Enough time has passed that I can admit my trip to Costa Rica was me running away from my problems. So much hit at once, and I decided the only logical response was to channel my inner Thoreau and run off to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Most of the trip was spent in hostels and BNBs in the middle of town, but I did spend three weeks of that trip at an isolated cabin in the middle of the jungle.
Other than biking to town for groceries and going out for hikes, I spent those three weeks almost entirely in the yard. I’d wake up to the calling of Howler monkeys, make a cup of coffee, and sit on my porch and watch in awe as all sorts of mammals, birds, and insects passed through my yard. I saw something mindblowing every day. Every day around sunset, a Chestnut-mandibled toucan would perch atop the 100+ft tree in my yard and call out for a mate. Near the end of my stay, he appeared one evening with a lady friend. I never knew how invested I could become in the love-life of a toucan until that night.
At night, once the yard lit up under the light of fireflies, I’d go searching for nocturnal life. I saw something that blew my mind each night. I watched a Unicorn mantis stalk beetles the size of my palm, lines of ants so thick they looked like snakes, and plenty of actual snakes as well. On the nights with heavy rain, all I could hear was Tree-frog calls. Too many to pinpoint any one individual, so I’d wait silently until I could spot one hopping from branch to branch, and move in to catch it for a brief photoshoot.
When I wasn’t exploring the yard, I was reading, writing, and meditating. I learned more about myself in those three weeks than I had in the prior five years since graduating high school. I truly thought I would come home with the newfound wisdom to face the problems that caused me to leave.
I was wrong. Almost immediately, I fell back into the exact same patterns from before I left. But it was even harder to bear, being juxtaposed with such an amazing prior experience. I knew how amazing life could be, but was stuck existing outside of that.
I was living alone, retreating, and attempting to finish my second-to-last semester of an Environmental Studies degree online. Let me tell you, it is impossible to be an optimist about the future of the planet when your full time job is to learn about how fucked we are. At one point a professor mentioned that even if we go carbon neutral today, the delayed effects of carbon dioxide will still be enough to take out the coral reefs. At that point, I left the lecture and started looking up plane tickets to the Great Barrier Reef.
In just over two weeks, that’s where I’m headed. I have a one year Australian working Visa, and I intend to backpack around the coast for that year, picking up farm jobs and volunteering for room and board as needed. I’m flying into Cairns, where I’ll take that fleeting chance to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. Then I’ll head up to the Daintree Rainforest to try my luck at finding endangered species like the Southern cassowary and Tree kangaroo. I want to see as much as I can while it’s still there to see.
Wildlife watching to me is recalibrating. It brings this cathartic, spiritual feeling I’ve always struggled to articulate. I’m so lucky to have found something in my life that I’m totally in love with. This past year, I’ve been slapped in the face with so many reminders of how fragile life is. It’s time for me to get into the driver’s seat, and make the most of my limited time. Costa Rica taught me that the only way to escape that constant fear of what the future holds is to live in the present.
I’m not sure how often I’ll post here. I told a lot of people that I’d be posting daily while in Costa Rica, and ended up posting a total of once, so I’ll hold off on the grand statements this time around. Once I leave Edmonton, my friends and family will have nobody left to ramble incessantly at them about birds. I know you all love when I do that, so hopefully this site can serve as a way to keep everyone up to date. Thanks for reading!
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
– Henry David Thoreau
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