I’m just not sleeping well.
My pillow feels lumpy. The wind roars and gusts loudly, incessantly. A dog barks every night. Is the dog okay? Where is he? Why is he barking?
Lack of sleep is not helping my emotional fragility at all.
And then the alarm clock goes off at 4:50 AM, just as I’m finally, blessedly, drifting off into an exhausted sleep. Too bad, time to get up.
We were in the Santa Elena Reserve near Monteverde, a beautiful amazing dense cloud forest of trees covered with mosses covered with epiphytes dangling with vines covered with ferns covered with mosses covered with epiphytes.
A green riot of life. Santa Elena Cloud Forest
Plants grew on top of other plants, vines wound around tree trunks, ferns choked the hillside, mosses sprouted from thin air. Don’t stop walking! A vine might grab you, a moss might take root.
Not only was Dakota navigating, he was driving.
Martin and I were pretty much at his mercy when he announced, “I think there might be a birding preserve up here somewhere!” and swerved off the highway.
We were again on dirt roads leading to who-knew-where, jouncing along while Dakota the Navigator monitored his neck hairs and the earth’s magnetic field for which way to turn. The road, wide and well-graded at first, went on and on. It didn’t lead to any birding preserves, of course, but through the Costa Rican backcountry, with funky little houses and fields full of cows or crops, past the occasional little store selling soda. Dakota turned here and there onto secondary roads as his neck hairs dictated, and the road narrowed, the grading worsened.
Truly. Here we go. Again.