Nine Months Out

We wake up to a unique chorus every morning. Maybe the combination is Red-faced Spinetail plus Yellow-throated Toucan. Or perhaps Scaled Antpitta plus Zeledon’s Antbird plus Brown Violetear. Plus 30 others, of course. There are so many birds here that every dawn may sound a bit different out of the same window. Then we rise and look out of that window – at a misty mountain forest draped in various shades of green with red, pink, and yellow highlights. Bizarrely shaped inflorescences peek from behind mossy trunks, often so strange and waxy looking that they seem fake. Then, out of nowhere, a Violet-tailed Sylph flashes up and sticks its face into one of those fake-looking flowers, waving its elegant tail around for balance. Always the river roars in the background. There’s no doubt this place is some kind of wonderland.

               Yet, we’re ready to leave. It’s time, not only because our contract is ending, but also because our time out (a term that has new meaning now) has made it painfully obvious what we really want from our life. Emily and I had both bounced around in seasonal jobs a fair bit in the past, but by the time we applied to come to Las Tangaras, we were both sitting comfortably in permanent, “real jobs.” Maybe that scared us. Or maybe we knew that we just needed one last big adventure before we could relax into a steady life. Whatever the motivation, we applied. After getting the offer, we then applied for technician positions in Panama to fill the time before coming here. By now, we’ve been away from the US for 9 months. It’ll be nearly 10 by the time our plane lands back in Washington, D.C. While it’s not true that we wouldn’t change anything about our year, we can confidently say that we feel blessed to be here, having learned what we’ve learned and had a chance to live this way out here in the cloud forest.

               Even though we’ve been gone for 9 months, we haven’t actually travelled much. Besides a few weeks of exploring Panama, most of our time has been spent simply living. Here, in a sense, our job is to inhabit this place. A lived-in house is a house that (hopefully) isn’t falling down. Especially here, in a wooden cabin in an environment that’s hell-bent on eating wood 24/7, someone’s got to be here. We also have grounds to maintain, a lodge to run, and a whole bunch of other small tasks, but the point is that we’re pretty dug in. Maybe that fact has made it obvious that “dug in” is exactly what we want to be. We’ve scratched the Big Adventure itch, and now we’re ready to find a place where we intend to stay – to dig in without the knowledge that, pretty soon, we’ll have to dig back out.

               Without digging in, at least for us, life feels pretty pointless. Not that travel isn’t fun and mind-expanding, but lasting relationships – both with people and places – come from sticking around. Life-enhancing projects are also ruined by excessive movement. Not three days after we got here, I mixed up a brand-new sourdough starter. My last loaf in Ecuador came out of the oven this morning. I’ve also fermented some kraut and ginger beer. But we don’t have the capacity to do much more than that here. Our limitations make us dream of what we can do when we find a place to dig in. Chickens, bees, mead, goats and/or sheep, a lasting garden, canning – the possibilities are endless.

               Thankfully, we know we’ll be leaving the reserve in capable hands. At the 2023 South American Bird Fair, which happened to be in Mindo, we met a great couple currently living in Colombia. We spent the better part of a day with them and got to know them a bit. We had no idea that one month later, we’d be told that they applied to be the new reserve managers and were offered the position! We think they’ll do a great job, and we can’t wait to keep reading the blog to see what they’re up to in the first half of 2024.

               As for us, we’ll hopefully be home during that time, wherever that winds up being. We’ll continue to study the world around us, but with a new appreciation for how big and strange it really is, and how lucky we are to have the chance to make something nice out of some small part of it.