Love and Gratitude

Barring the most heroic of journeys, Mt.Everset and Kiliminjaro included, and more inclined toward the trials endured by your average intrepid voyager, airports and the myriad ways of discomfort and delay they are adept at administering by the resulting  demand to our practice of patience and fortitude, surpass the most challenging of situations.

We have arrived safely, contentedly, and nourished in ways we are still yet to know, back to Ashland. Spring arrived during our departure, and we are welcomed back by blooming daffodils, quince, flowering almond, camellia, and in my opinion, the queen of this time of year’s heavenly scents, daphne odora. Our hearts rejoiced in grateful union to the snow pack and swollen rivers we viewed from the metal bird that carried us.

It will be a long while before the taste of agua pipa ( fresh cold coconut water) leaves our memory. However, regardless of what earthly pleasure we might be embracing at any given moment, our shared quiet and often laughter-filled delicious harmony is what has penetrated most deeply into my heart.

Sophia, David, and I created a place of mutual consideration and beauty only to match that which resided around us in both the natural and social environment. We found that Pachamama responded to our peaceful heart song by sharing openly her countless ways of exquisite expression at the places we visited. The people that we encountered responded to our joint mirth with ease and acceptance.  We treated each other with baskets and urns and botellas full of the same, of course, and slipped easily into a soft, malleable configuration of ways to travel and stay and play and dance and cook and eat and sing and breathe together.

Sophia ventured forward to continue her quest with another member of our ever growing family, Ari. After traveling  all together to the border crossing at Los Chiles C.R., we bid them farewell to enjoy the boat ride along a small river gliding through the jungle that would eventually take them to the town where David and I ventured together last year, San Carlos, Nicaragua.

That David and my intended plans for Bali and Australia ended in Costa Rica with Sophia and me doing ceremony together and deepening our ever-growing adoration of each other, and then the three of us  traveling together culminating with the additional light that is Ari, speaks to the path of the heart that is always choosing the correct course, the course of highest intention, regardless of what we think we are doing or where we believe we are going.

This pathway of highest intention, of course, is borne of, resides within, and expresses outwardly through gratitude and love, love and gratitude.  We watched a beautiful video while we were gone called “Water”, which showed among other many beautiful aspects of water its capability for response to even written words of positivity or negativity.  The clarity of both color and crystalline structure bespeaks the way that we humans also respond.  The conclusion of the film spoke of all of the gifts that water bestows upon us and  that all it asks in return is “love and gratitude”.  How perfectly clear and simple!  Water is such a great teacher for pathways and flow.  Be like water, she says.  We respond with love and gratitude.

H-Om

Wherever I travel my destination is always the same. Home.

I look for it during my daily forays into my repeated attempts to simply listen without my  mental chatter interrupting the divine choir around me. I yearn to be 100% present to the howler monkeys' call. To receive with full awareness even the most subtle songs. The wind gently kissing the leaves.. Yes, kissing. You must know that nature is one enormous ode to love.

I search in my wanderings for an exquisitely simple place.  Each dip and dive into the Pacific, a river, or a lake that has caressed my being aids in the purification toward ridding myself of anything that is not of my uncompromised essence. Walking through the jungle and seeing an unknown flower for the first time allows me to experience that moment as completely new and helps me to remember that truth, lest I ever become complacent in my awareness of the gratitude I owe to life for my life. It is through my aliveness that I am able to feel awe and wonder at creation.

What I seek is simply to see vividly with eyes unhindered by automatic labeling which degrades the magnificent splendor of butterflies, hummingbirds, toucans, red macaws, rosette spoonbill and the roosting tree where hundred of egrets go to their communal dreams.

I love the way traveling, in the way we do, allows me to adopt the rhythms of the land and its people. It teaches me another way of being that encourages spaciousness. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure I’m not because smiles are a universal sign of happiness that the people here are way more laid back with less stress in their lives. It’s a relief and pleasure to be surrounded by a culture that has “pura vida” (pure life) as its greeting. I learn how to take my time in making decisions. I practice feeling what is around me to guide my decision making. I practice spaciousness so that I have room to breathe deeply which helps me expand my awareness.

Similar to the vision quest where one journeys not to have holy communion, which one certainly does, but to take the gifts received and bring them back to your people, I travel to rejuvenate, learn, and grow so that I can be and do my best.

I travel so that I can return to my home which has never been anywhere else than my own heart.

Okay, you caught me. If you know me, you know that the true reason I do anything is to fulfill my pursuit of joy. Maybe as I get older the inner callings will turn my attention more inward but for now I am admittedly a hedonist for sensory pleasure. Bring it on: sights, aromas, tastes, sounds, a million feeling sensations, the wind kissing my cheek.

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Lake Arenal

Two days before flying out of Juan Santamaria Airport, we see our first howlers of this journey when we stop at a group of cabinas owned  by a Swiss woman named Erica at a fresh, breezy, garden-enclosed knoll above Lake Arenal.  The following morning the howlers joined David in his orgasmic yawp, though we didn’t see them again until a couple  of hours later when Sandy stood up and wordlessly disappeared.  I’ve taken that to mean that she has been called out by nature.  She explained later that there was the cuuuuutest little howler infant being cuffed around by its mom, but I’m sure that the original reason was that she was simply drawn outside to feel the presence of the trees.

 In honor of my buddy Robbin and his eternal quest for finding the best breweries that combine great beer with outdoor sports, we’ve booked a lakeview room for the night at a local microbrewery that bills itself as “The best (and only) microbrewery hotel in Costa Rica”.  We’ve already sampled their excellent breakfast coffee and look forward to trying their prize-winning pale ale. 

This blog is currently coming to you from a tree-shaded hammock beside Lake Arenal, where we finished off last night’s delectable pizza from Gutierrez Family Pizzeria in Tronodora.  We are enjoying the chortle of oropendulae in the orange-blossomed poro tree across this small inlet whose view reminds us of Emigrant Lake until the howlers start branch-waving and ooh-oohing across the way. The frogs chorus in with the cicadas and cricket blending as well.  All on a field of blues and greens.  Meanwhile a great egret gracefully, but ever so slowly lifts a foot and extends it smoothly with barely a ripple, hunting along the edges for quick-darting morsels. 

We go for a leisurely swim in the refreshingly cool waters, forgetting that Lake Arenal’s altitude combines with the brilliant reflection off of the water to create a bit of a sunburn.  So I go to dinner later that evening with a face glowing from the sun and the beauty of my surroundings, a face glowing with love.

 

Divine Weaver by Sophia Jones

Above our heads 

A gateway to the infinite is waiting

Patiently the moon shines 

Demanding attention only from those who are willing to face the night.

The darkness consumes 

Form a memory forgotten by shapes that have dissolved into 

Something more than self 

More than you or me 

Eternity lingers 

Patiently Waiting for fear to step aside 

Goddess of the moon 

 now we have awakened 

In this darkness we have surrendered 

To your light within ourselves 

That shines in complete harmony 

With the night we have embodied

Divine feminine -weaver of the fabric of life

Thank you for wrapping us tenderly in your web of space and time

We honor you as our sanctuary of renewal, peace, and stillness

We see you as the child, mother and crone 

Who nurture our subtlest energies

We give thanks to the moon

Celebrating her divinity within ourselves

By honoring her undulations 

Waxing, waning

We too wane within- complete surrender to the formless 

We honor our own temple with sacred revelation 

And we wax - overflowing with energy we reflect the light back to the earth 

So that even in the womb of night 

Light and dark intertwine in complete balance. 

Envision or Invasion?

After the Singing Alive weekend, we spent a couple of days of energy recovery and relative solitude prior to heading down to the Envision Festival where we would be encamped surrounded by 7000 festival goers, often with a scant few inches between tents.

  Sandy and I were conservative in our approach, reserving time each day to escape the throngs by  walking up the beach far enough to  find a quiet place or taking a taxi to the waterfalls above Uvita, and climbing high enough above the main pools to find a smaller pool that we shared with toucans and freshwater shrimp, but only the occasional festival goer who had wandered our way, usually with the same intention (of finding a more quiet place to enjoy the river).  Hence, after a dip in our pool, and perhaps a short conversation, they each continued upstream to find their own quiet pool.

This energy renewal allowed us to fully jump into the festivities daily, but especially on Saturday and Sunday nights when the festival lineup was at its juiciest.  Sandy and Sophia's friends from  Guaria joined us at our camp, bringing with them a Boruca elder, Don Memo and his granddaughter, Sandra. Sandy and I took Sandra under wing for an incredible night of dancing on Saturday, creating a tribal dervish  space of whirling, interactive bodies within the crowd of listeners and dancers to Beats Antique, the band at the Sol Stage.  We danced to every song in the 1 1/2 hr. set, then found a DJ at the Lapa Stage who had the mob jumping, so we created space again and resumed the energized revelry.  We finished out the night about 2:30 or 3:00 after returning to the Sol Stage for Santos and Zurdo, a spectacle of pole clinbing and cloth crawling among Latin-infused rocktronica where we again refused to quit dancing until after the final encore.

Sunday night began in a slower fashion.  Once again, Sandra and Sandy and I forayed into the crowd  at the Sol Stage, finding space close in, and readying ourselves to dance.  However beautiful the musicality of Elephant Revival, though, it didn't inspire the type of dancing that we were ready for, Sandra and I, so Sandy sent us packing, allowing her to find rhythm that we weren't privy to.  I went back to the camp for some hammock time to ready myself for the next band, Dirtwire.  Once again, Sandy found the connection with the music, but Sandra and I wanted something faster  than the swaying that we found around us in the milieu, so we exited.  However, I hadn't stayed up until midnight to be a non-participant, so I walked Sandra to the camp, infused my brain with some meditative breathing, and returned to the fray to dance to Dirtwire.  The breathing technique worked its magic, and I stepped into the rhythm of Dirtwire's final number and several of their encores.  Those few songs helped bring me to a space of acceptance and open-mindedness for the next band, Dimond Saints, on the Luna Stage.

They turned out to provide the perihelial dance event for the two of us. We wended our way slowly back to the camp, wanting both sleep and dance, with no clear course as to which would win out.  But the festival goers would be leaving that morning in hordes or red taxis and  private cars, queuing up to return rental tents, and retrieving valuables from the secure lockers,  so our plan was to arise  at 5:00, grab coffee, and decide whether to break camp or go dance to the Human Experience on the Luna Stage at sunrise.  Practicality won out.  After coffee, we broke camp, turned in tents, retrieved valuables, and were ready when one of the Guaria friends, Scott, collected us to give us a short ride up the coast  in his rental car to our next accommodations in Matapalo Beach.