Rain Pigeons

Well . . . actually Red-billed Pigeons, in the rain! But after a great response on my “Rain Trees” post, I may do some more rain-themed posts.  🙂

I was on my terrace waiting on the delivery guy to bring my once-a-week “meal out” now “meal delivered” from Parrillada Androvetto. I usually have a grilled rib-eye steak but tonight (Friday) I tried their grilled Chorizo sausage which was very good and not too spicy. Well, anyway . . .

It was raining pretty hard with all the birds hiding in the big trees under leaves and limbs except this one loving couple, sitting on the power line like it were a nice sun-shiny morning! Of course their overlapping layers of feathers keep their bodies dry, but it still seemed a little unusual to me. Not singing in the rain, though one was grooming. Blurry raindrops are ugly but the birds are kind of cool! Pura vida!

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Red-billed Pigeon
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Red-billed Pigeon
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Red-billed Pigeon

“Umbrella is comfort, rain is life! You must often leave comfort to touch the life!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

¡Pura Vida!

And my Red-billed Pigeon Photo Gallery

Fog

The clouds yesterday were easier to photograph! This is what the late afternoon or early evening looked like – a wall of white 50 meters away – so that you cannot see the mountain or hill in 2 of the shots or the valley in the other shot. There is something mysterious and exciting about fog, though hard to capture in a photo.

“Foggy road is a blessing because it is full of surprises and life is such a road! We are incredibly lucky that we all have an unknowable future!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

 

¡Pura Vida!

Gazing?

When I watch an animal gazing like this I cannot help but wonder, “At what does he gaze?” Us humans tend to think he is looking for food, and maybe he is – but could he not also be gazing at some beauty unseen by me? A Rufous-naped Wren in my Guarumo Tree during my breakfast.

Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.

~Michelangelo
My BIRDS Galleries
or All of my GAZINGS in Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!

May Day Morning Walk

On this cloudy morning I walk up the hill above my house and back at less than an hour with these colorful photos even without sunshine. Nature is everywhere and my favorite way to celebrate “May Day” or May 1.

May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.

~Fennel Hudson

May Day Birds

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May Day Flowers

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May Day Vistas

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I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

~Henry David Thoreau

¡Pura Vida!

WILDFLOWERS – Tennessee & Costa Rica

Okay, yesterday I compared waterfalls so today as I finished my last gallery in the Pre-Costa Rica TENNESSEE Photos gallery, I must do the same with wildflowers. The last gallery for the state of Tennessee is simply Tennessee WILDFLOWERS and again I tried to pick just one photo from each of about 150 species of wildflowers for this gallery with more variety or multiple images in the location galleries where they first appear. The wildflowers were another of the many elements of nature that I enjoyed during my 37 years in Tennessee with an amazing variety!

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Tennessee Coneflower  —  Growing across from my Nashville row house in the Bicentennial Capital Mall State Park where I spent many hours with nature.

And the featured photo at top is on a huge Magnolia tree in the same park near my house. The beauty of nature is everywhere!

-o-

Similarly I have enjoyed the beautiful tropical wildflowers (most of my garden is wildflowers). See my Costa Rica through regional flower galleries in my big gallery of flowers I call FLORA & FOREST Costa Rica. Click and enjoy! I’ve only been here 5 and a half years, but spend most of my time with nature now! Just one of the many reasons I love being Retired in Costa Rica!

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Growing in a ditch along my street uphill from my house. Pura vida!

 

“Do you know why wildflowers are the most beautiful blossoms of all, my son?”

Dain shook his little head.

Soft waxen curls blew forward in the breeze as she lifted her storm-gray eyes to gaze out over the sea of petals. “Wildflowers are the loveliest of all because they grow in uncultivated soil, in those hard, rugged places where no one expects them to flourish. They are resilient in ways a garden bloom could never be. People are the same, son—the most exquisite souls are those who survive where others cannot. They root themselves, along with their companions, wherever they are, and they thrive.”

Micheline Ryckman, The Maiden Ship

 

¡Pura vida!

The Future We Choose

Cristiana Figueres
Cristiana Figueres

We have just entered the most consequential decade in human history. The scientific assessment of climate change suggests this can either be our final hour, or our finest. The Future We Choose is an inspiring manifesto from Global Optimism Co-Founders, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. It explains what’s to come, how to face it and what we can do.

Practical, optimistic and empowering, this is a book for every generation that shows us how we can move beyond the climate crisis into a thriving future.

Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and was the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016. Ms. Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy.

One of the best things you do with your “down time” due to COVID19 is to read this book and participate in saving the earth before it is too late! Celebrate Earth Day 22 April 2020!  FIND THE BOOK HERE or simply do a search in your favorite online book source or ask for it in your favorite physical bookstore.

My friends in the U.S. especially need to read this due to the “rollbacks” of policy or the backward movement on climate change the current president and Republican Party have brought the last few years. It is not too late, but if we don’t start doing something now it soon will be too late! And how you vote does make a difference!

Go Green!

VOTE Blue!

¡Pura Vida!

 

A “Like” from the Author

My review of The Adventurer’s Son got a “Like” from the author, Roman Dial. I finished the book and liked it much even if sad. A guess all of us who venture into the wilds realize the dangers but still go because of the great joys! I would have guessed that in Corcovado he most likely would have died from a deadly snake bite and would never have guessed from a tree falling in a storm – but such are the surprises in the wilderness and in life and death. And I’m glad it was not “foul play” from a bad human as some had thought throughout the story. It was an emotional read.

SEE ALSO: NPR Interview of Author: A Father Recounts His Search For The Son Who Vanished In Costa Rican Wilderness  – There is a short written summary and a 37 minute audio at this link.

Father-son in Bhutan

Guess I’ll now go back to a safe and easy Agatha Christie read now!   🙂

 

¡Pura Vida!

Walking

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast.   

-Paul Scott Mowrer

¡Pura Vida!

Every walk includes flowers!    🙂

“It should be difficult to get lost forever.”

46041442Those were the last words emailed to the parents of Cody Roman Dial as he entered the famous and notorious Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula of south-western Costa Rica on the Pacific coast near the Panama border, July 10, 2014.

I am currently about 85% through the Kindle version of this memoir of the loss of Roman Dial’s son Cody Roman Dial here in Costa Rica the same year I moved here, 2014. It all happened in one of the wildest jungles in Central America, the kind with dangers that attract young men like Cody! From snakes & jaguars to illegal gold miners.

The book is The Adventurer’s Son by Roman Dial, the young man’s father, and it starts slow as a childhood biography of Cody helping you to love the adventurous boy as if you were his parent too. Then later he adds as many details as he had of Cody’s solo adventure hike from Mexico City to South America through Central America as an invincible-feeling 27 year old with enormous experience in the wild since his young childhood, most with his parents or sometimes with just the father, who is a lifetime adventurer, explorer, scientists, college professor and part-time explorer for National Geographic. The young man sort of had a reason to feel invincible in the wild. On his trek he climbed the highest mountain in Mexico, used his Spanish language to relate to locals, did an impossible off-trail hike through the jungles of El Peten, Guatemala and boated through the dangerous La Mosquitia Swamp in Honduras before coming to Costa Rica. All of the above were already amazing feats!

Cody Roman Dial
Cody Roman Dial

Because Corcovado National Park is one of my favorite places in Costa Rica that I have visited 3 times now, I was naturally quite interested in the story and the book.

I will not try to summarize the book or write a full review right now (I’m still reading it), here I give links to public information on the book (the above title link is to the Amazon.com source of the book). Below are three reviews. Plus I have added the reports of the father’s search by our local online newspaper Tico Times and some other news media reports below that. Lastly I have added links to the photo galleries of my three visits to this wilderness national park that took Cody’s life.

 

BOOK REVIEWS:  (1) The Washington Post,   (2) Tico Times,   (3) Goodreads,  (4) My Review on Goodreads, 16 March, added after this post published

SEE ALSO: NPR Interview of Author: A Father Recounts His Search For The Son Who Vanished In Costa Rican Wilderness  – There is a short written summary and a 37 minute audio at this link.

Images from News Articles

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The True Story in Real Time by News Media

TICO TIMES CHRONOLOGICAL ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:

July 28, 2014 – Search continues in Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park for missing US hiker

July 29, 2014 – Red Cross officials suspect missing hiker may be inside gold mining tunnels

August 4, 2014 – Final search underway for US hiker missing in Corcovado National Park    (That is “final” says the CR government agencies.) Not for the father!

August 6, 2014 – Costa Rican gov’t and Red Cross suspend search for US hiker believed missing in Corcovado Nat’l Park

September 17, 2014 – Father of missing hiker hopes to continue search in Panama

May 7, 2016 – Nat Geo mini-series investigates Cody Dial’s disappearance in Corcovado National Park

May 20, 2016 – Human remains in Corcovado could belong to missing US hiker Cody Dial

May 23, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s passport found with human remains in Corcovado National Park

May 27, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s parents submit DNA to investigators

 

Cody Search Map

OTHER CHRONOLOGICAL NEWS ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:

May 23, 2016 – outsideonline.com,  What Happened to Cody Dial? A New Discovery Raises More Questions

December 20, 2016 – Alaska News, Missing Alaska adventurer was killed by falling tree in Costa Rica, his father says

December 21, 2016 – reddit.com, Mystery Solved!

Cody-Belongings Found
Cody’s equipment and passport found with human remains.
Forensic specialists recover remains 2 years later.

There are many more stories online about the mysterious disappearance of Cody Roman Dial and and the ultimate conclusion that he was struck by a tree in a storm and killed in the wilderness of Corcovado National Park, hiking off trail which is against the park rules and hiking without an official guide which is also against the park rules. Sometimes rules are for your own good, but a real adventurer doesn’t always think so.

The book and the live news stories are heartbreaking for parents (I empathize because I’ve lost a child), but this story shows the infrequent yet possible dangers in the wilderness that any adventurer knows are possible. I would personally have thought a poisonous snake more likely there, but even the less likely falling tree is possible, especially in the many storms there.

I remember backpacking solo on Fiery Gizzard Trail in TN with fewer dangers but real dangers anyway. Then one day in 2012 on just a day hike there I stumbled and fell on a rocky mountainous trail and was serious hurt requiring stitches in my head. Maybe a life of adventure is always a gamble to some degree, but many real adventurers feel they must continue the gamble! But, like with so many things for me, I tend to be a moderate, wanting adventure but with more caution than many require, especially the young invencibles!

And yes! I will continue to go to Corcovado National Park (see photos of my 3 visits linked below), but always I go with a guide on an official trail, as tame as that may seem to you Cody’s out there!    🙂    I am basically a risk-adverse adventurer! And yes, that is compromising the very meaning of “adventure,” but I’m an old man who is still alive and still having fun!   🙂

My Comparatively Tame Corcovado Adventures

2018-March-13-17–Danta Corcovado  —  At Los Patos Entrance on above map.

2017 May 1-6 – Drake Bay, Corcovado, Aguila Lodge  —  At San Pedrillo Entrance on above map

2009 January Birding Tour of Costa Rica —  At La Leona Entrance on above map

There are only two other entrances that I have not visited, Sirena & Rio Tigre, but may yet. No planned trips there this year but maybe I go again in 2021.    🙂

 

“Adventure is worthwhile.”    -Aesop

¡Pura Vida!