for now. The birds are crying out to the world, its time to get up, in a cacophony of squeaks, chirps, screeches and sweet songs. The sun is climbing steadily up the backside of the jungle covered mountain in the background and the clouds are parting for her like sentient soldiers spreading a veil. A few pockets of mist cling to the verdant trees, adding eerie apparitions floating through the trees like water flowing around rocks in a river. There’s a hint of jasmine in the air.
The days are filled with a flurry of activity early, as the humans try to beat the heat and humidity of the coming day. We scurry about, doing chores, getting those last staples at the stores, running off to work, cleaning up whatever the rains brought down from the trees last night.
It’s a symbiotic relationship one develops with nature when living in Costa Rica. The fertile ground will grow anything and the jungle throws down a lot of things. Even we humans add to the growth with a seed tossed out while on a walk, an upset garbage can can be full of seeds from the copious amount of fruits and veggies we eat. Fresh and organic. There’s not much concern about spots and imperfections on our fruits, no dyes added to the fish or poultry. Beef is not a big thing here nor is cheese. Cheese, in all forms is a delicacy. Beef can run from tough to sublime depending on the region.
Fruits and veggies grow like weeds here. It’s not uncommon to find squash plants growing on the side of the road or in a vacant field that has become a natural compost. Fruit trees are ‘fruitful’ and multiply if left unchecked. Most of these accidental plants become food for the vast variety of wildlife here. Birds, amphibians, mammals small and large, and the insects, all enjoy the bounty.
Costa Rica is wild and wonderful. It’s harsh and gentle. It’s teaming with life. The vibe is one of calmness and a natural rhythm, a stasis between man and nature. A constant battle between water and land, plants and the tiny space one carves out to call home. A hidden world in the lush tropical forests and a world of wonderment. Someplace that we feel alive, small, and acknowledge the heavy weight of being a steward in a country with so much untamed beauty.
Today I woke up to 41 degrees in the van…who knows what it is outside. With everything we need in our little capsule of steel and rubber, there’s no big rush to go outside and find out.
The sun is making its way into the sky, creeping slowly from behind the snow capped peeks, but has yet to shine on the opposing peeks across the river valley.
Our camp last night was right beside the Matanuska River, surrounded by Alders, sporting their new yellow fall colors, Drayas, also in showy white tops, and Fireweed that has lost its towers of red flowers and turned to tangled white silky seedpods. The mountains surrounding this valley are topped with snow from the thunder storms 2 nights ago, accenting the harsh, craggy peeks.
Yesterday, we drove up from Ninilchik to the Russian River Ferry crossing and joined the throngs of fisher people hoping to catch a nice coho salmon, or at least hook into one of the giant red sockeye on the Kenai River. These fish are huge! As your standing in the water, these fish are lined up, heading upstream. Every now and then, one will breech the surface slowly or jump out of the river all together. With your concentration on your line and indicator, this is quite alarming at first, but soon becomes the norm and you settle in to the rhythm of casting.
It’s time to begin our month long procession east then south, out of Alaska, into Canada, and finally, the lower 48. Time to say good-bye to the wildness of this beautiful land, where it is easy to forget your worries, clear your mind, and refresh your inner most being. To the fresh, crisp, cool air, the bears, moose, squirrels, seagulls ravens and bald eagles, all etched firmly into my mind, a sorrowful good-bye. A fond farewell to the mountains and glaciers, turquoise rivers and milky white glacial streams and waterfalls, thousands of lakes and fiords. To leave behind the thousands of miles of pot-holed, wavy, and frost heaved roads of dirt and tar.
Although the journey has not ended just yet…we’ve traveled almost 6,000 miles since Salt Lake City. We’ve driven on almost every road in Alaska, been from the Continental divide (Antigun Pass) to Lands End (Homer). We’ve traveled by ferry along the Inside Passage between Juneau, Skagway and Haines. Took a wild ride down the Tatshinini and Alsek Rivers, played with icebergs and bergy-bits. We’ve had our share of bear encounters, some too close for comfort. I’d say it’s been a wild and encompassing ride for sure with still more to come.
It’s sometimes hard to slow down and take time to organize my thoughts. We have now been on the road for almost 4 months, not including our 2 years of vanlife. We have visited Ireland, Scotland, Portugal mainland from Sintra to the Algarve Coast, Madeira Island, San Miguel Island in the Azores, Germany, Austria and Spain. We are currently on our way to wrap up our Schengen EU Visa in Dubrovnik, Croatia. From there moving down into Montenegro for at least a month, which used to be Yugoslavia until 1991. From there who knows where?
São Miguel , Portugal
It sometimes feels like we’ve been gone for so long, and at times I want it to just stop and go “home”, but where is that? My heart is filled with gladness, my mind filled with curiosity. There is just so much of the world to explore. I must admit, at times, we have to pass up some countries we’d love to explore due to many different reasons, both political and uneasy feelings about traveling there as two women. We are playing it on the side of caution when if we were younger, we might throw that same caution to the wind.
Does that mean that we are older and wiser? Life is more precious? Probably…
In the last 2 years, we have been taught a lesson in the value of living life as if it were your last day on earth. I tear up just thinking of family members lost too soon and those that lived out their lives to the fullest and just came to the end of life’s road, including my grandmother and our faithful corgi, Gandaulf. It is part of our motivation to do all we can while we are healthy and able to.
Another motivating force is the all encompassing world of climate change. Since we’ve been retired and living in the world as nomads, living with and off the land around us, we have seen the changes first hand. Coastal flooding, unbearable heat and harsh winters. Storms off the charts. It seems that every year we are breaking records of all types, rain, heat, hurricanes, snowfall, wild fires, ocean temps rising, and drought, to name a few. Perhaps it is the way the earth is trying to wipe us off like a festering tick sucking the life blood out of her? It is everywhere and my heart is saddened to think it may be too late to reverse. Perhaps it is just the way it is going to be and we all will pay dearly in the end. In the meantime, here we are off on another adventure to see all we can before it is gone. We are doing all we can to reduce our carbon footprint, but we are just a minuscule part.
One bright morning, the brightest morning in some time, the Child woke up from a night of playful dreams. She wiped her eyes and sat up stretching into the brilliant sunlight.
What a wonderful day, thought the child.
She looked around the forest at the edge of the sea and something colorful caught her eye.
She stood up from her hammock and wandered over to a branch.
Before her was a most curious thing… not quite animal and not quite bug.
It was bright green with orange spots that looked like eyes on its one side and long hairs and two beady black orbs on the other.
“Hello and good morning,” announced the Child with a huge toothy smile.
The strange thing stopped its chewing on its leaf and half its body rose up to look the Child in the eye.
As it rose up the Child could see that this creature had hundreds of little legs with little suckers on each.
“Hello young Child, are you here to eat me?” quizzed the creature.
The Child looked in horror at this beautiful creature of the forest and assured him she wasn’t planning to eat him.
“Why no… I am mostly curious,” assured the Child.
“Why curious? I am not doing anything to harm you. I am just getting ready for my change,” replied the creature.
“Change?” The Child looked inquisitively at the creature, still standing upright.
The Child carefully scooped up the creature and ran to the wise Owl.
“Look what I found, eating a leaf on my tree,” and the Child opened her hand.
The creature again stood up, looking the Owl in the eye, and asked again, “are you going to eat me?”
The wise Owl looked at this small creature, all covered in long hair and hundreds of legs.
“If I ate you, you would not go through the change and become a beautiful being.”
The Child was bewildered by what the Owl said to this small creature.
The Owl told the Child to watch over this small creature and be sure it is safe.
The Child slowly closed her hand and ran back to her favorite tree and gently placed this strange creature on a low branch by her hammock.
“I will protect you and you will be my friend,” promised the Child. “Do you have a name?”
“I am a Caterpillar,” informed the creature.
“I am this color and design to stop birds and other animals from eating me.”
The Child looked sadly at the Caterpillar and wondered how it would be to live in a world where you were so different no one would want to come near you. Again, the Child gave her word that she would keep him safe.
Days turned into weeks and the Caterpillar continued to spend his days in the Child’s favorite tree, eating all the delicious green leaves it could.
One morning, the Child woke up from the most wonderful dream, and found the Caterpillar moving very slow.
“Are you okay,” she asked her new friend?
“I feel strange,” said the Caterpillar.
“Are you sick? Should I go get Otter, she can heal anyone!” The Child was deeply concerned about her friend, so she ran as fast as she could to the river where Otter lived. She frantically explained to Otter that her new friend called Caterpillar was sick.
Otter took the Child by the hand and they went back to her favorite tree together.
He was wiggling and wiggling.
When they arrived, the Caterpillar was hanging by the branch the Child had left him on.
“What should I do?” cried the Child to Otter.
Otter took the Child by the hand and told her that this is what Caterpillars do… just watch.
The two watched for hours as their friend spun and spun, covering himself in silky thread until he was gone.
The Child began to cry, but Otter wiped her tears and told her that he is now in a cocoon and her duty to her friend was not over, she still had to keep him safe.
The days turned warmer and warmer, and everyday the Child would wake up to the sun, thank the day for coming, and looked in on her friend. It had been weeks since he had spun himself into a cocoon. His cocoon had gone from bright white to a hard brown color. She wondered if she had done something wrong but continued to do as Otter and Owl told her, and never let the cocoon out of her sight.
One day, while swinging in her hammock, she noticed a crack in the cocoon. She ran through the woods again to the river to find Otter.
The two ran back to the tree. All the animals of the sea, forest, and sky had gathered around the Child’s tree.
Otter took the Child’s hand and whispered to her to watch, this is the change he spoke to you about.
Slowly the crack grew bigger and bigger until a wrinkled, winged creature, emerged.
The animals and the Child all watched for hours as this creature began to grow wings.
The Child stood in amazement as she watched her friend come out of his cocoon and turn into a beautiful winged creature.
The creature then released itself and floated silently on its new wings over to the Child.
She put her hand in the air and her friend landed on her finger.
“Hello my dear friend,” said the Caterpillar.
The Child looked at this delicate, beautiful creature. On its wings were the same orange eyes she had seen on the Caterpillar, it had only 6 long skinny legs, instead of the hundreds he once had. It’s body was much more slender and its black eyes still remained.
“You are my friend!” screeched the Child in excitement. “How did you perform such magic?”
“I am now Butterfly,” spoke the newly emerged insect. “This is what I was born to do.”
The Child ran to her secret hollow in the tree and pulled out the paint bucket, brush and jar of smells the old lady in the cave gave her.
“As a re-birthday present, I will paint you your favorite flower and it can smell as sweet as you’d like,” offered the Child.
She ran around the forest painting flowers all around her favorite tree for her new friend.
They played games of hide and seek and spent hours in the sun resting together.
After a few days the Butterfly began to slow down and didn’t want to play anymore. He said he felt strange again. The Child asked if he was going to change again?
“I am afraid so,” answered the Butterfly. “This change is life’s own journey.”
The Child didn’t understand.
Soon Otter and the wise old Owl appeared.
“My friend is sick and is going to change again,” cried the Child, and big tears ran down her face. “He said he’s on life’s journey.”
Otter and the Owl sat next to the Child as she watched her friend fall asleep on one of the beautiful flowers she had given him for his re-birthday. He didn’t move for a long time as the three comforted him. His journey had ended.
The Child cried for days and Otter sat with her.
“We all will die, and our life’s journey will end much like your friend,” said Otter trying to explain life to the Child. “We must live our lives as good souls and take care of our land and love each other for as long as we can.”
The Child looked at Otter with her big innocent eyes full of tears. Otter wiped away her tears and the two went to sleep in her hammock.
Two Travelin' Chicas... 