That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
~Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886
¡Pura Vida!
Featured photo is a Red-legged Honeycreeper I photographed at Maquenque Lodge in Boca Tapada, Costa Rica where I hope to be again in July if re-opened. 🙂 See more in my Red-legged Honeycreeper Gallery or also my bigger BIRDS Photo Gallery for many more birds. Pura vida!
“There is poetry among the wildflowers’.”
― Rachel Irene Stevenson
Sure! I look for nature everywhere! And noticed yesterday morning when I left the Coffee Shop that the vacant lot across the street had this mass of yellow swished across it. Wildflowers!
Beauty is where you find it! And those trees are kind of nice too! 🙂
“Wildflowers are the stuff of my heart!”
― Lady Bird Johnson
Monday I’m off to Arenal Observatory Lodge in Arenal Volcano National Park with my choice room reserved again – #27 – where my deck looks up at the volcano and out past the bird feeders to Lake Arenal over which the suns sets each evening in brilliant colors!
I was there a year and a half ago and you can see why I like it in my trip photo gallery: 2018-May 4-9 – Arenal Observatory Lodge. It is truly one of my favorite places and I’m beginning to return to such more often now, where there are more birds than I will every photograph! (An “official” birding hot spot.) Plus waterfalls, trails, horses, a farm, beautiful scenery, good food, and a comfortable room with more places nearby to visit. And I will probably relax more this time without the rush of trying to see and do everything the first time! ¡Tranquilo!
“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
On my 4 km walk to town yesterday, on the one steep hill, I came across this sidewalk grasshopper in the featured photo above. (Actually a Cricket – See Comments below. I stand corrected!) 🙂
Sorry I can’t identify him – but that’s not expected here since we have 11,000 species of grasshoppers and crickets in Costa Rica as part of our more than 500,000 total insect species! — More bugs than the U.S. & Canada combined! 🙂 And oh so much fun! See my InsectsGallery or just my Grasshoppers Gallery to stay with today’s theme. I only have photos of 13 of the eleven thousand, so a ways to go in that collection! 🙂
Here’s a fun, educational YouTube Video about our grasshoppers with jokes about how some people in the world eat them, though not Ticos! They do not eat them here like some in Mexico and of course my past home of West Africa. I’ll just stick with photographing them! 🙂
Just another of the many daily encounters with nature while being retired in Costa Rica! Love it! 🙂
“Crowds of bees are giddy with clover Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.”
~Jean Ingelow
¡Pura Vida!
P.S.
I arrive at Hacienda Guachipelín in Rincón de la Vieja National Park mid-day today and may start posting at odd times as things happen on this new and exciting adventure! Or I may try to keep the discipline of one-a-day posted for release at 5 am, which I kind of like. Keep reading the blog for totally new photos and scenery this week. Pura vida!
Click the linked article for one of the most practical list of how to live cheap in Costa Rica – in short it is all about the life-style you choose and I can testify that living without a car not only saves lots of money but is easy and fun here! The article is by Christopher Howard in his “Live In Costa Rica” blog & website – the one who also does a great relocation tour coupled with the ARCR Seminar. Panama may be cheaper, but Costa Rica is a whole lot better! 🙂
Yes – I wake up each morning to the crowing of multiple roosters in the neighborhood, though so used to it that I hardly notice now.
This one is across the street from our Roca Verde Entrance Gate (about 2 blocks away) plus we have two roosters at the gate along with chickens that give our guards some eggs.
I know of no one inside Roca Verde with chickens but many of the homes in our adjacent neighborhood of Boquerón outside our gate have chickens. The roosters will not allow me to get close enough for a good photo with my cell phone which is all I have when walking through Boquerón, thus these grainy shots I cropped in tight. Fun color in the ‘hood!
Rooster across the street from Roca Verde Entrance Gate – one of many!
The children’s nursery rhyme use of “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo” to describe a rooster crowing started in 1606 in this archaic poem says “the Web”:
“Cock a Doodle Doo” Original Version
Cock a doodle do!
What is my dame to do?
Till master’s found his fiddling-stick,
She’ll dance without her shoe.
Cock a doodle do!
My dame has found her shoe,
And master’s found his fiddling-stick,
Sing cock a doodle do!
Cock a doodle do!
My dame will dance with you,
While master fiddles his fiddling-stick,
And knows not what to do!
A very popular name for boys here is Jesús, yes that is Spanish for the English name Jesus but with the Spanish pronunciation and noted accent on last syllable: for you English-only speakers it is pronounced like “yay-sús.” It is not considered sacrilegious to use our Lord’s name as a given name, though some boys and more men tend to use their other given name, possibly because of the religious connotation or I can imagine little boys being kidded or bullied over their name.
Just today I conversed with Jesús twice. My taxi driver to the bus station was named Jesús Alpizar and his spirit and relation to me gave honor to his name which is what he is called by everyone as a young man in Atenas. Then in Alajuela today I went to my wonderful dermatologist named Jesús Roberto Gamboa Arend, who goes by Dr. Gamboa or Dr. Roberto Gamboa (choosing not to be called Jesús). But he too gives honor to his first name in his spirit and ways of relating to me. In addition to being my doctor, he is now my “Tico Travel Buddy” as he too enjoys traveling all over Costa Rica for both the sights and adventures, he with his family (2 children). He is the one who has removed all my skin cancers and is regularly monitoring the many growths I continue to get over my body due to my outdoor sunshine in the past. 🙂
A Break from Blogging
Yes, partly I just need a break from the blog sometimes. And after two trips rather close together, I was sort of tired which I seem to get more now that I’m nearly 80. But I have still been writing or really posting photos on my “static” pages of this website, just slowly. For a few days I added more trips to my Pre-Costa Rica TRAVEL Photo Gallery, particularly some of my many Zoo visits across the states. And thus more to my ZOOS I’ve Visited – Photo Links Index gallery page.
AND I also got motivated to start working some on my FAMILY pages, starting with one of the heaviest, fullest, and most emotional pages, titled Death of Juli 1997. On the Menu under FAMILY – Family of Marriage – LOSSES.
I had already dealt with my dozens of scrapbooks from over the years in my bio books mostly, but I still have two full “scrapbooks” I called Juli Doggett Memorial Book 1 and Book 2. The soft pink covers are perfect for her but two more things I don’t have room for and what would anybody do with them when I die? So I am scanning most of what is in the two binders for perpetuation on the web for at least now (not finished scanning).
And one page from these books is the poem I wrote the day after her funeral. The photo of her was the last decent or useable photo I had made of her back in April ’97 on one of our weekend trips from Columbia, this one at Falls Hollow on the Natchez Trace Parkway in front of a waterfall. (And I know! She needed a haircut! But we were busy!) 🙂
This week’s death of Nature Poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), and article about her in Washington Post, plus reviewing her poems led me to her “Journey” which in some ways describes what I was unable to describe in my 2014 “Decision Process” I called it then, of getting away from the depressing world of conservative Middle Tennessee, the clouds of a failed marriage and subsequent loss of family, branches and stones in my path of a vocational “calling” manipulated by power-hungry “rulers” ending unceremoniously first in 1999 and finally by 2002 in unplanned early retirement. In a daze . . .
I’ve always tried to “make lemonade out of lemons” and I turned my retirement into an adventure of nature travel and photography as much as I could afford, including visits to all 54 state parks in Tennessee with a book about that, A Walk in the Woods, along with many other nature/travel books and my growing nature photo gallery. But I was still looking for something else.
Moving from the vibrant life of rowhouse living in downtown Nashville to a suburban “Independent Living Retirement Home” was still not what I was looking for.
It was to commune closer with nature, to travel in natural exotic places that my limited income could not afford, then suddenly it hit me, why not move to one of the nature places in which I love to travel and just live there?
With only 2 family members left and no grandchildren, it was easier for me than some people to make such a life-changing move! And now I see it described in a new way in this poem by Mary Oliver:
