beginnings

“Are you the sort of person who can turn around when you have nothing left, and find that little bit extra inside you to keep going, or do you sag and wilt with exhaustion? It is a mental game, and it is hard to tell how people will react until they are squeezed.” ― Bear Grylls

Friday morning: I am walking across a beautiful grassy clearing, carrying an armful of limes that I picked from our very own lime tree. In front of me I see a group of butterflies playing in the sunshine, so I stop and watch them. They

fly towards me and for a moment I am surrounded by more than a dozen butterflies. They fly in circles around me, swirling up and around from my bottom to to my top, and then they were gone.

Yes, I get that this sounds ridiculous, but for a moment, I hilariously felt a bit like a Disney princess being greeted by her new land.

Wait for it.

Friday afternoon: We set off to have a ‘proper’ explore of our land. We’ve had a snack and are carrying what we think is enough water. I am wearing rubber boots (to protect me from the snakes) and (thank God) long legged pants for the first time since arriving in Costa Rica nearly 11 months ago.  Although I have a brand spanking new machete, we decide to leave it in the clearing since most of the places we are going are fairly clear, and my husband (quite rightly) doesn’t want me cutting something important off of myself.

A nice little adventure? Not so much.

First of all, it turns out that rubber boots suck. If I had had another footwear option with me, I would have had a Cheryl Strayed moment and pitched the damn things off of the edge of the ravine. Sweaty feet + no socks + downhill climbing = squashed toes, slipping, and zero – ZERO – ability to know where my feet were going to end up in any given moment. At one point I turned around and walked backwards to give my toes a break from being battered.

Apart from my feet, it was all going very well until we got to the end of one of the overgrown but previously cleared trails and realised that we either had to turn back or clear a path through the jungle to the river, (which he had done previously when he walked the land with our real estate agent. They then walked along the river to get out. Easy).

Easy.

So we (he) had to machete our way through dense jungle on a downward slope towards the river. I travelled by slipping from thing he cut down to thing he cut down in order to find a secure footing. At one point as I was clinging to a bit of vine to keep from taking us both out, my darling foodie stops, wipes the sweat from his brow and says, “I think that’s ginger! I can smell ginger.” Bless.

So when we got to the edge of the ravine we found that we were in a different place than he had come out before, and no matter where we tried to go down, the way was just too steep and slippery. I – clever me – found a place that seemed a little less steep than the rest and suggested that we try it. Within one step my rubber boot slipped out from under me and I slid half-way down the hill on my backside. When I looked up at him he – always the calm Brit – said, “maybe we should go another way, can you come back up?”

Didn’t happen. Despite trying my best, I pretty much went the rest of the way down on my ass.

It was at this point that we finished our drinking water.

The river, my friends, is glorious. It’s made up entirely of cascades and rapids and beautiful pools that would be wonderful to swim in when the water is a little higher. It’s truly beautiful. Some of the trees are still primary rainforest trees, so big I couldn’t put my arms around them. It’s magic, pure and simple.

But it wasn’t an ‘easy’ walk.

As it turns out, during the last rainy season, several of the big old trees lost their footing and fell over the ravine into and across the river, almost completely blocking it. We had to scrabble, climb, scale and cave our way through several of them. There was no other way up or out, there was only through. What would have been a twenty minute final bit of the walk was over two hours of extremely hard work – in 90+ degree weather, with no water and no food. It was not good. Not good at all.

I’ve run a half-marathon. This felt worse. We were properly, scarily dehydrated. (And yes, we know now that we probably should have drunk the river water. But we were no longer thinking clearly enough to weigh up the risks.)

Luckily between us we had enough forethought to have bananas, water and a coconut waiting for us when we finally climbed up the bank into the clearing. I have never tasted anything better than that coconut.

I don’t know where all of this is going to go. I don’t know how the story turns out. But I do know that in just one day together the land both welcomed us with its magic and reminded us that it requires respect. I know that I have never been physically closer to my edge than I was on Friday. And I know that I couldn’t wait to get back there today.

I also know that this new life, this land, these plans will not let me get away with being half there. I have to be all in. Prepared. Hydrated. Ready for anything. Awake and participating fully.

Sleeping Beauty just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

This made me think of all of the ways I have not been awake, prepared, or otherwise fully participating in my life. It makes me laugh that it took a river and some trees – it’s often trees – to wake me up.

I can’t wait to see what else this land has to teach me.

xo