hortelana

04 June 2009 @ 06:45 pm

I'm still working on the schedule that has me prepping for my internet visit all week, not just Wednesday night or Thursday afternoon (which is when the library stays open after farm working hours). So unfortunately this space has remained rather blank. Here, finally is an update -- a few snapshots of farm life from the past two months (!).

As we were setting up for my first market I felt as though I was about to take a test I hadn't studied enough for: I hadn't really EATEN any of the lettuce we grow and I didn't know the tomato varieties. And of course I knew that I was going to have to talk to people. Lots of people. I was going to have to initiate conversation with person after person. Yikes. I told myself to be a brave little engine. It turns out that most people at a farmers market are quite willing to make eye contact and smile, which is always a confidence booster. Many people were clearly regulars (which I also felt a little awkward about... I wasn't sure what to do, since I didn't know any of them) and knew what kind of lettuce they wanted. Other people might not have been regulars but had made a decision about which lettuce they thought was most beautiful. And the lettuces are beautiful. You know how the flower booths at market are always gorgeous -- they are their own best advertisement. Well, lettuce is almost as good as flowers. A table covered with 7 kinds of lettuce in various shapes and colors is gorgeous. It sucks people in. Then were the people who couldn't make up their minds, who were simultaneously the most fun (more conversation) and most nerve-wracking (I hadn't studied enough). I conducted lettuce-tastings and tried to find the right words to describe lettuce texture. I had a lot of fun -- watching all the different people go by, smiling at lots of people. Even talking to people was fun. I had a good time.

This morning we pruned and trained tomato plants. I realized that I really enjoy that task. I have been excited about pruning tomatoes because it is a task I have never done well, and it is fun both to learn how to do it and to actually make it happen. The tomato house will probably become more jungly as the season goes on, but for now it is so tidy. Training the regular tomatoes is pretty straightforward, but the cherry tomatoes are like solving a puzzle. So I knew that some tomatoes are determinate, which means that they form a bush and then stop growing. Some tomatoes are indeterminate, which means that the main stem keeps growing up and up indefinitely. On those tomatoes it is good to remove all the suckers (side branches), leaving one main stem to go up and produce flowers/fruit. Apparently on cherry tomatoes, though, the suckers also produce a lot of fruit, or the main stem stops producing fruit -- anyway, you're supposed to leave some suckers on. This inevitably produces a jungle. So the process of pruning them is to tease apart the tomato knot and figure out what's going on with the main stems that have been left thus far, and then to prune selectively to find a balance between having lots of fruit and being able to pick it later without being hopelessly entangled in tomato vines. It's a process of controlling chaos. And pruning tomatoes overall is a process of turning an overgrown mess into tidy, happy plants. (Maybe they aren't immediately happy because they've been trimmed, but they get to stop falling over and shading themselves out.) I think that one of my favorite things about working on a farm is that it is now my job to do, well, all the things that I did in my garden, often badly or incompletely, for years.

There have been several moments where I've really realized that I'm on a farm, not just a glorified garden. The 30 flats of lettuce per week -- seeding the new ones, thinning the young ones, planting the teenage ones out. The 700+ row feet of potatoes we planted. That was a lot of potatoes. The first plowed field that was as big as my parents' acre backyard. I looked at all that turned-over dirt and thought, wow, we're going to fill this with food. Of course, probably 5 times that space is now planted or ready to plant. Sometimes it is overwhelming -- the onions we were planting on Monday seemed absolutely endless. Farming is hard work but I'm enjoying it. At the end of most every day I feel really good about how much I did in the day. It's nice to be able to see the results of all that work so concretely: bare dirt turns into rows of transplants, or the rows of radishes reappear from amidst the weeds. We'll see if I'm having this much fun in August -- the whole point of spending a season on a farm is to find out whether it is something I would want to do full-time long term. I still suspect that the answer is likely to be yes, though of course there are a lot of options within farming.

Tags: farm

Current Location: Oakville library

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23 April 2009 @ 07:52 pm

quickly before the library closes...

There are some photos of the farm on Flickr under the name hortelana.

I would link elegantly to the site but it would take too much time.

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17 March 2009 @ 10:26 am

It's alive!

I am returned from the jungle! (I've been returned for about 2 weeks, actually, but I've been slow about getting in touch with people.) Overall, I had a wonderful time traveling, but I was also happy to return home. A few more highlights of my trip include:

The Caribbean Coast, which I hadn't seen before. The Caribbean seems to behave differently than the Pacific -- the waves break much more erratically and the beaches that I saw were narrow. I suppose that's because the tides are the opposite of extreme (also strange). My favorite thing was probably the canoe tour of Tortugero National Park -- drifting through the water was such a great way to watch birds. We saw tons of herons. The tiger herons, which are about 5 feet tall and more husky than a great blue heron, were nesting, and we saw them displaying (I think their name comes from the growling sound they make. If that's not what their name comes from, it should) and also saw a nest with chicks. The chicks look like they need a comb.

I spent a couple of nights in Alajuela (Alajuela is to San Jose as Beaverton is to Portland, sort of) so that I could go to a museum in San Jose and also go to Sarchí, which is where they paint oxcarts. I think Sunday was not the best day to go to Sarchí. A lot of the small workshops I saw were closed, making it difficult to avoid the feeling of stumbling into a giant tourist trap. The one workshop where they were actually painting oxcarts was a huge place full of seniors who had arrived on tour buses. The rows and rows of oxcarts (in sizes to fit any budget) and the crowds of US tourists were frightening. A highlight, however, was that the town fiesta (basically a cheesy carnival) was going on while I was there, and so in the stadium there were all these flaking carnival rides and Ticos were wandering the streets with cotton candy. One of the rides -- one in the round and round a "hilly" track -- was in the shape of a woman in a ball gown spinning around and around. The cars were at the edge of her full twirling skirt. Her arms were outstretched and she looked... well, not happy. I thought it was hilarious. On the bus ride back to Alajuela I talked to the Tica in the seat next to me. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a ton of conversational practice in Spanish during my trip (though I can easily order dinner in Spanish) and so it was a little hard to understand her. The other thing I've noticed is that I'm not very good about asking to repeat people all the time when I'm not 100% sure that I know what they said. So I think (in retrospect) that part of our conversation went like this:

   Her: Are you traveling by yourself?
   Me: Well, I graduated from the university last June.

Nope, not fluent yet.

Since I've been home, I've been trying to get my photos in order (with every intention of putting some of them online, really), tidying up loose ends, having vehicular adventures (that story will probably come soon) and getting ready for my job, which starts April 1. I'll be moving up to Oakville, Washington (between Olympia and Centralia) to work on a farm, hooray! I'm really excited to be farming, and I'm happy that the farm is in a central location that will allow me to visit Seattle and other Northwest locations during the summer. Working on a farm is the thing I wanted to do this year, and I'm so happy that despite the fact that I put off applying for internships until I left the country, everything worked out. (I do not recommend this approach if you can avoid it.)

Current Location: The Yellow House

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26 February 2009 @ 05:14 pm

Got Fruit?

Do you like peeling dried glue off your fingers? If so, have I got the fruit for you.

I was sitting on the porch of my hotel in Tortugero this Monday morning with my book* when I couple of Tico guys came through the courtyard and set up some stuff at the other end of the porch. Soon after, the 2 women who run the hotel came out and sat on the edge of the porch. What followed were a lot of thumps, a lot of Spanish sentences involving the word ¨rama¨ (branch), and laughter. At first I was mystified, but then I remembered seeing birds eating the fruit of a tree in that area. Apparently people eat the fruit, too.

One of the women came over and gave me a shiny, green and purple fruit slightly larger than an apple. She told me the name, which I promptly forgot despite asking her to repeat it. She also kindly told me how to eat it, which was good because I had no idea what it was.

I hauled out my petite leatherman and cut into the fruit. Immediately, white juice started oozing in the cut. I removed a small triangle and tasted the purple flesh, which was sweet and delicious. Kind of like cantaloupe, but with extra creamy tropical flavor. I cut another piece. Ooh, a slimy translucent section. Rubbery. Delicious. The part that I found really strange was that even though the fruit looked conventionally water-based, milky sap was oozing out of it. The trouble is that I associate milky sap with, hmmm, dangerous things (e.g. Euphorbia sap, which can burn skin).

I ate the fruit anyway, enjoying the unique medley of textures and getting white sap all over my hands and face. Just like I always get glue everywhere when I'm gluing things. (Well, not so much on my face.) The sap dried like rubber cement into a sticky coating that could be peeled off and rolled into little balls. I went up to my bathroom to de-stickify and observed a thin ring of white around my lips. Move over milk mustache -- fruit mustaches are much more durable.

[Addendum. I asked the name one more time and this time it stuck: caimito. Wikipedia can tell you more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysophyllum_cainito ]

* My book is El club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It is a 400-page Spanish novel that I have tried to read 4 or 5 times. I fist started reading it during my homestay in Spain (2003) but didn't have time to finish it. Since then, I haven't made a concerted effort to read it -- my Spanish hibernates when I'm not actually using it, so it would take dedicated blocks of time to read this book when I'm at home. I'm almost halfway through the book with 4 days left in Costa Rica (plus plane ride). I'm not sure I'll finish it before I get home, but I'm determined to finish it on this attempt -- I really want to know how it turns out!

Current Location: Cahuita, Limón, Costa Rica (Costa Caribe)

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11 February 2009 @ 02:56 pm

camarones

In case you didn't know, I'm in Costa Rica again. It was a pretty quick decision -- short planning period -- but someone offered me a plane ticket and I was feeling kind of stalled at home so I decided to go on an adventure. For the last 2.5 weeks I've been helping with biological research in streams on the Pacific Slope -- in the same town that I was in for my class 2 years ago (never thought I'd be back there...), and now I have 2.5 weeks to travel on my own (eep). At least my Spanish has come back to me!

The research was focused on some really cool shrimp that live in small forest streams. They have a life history kind of like salmon: the eggs are laid high in the streams at the beginning of the rainy season and the larvae wash down to the mangrove swamps. The larvae have a limited amount of time to reach salt water to continue their development. Then, when the shrimp are a few centimeters long, they walk back up the streams (during the dry season) to spend the rest of their lives there. Yes, walking up the stream involves both long distances (I think it's 30 kilometers to the coast as the crow flies) and climbing waterfalls. Adult shrimp can grow to be 15 centimeters long (not including claws) -- they are big (pictures will hopefully come later, with all those other pictures I also haven't posted). They're big enough to look tasty, and sure enough, they're hunted for food. It's legal to harvest enough shrimp for personal/family use using non-toxic methods (I've heard that a local man goes out into the rivers at night with his machete and whacks the shrimp when he sees their eyeshine. Wow.) Unfortunately, the other way that they are hunted is to pour poison (an insecticide) into the river. You might ask what kind of short-sighted person pours a bunch of poison in a stream in order to harvest food out of it. Well, yeah, that's a good question. The poison is intended for invertebrates, but can cause birth defects in people. My understanding is that people who poison rivers to get shrimp are not generally eating the shrimp themselves. They are selling the shrimp to other people. Which is illegal. I guess the only conclusion I can come to is that if someone is unscrupulous enough to poison a stream in the first place, they are unscrupulous enough to sell the shrimp to unsuspecting consumers, and if you're illegally buying shrimp there's not a lot of honesty anyway.

My job for the last two weeks has been to record numbers and look for snakes. Snakes put a real damper on hiking in the jungle, let me tell you. They're a pain. We saw quite a few, both in the day and in the night. Shrimp are more active at night and also easier to see (for counting purposes) because of their pink eyeshine (pink rhinestones underwater, I'm telling you – it's weird). We also set traps on some nights in order to catch shrimp. The traps are quite clever – they are made of netting covering a spiral of wire, so you can squish them flat to store them. There's an opening at each end, with a funnel of netting. The shrimp walk into the funnel, lured by the scent of cat food, and fall out the end down into the main cylinder. Then, because the exit is suspended in the middle of the tube, they can't get out (unless they succeed in destroying some of the stitching around the access zipper or the cat food pouch). We come back the next morning to measure and mark the shrimp. The mark is a bit of fluorescent latex injected into their tail. Then we trap again in the same place on a subsequent night, and using some assumptions about the population and a lot of statistics, the ratio of marked/unmarked shrimp in the re-capture allows for an estimate of the population size.

If you don't think I have your address (I think I have the address of most of the people who would read this, but I'm not sure) and want the possibility of receiving a postcard, you should send me your address.

Pura vida!

Current Location: Monteverde, Puntarenas, Costa Rica

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01 November 2008 @ 05:26 pm

a fond hope

I have the fond hope that someday I will have the chance to vote FOR a presidential candidate (or any other political candidate, for that matter) because I am excited about his/her policies and confident that he/she is competent and trustworthy instead of continually voting against a candidate because I am convinced that she/he is worse than the other option.

Tags: politics

Current Location: The Yellow House

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22 July 2008 @ 05:20 pm

The baby cow sucks.

This is my third summer working as a field assistant for intertidal ecologists. My first summer was on the Olympic Peninsula, working in the rocky intertidal. This is my second summer on the Long Beach Peninsula working in the muddy intertidal of Willapa Bay. I help with projects involving oysters, which are cultured extensively as a crop in the bay, and eelgrass, which is a flowering plant which lives submerged in salt water. For my job, I count a lot of things and move eelgrass around (I sometimes think of it as tideflat gardening) and measure eelgrass and build cool contraptions out of PVC and put out cool instruments that measure characteristics of the water (salinity, chlorophyll concentration, etc.) or the speed and direction of the water flow. It's so fun to be out here for a second year because I get to learn even more about the projects in progress and also to get to know the bay over a longer period of time. Also, I work with some of my favorite people.

On the peninsula, we live in a house belonging to the professor who heads the lab. She's on sabbatical this year with her family; it's both good and bad to be here without them. They're great people, and we miss them and their expertise, but at the same time life is simpler without a 2 year old around... The house is on about 5 acres, most of which is pasture (the peninsula grows great grass). There's also a large garden, which has produced peas, radishes, onions, potatoes, beets, lettuce, carrots, kale, chard, strawberries, cilantro, and dill so far this year. The garden is in much better shape than last year – there are times when I go out to work in the garden and can't really find anything to do (not an experience I've ever had before in any garden. I suppose it helps to have 4 people caring for it). We have 2 chickens, which either are not laying eggs or are very good at hiding eggs in the tall grass. In back, there are 10 goats (including the cute baby that was born this summer) and a calf that are cared for by some neighbors from down the road. There is also one horse. It's pretty awesome to live with animals without being responsible for them – we get all the pleasure of watching them, including the goats playing on their new see-saw toy. The first time that they climbed on it was pretty hilarious. They would climb to the highest point, but of course as they climbed they eventually tipped the see-saw and would scamper/fall off with a perplexed expression (yes, rampant anthropomorphism).

The cow is really a baby – it arrived here when it was just two days old, acquired from a milk farm that was going to put it down because it's a male. For the first few days it was just a cow-colored lump that occasionally mooed. Now it's wandering around and interacting some with the goats. I went in and said hello to him the other day. I offered him my hand, which he subsequently tried to eat. OK, so that's not really accurate. He doesn't have any teeth yet, and I'm sure he was really hoping that milk would begin coming out if he sucked hard enough. Wow, could that cow generate suction. I was impressed. And then my hand was covered in cow slobber. However, since it doesn't absorb water, (unlike slug slime), it was no big deal.

Current Location: Ocean Park, WA

Current Music: Richard Shindell

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22 July 2008 @ 04:11 pm

There's this mail, see, by which physical objects are transported through space...

It has taken a long time for me to admit it, but I am a lousy correspondent. Much as I want to write to people, I am bad at moving non-business letter writing up my priority list far enough to make it happen. I have the best intentions – I am always on the verge of writing some 50 e-mails and getting all caught up. I'm hoping that now that I'm out of college, which was a life-consuming experience for me, I will acquire better correspondence habits. This summer is not the best time to start, as I'm living somewhere without internet access (I have to go to a coffee shop or the library to check my e-mail) and, frankly, sitting down with a computer when it's sunny and beautiful outside and the garden needs weeding is not particularly compelling for me. The world here just seems a bit more immediate than the world outside, and I have to consciously recall that, actually, I really care about the people out there and keeping in touch is important and fun. E-mail is great for that, but I also have a special place in my heart for postcards. I love postcards. You can send pictures of cool places, or pretty art, or funny cartoons. I have quite the postcard collection, because they aren't expensive and it's easy to justify buying them with the idea that I'm going to send them to people. Sometimes I do send them. And other times, I want to send a spontaneous postcard, but I don't have someone's address. Having to ask for the address removes all the spontaneity, and if I have to send an e-mail to ask for the address, I might as well just send an e-mail with whatever I was going to write on the postcard. It's terrible.

This, then, is the call for addresses. Please, if you like receiving postcards, send me your address. I like sending postcards. If I do not have your address it is guaranteed that I can't send you postcards, that my stationery drawer will continue to fill up, and that my spontaneity will be squelched. Take action now to prevent this sorry state of affairs!

Current Location: Ocean Park, WA

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01 June 2008 @ 04:49 pm

for loops

I have successfully run 5 for loops today in my statistical analysis without receiving an error message. This is probably peanuts to real programmers, but I feel accomplished. After all, 6 months ago I could barely make a scatter plot. Maybe R and I can learn to communicate and have a long-term relationship after all.

Moss does not grow more on the north side of trees. Be aware when you forget your compass...

(along Memorial Way in Seattle).

Current Location: my desk chair

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07 May 2008 @ 09:57 pm

Drat

Got sucked into the internet again. My whole goal of the evening was to go to sleep early. Rhubarb bars fit in there too, somewhere. I'm one for 2.

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01 May 2008 @ 04:44 pm

lunch

Yesterday I sat under the flowering quince tree on the farm and ate fresh-picked salad with my fingers.

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03 March 2008 @ 09:09 pm

This may explain a few things about me

I was in mycology lab today, and someone one microscope over was making bold statements I found a bit ridiculous. I asked him if he was making them up or whether he had actually read them somewhere. He said that he was not making them up. OK, I said, just curious. I still thought it was ridiculous, but it didn't bother me to hear it.

Then I was looking at another mushroom and thinking about the tone, and that the conversation was between a guy and a girl (not me). I realized that I had probably just flippantly and completely obliviously interrupted flirtation-in-progress.

People are interesting and confusing. Mushrooms are simpler.

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29 February 2008 @ 07:19 pm

I knit socks on the bus

There's a new cell phone kiosk -- you know, one of those little buildings whose whole existence is housing a cell phone store or one of those we-loan-you-money-you-don't-have! places or a coffee shop -- along my bus route. In an attempt to reach out to the Spanish-speaking community, which is reasonably large in my end of town, they also advertise "trajetas telefónicas".

Now, I don't claim to be fluent in Spanish, but I'm pretty sure that "trajeta" is a typo, and not another word meaning the same thing as "tarjeta". (Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken). Unfortunately for them, "trajeta" is now in large type on multiple advertisements in their windows. I wonder when/if they'll figure it out. Never let anyone tell you that copy editing is not important.

***

One of my housemates is an elementary school teacher, and I've had several conversations with her about small children and sarcasm. She says that until a certain age, the human brain just doesn't understand sarcasm, though children can learn to see that you aren't being serious/telling the truth. I can see myself being a teacher (as my official job) in later life, and I think it's essential to have good teachers (which is what I would try to be) at a young age to lay a foundation for a love of learning (which is, in my opinion, the most important function of school). However, I'm not sure I could be an elementary school teacher because of the way my sense of humor works. That, and I don't feel so comfortable with young people of that age. Anyway, it's also interesting for me to think about this because I grew up in a house where sarcasm and irony are dominant forms of humor. I'm sure it was less subtle when I was younger, but I don't think my parents stopped being sarcastic until both my brother and I reached the crucial level of brain maturity. Besides, I remember studying my father's face when he said something that didn't seem right, trying to figure out if he was being serious this time or not. (Often, not.) I think that the way that this affects me now is that when people say certain kinds of ridiculous things, I don't take them seriously. I assume that people are being absurd, or at least reserve judgment, until I see/hear concrete evidence one way or the other. I wonder how this changes my impression of the world.

***

The parenthesis is one of my favorite punctuation marks.

Current Location: Dakota Street

Current Music: Coyote -- Joni Mitchell

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24 February 2008 @ 10:30 am

This is what happens when people talk to me about poetry

Not that I'm claiming that it's good.

Eclipse
He lights a cigarette, looking east.
I do not condone smoking,
yet the brief glow illuminating his face
is a perfect mirror for the smoky moon.

I walk past, up the hill;
my shadow grows and shrinks in the streetlights.
If I did not read the newspaper
I might believe the gods were angry.

Edit: punctuation now fixed. I was too lazy before when I noticed the problem.

Current Location: Seattle

Current Music: Wait, Wait...

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12 February 2008 @ 08:39 pm

Shooting oneself in the foot, academic-style

Just to set the record straight: writing an essay for Spanish class in English, while allowed if one is not taking the class to fulfill a requirement, does not help one learn any Spanish. It is a waste of time other than for the purposes of getting a grade higher than zero.

Also, there are sleep deficits not overcome by the invigorating power of a 7-mile bike ride.
Unfortunately.

Current Location: Seattle

Current Music: Dar Williams -- So Close To My Heart

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10 February 2008 @ 08:40 pm

As per request

Brown rice at least 3. Arwen 0, but becoming expert at scrubbing burnt-in rice dimples out of pans.

Tempeh has interesting texture.

Current Location: Dakota St, Seattle

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05 January 2008 @ 05:49 pm

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone -- may your years be filled with everyone and everything that you love.

A huge thank you to all the friends I was fortunate enough to see over the break -- thank you for laughter and poetry and silliness. I can't believe I'm lucky enough to have friends like you.

Current Location: Seattle

Current Music: Ten Thousand Maniacs

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10 December 2007 @ 11:06 pm

The trouble with the world...

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -Bertrand Russell

“the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” --Yeats

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20 August 2007 @ 04:03 pm

The Long Answer continued: The Stuff I need

I read a newspaper article several years ago about a woman who built a house small enough that it was a legal trailer, put it on wheels, got rid of her stuff, and moved in. I was fascinated: it would be liberating to get rid of all non-essential, cluttery things and live in a house that could be towed to wherever struck one's fancy. I imagined myself doing the same but rejected it as impossible. I like having more than 4 changes of clothing. What about my craft supplies? Part of me hoped that maybe someday I would be a person who would be able to let go of her objects and possessions, but another part of me shrugged: my hobbies take up too much space and that's the end of it.

To go to Costa Rica I had to fit everything I needed for the next three months into a duffel bag plus carry-on. I suppose I was helped by not needing to take a winter coat. And that there were plenty of books at the place I was staying. I don't remember many of the details of packing except that everything fit and my bags weren't bursting at the seams. I do remember realizing at some point during the quarter that, wow, I had been living out of a duffel bag for more than a month and didn't really mind. Sure, it would be nice to have a few of the things I had left at home (mostly craft stuff) but I didn't need them. Sure, I sometimes thought that having an additional item of clothing would be fun for the variety, but I didn't need it. And mornings were less complicated when the only criteria used to choose my clothes were how much they smelled. (One thing I do not miss about Costa Rica is humidity so high that clothes NEVER dry completely on the line. Aargh.) It was a liberating feeling to realize that I could live with so little and that I liked it. So much less to keep track of, to keep tidy, to take up my time.

I think that one of the most valuable things about the Costa Rica trip was the opportunity to live so simply for an extended period. It was eye-opening both in terms of possessions but also in terms of my use of time. Living in Costa Rica made me realize how much time I spent on, um, the internet and on lots of tiny tasks that never seemed to get done. Maybe none of what I learned was revolutionary, but I don't know how I could have learned it so thoroughly without the chance to leave what I had come to think of as a “normal” life behind for several months. The top of my priority list when I got home was to go through my room and get rid of junk that I never use – I did it, but despite my new attitude, it still wasn't easy. I guess it will be a long process. At least I've begun it.

Current Location: Seattle, WA, USA

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20 August 2007 @ 03:42 pm

The Long Answer Continued: Biology/Landscape

My biologist side wanted to go to Costa Rica to see tropical forests and experience firsthand the diversity of the tropics. The rainforest I spent most of my time in had far more species of plants than any forest in the Pacific Northwest, and had a very different feel in general. Part of this is that there are no conifers in Costa Rica, but part is that there are categories of plants that are rare or nonexistent in our forests: trees were covered in carpets of mosses, ferns, and bromeliads; vines thick and thin connected the ground and the tree canopies. There were also tons of birds – I probably identified as many species in 10 weeks in Costa Rica (with some help from guides) as I have in my whole life in Washington and Oregon. Yet I saw more species than I identified, and there are even more species in my field guide. Visiting the tropics was a great follow-up to several of the biology courses I took earlier in the school year which discussed the relationship between species diversity and latitude: closer to the equator there are more species. There are plenty of theories about why this might be, but no one knows the true explanation.

The landscapes of Costa Rica were beautiful and became more familiar to me over time, but I never truly felt at home in them. Maybe it's that I don't want to have to worry about stepping on poisonous snakes as I hike, maybe I'm just not cut out to live in hot humidity, or maybe the conifer forests and chickadees have imprinted too deeply. I enjoyed visiting the tropics, and would love to have the chance to visit again, but as the quarter went by my sense of belonging somewhere else only grew stronger. The northwest is my home, and while that might not be true forever, it's definitely true now.

Current Location: Seattle, WA, USA

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