Remembering Arenal

I think next time I go on a vacation I'll do a better job of Not Waiting 2 Months To Blog About It. 

--A Brief Pause--

I think one of the reasons I've been so sick of writing about this trip is because I haven't been able to write very creatively.  I've been so preoccupied with giving all the details, "And then we went here, and there," not only to give the 3 people who read this an accurate account, but to give myself a good record of our events, that I haven't been as excited to write.  I'm going to switch it up a bit.  I hope you don't mind.

--Unpause--

I'm a collector of experiences.  I'm also forgetful as hell.  When I'm on vacation my eyes are wide; I am willing myself to take everything in, to remember, to not forget a moment.  I panic when I have to decide between capturing a moment on camera, or seeing it with my eyes--one is more reliable, one is more authentic.  

I'm certain that I will not forget this Tuesday in January of our Costa Rica trip.  From my first sight of the famous hanging bridges

to seeing a baby viper curled up under the branch of a tree, to the appropriately-named "walking palm"

(named for its uncanny ability to pull up its old roots and plant new roots, walking along to get better sunlight, a competition in the canopy, a rainforest wonder)

to the way our guide was just so introvertedly passionate about the rainforest, because even though he's probably given hundreds of walking tours of the Arenal area, he still has a sense of curiosity and wonder at the surroundings, and at the rare toucan that lives in the rainforest, that, in 2014 with our technologies and brilliant minds, we still have no idea what its nest and eggs look like.  

To the green, everywhere.  When I was in sixth grade we had a writing exercise to try and verbally explain colors to people who had never seen them.  Aysia Platte said that pink was like biting into a strawberry, and none of us could come up with anything half as good.  If I may attempt, over ten years later, to try to explain that green is warm and misty, green is a forest rain, the gentle humid hum of life, a color you can feel growing around you, vibrant and moving, diverse, lush, elemental.

We experienced the rainforest from the ground and the sky--zip lining high above the highest canopy, past the volcano, by the lake, through the trees, the green trees, the metallic screech of the line in my ears and the wind blowing my eyes to tears, wide open, wide open.  Remembering.  It's funny what your brain holds onto, because when I think about zip lining, a single thought surfaces above the rest.  There were backwards glances at the volcano, the constant mantra of not forgetting, but largely I has a feeling of smallness.  I felt so small, a dot above the world.

I am hanging, on a cord, above it all, and I am so small, I thought. 

When people try to explain the vastness of the world, they tend to start with you, or a grain of sand, or something, and exponentially multiply and multiply, like Billy Collins' Questions About Angels, they try to make us run out of numbers and collapse into infinity.  But perhaps, like Collins' picturesque dreamer, the answer to understanding the largeness of the world is one--one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet.  One girl high above the canopy, swaying in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed. 

[there were 8 runs on our zip line.  this was the last one.  i did not make this.]