A Memory Fading

I'll start by traveling a few months back in time.  It's fitting that in time-traveling, the place we're traveling to is a timeless one, where the days don't seem to be connected one to the other, where children and their parents seem locked in that relationship forever, and of course, where I felt so heavily on my being the undeniable presence of the now.  Time, in this place, was once again a construct for me, and one without much utility.

The place was a town called Orta.  Cradled between the curvaceous foothills of the Italian Alps, it has a lake so blue that everyone in the city seems to carry something of it in their eyes.  It is a deep, dark blue, but the bottom of the lake can easily be seen at even fifteen meters of depth.  The clarity of the water is unrivaled in my life of late.  The town of Orta, for it is a town more than a city, and the Lago di Orta sit in the far northwestern province of Novara.  It is a tiny province full of vineyards and small farms.  Novara's capital of the same name is accessible by car or by regional train from Milan.  You won't be surprised to know that generally speaking the Milanese are not fond of these regional trains, and the train schedules are set in a way that requires an often lengthy transfer in Novara if one is to catch the even smaller (though more comfortable and calm) train north to the tiny Orta-Miasino station.  It was, therefore, to my great delight that anyone smelling even remotely of Milan was not to be found north of Novara.

Regional train, serious conversations departing Milan.

The true name of the town for many centuries has been Orta San Giulio.  One gets the impression that all the frazioni, hamlets, that exist around Orta as one ascends the hill have been there forever.  Tiny Legro with its vineyards and pigpens; Corconio to the south seemingly angry at the lake for some past injustice, and the many villages of Imola along the road to Gozzano.  Each town could be nowhere else in this world - for just over any nearby hill it would be a different town altogether.

And what of the nature of the town?  Does not a town draw heavily from the people it nourishes?  Yes, of course, and no.  Orta cares not from which century its visitors come, from which distant lands or which languages they speak; it cares only to receive them as an old mother opens her home to her lost and dispirited child.  Orta is a brook filled with timeless water, and there is plenty of it for all to drink.  Sure, most of the tourists are slow-moving and old.  And the young tourists grow bored with the silence of the lake, its stillness and calm.  They can't stand to believe that the mountains and the lake have agreed to each other's terms so wholeheartedly!  And the wandering man (especially when young) will flee when he is too long near such flawless love between to beings, he will flee to find it on his own terms.

I have, until now, left out the two most iconic and powerful energies in Orta San Giulio.  They have both shaped and reshaped its thousands of years of human history, captivated the hundreds of generations of humans - and more than once brought them to tears.

I'll mention first the tiny mass of rock in the middle of the lake, the Isola San Giulio.  It is a small island about three hundred meters long and one hundred and fifty meters wide.  Sitting there, in the middle of the lake only a thousand meters or so from the docks in Orta San Giulio, the island asks questions, begs attention, but quietly and without presumption.  Who is San Giulio, you ask?  He was the patron Saint of Novara, Saint Julius.  It is said that Julius and his brother Julian were sent from Rome by Theodosius I to destroy pagan altars, and to build churches.  They built many.  His brother Julian is buried in the ninety-ninth chapel they built, in nearby Gozzano.  Many small chapels have been built on the island over the centuries, and now buildings cover it entirely.  Famously, the Basilica di San Giulio, the hundredth church built by the brothers, is in the center of the island today.

Isola San Giulio, Orta San Giulio, Italia

From the island you might be so overtaken by the calmness of the blue waters, the curiosity of the small birds, and the distant snow-capp'd peaks of the Swiss Alps to realize that across the lake, a few hundred meters above the city of Orta, there is a holy place hidden in the trees.  The hill itself has a name with as much gravity as the place itself: Sacro Monte.  They say Nietzsche visited with a young woman in May of 1882, may or may not have kissed her, and was then heartbroken for months when she turned out to be..."not that interested."  Such is the fate of great men, I suppose.  The Sacro Monte possesses a blithe energy like nothing I've felt before.  The freshness of the air, the calm and quiet.  While it had me under its spell I was content to spend the rest of my life there.

I'll tell you more about it through a tale of a  evening "adventure" I had.  After having already visited these sacred places earlier the same day, I noticed a few bikes for use at the agrotourism hotel where I was put up with a friend.  My soul was restless for some destinationless wandering so I chose a bike and took off.  Fifteen hundred meters down the road I got a flat tire, laughed heartily, and cruised back to the hostel for a replacement.  I was very close to just staying in for the evening, giving up and blaming the heat for my failure.  But, the lovely receptionist, upon hearing my story of false beginnings and seeing the beads of sweat pouring down my face felt responsible in some way.  She did her best to help in a hands-on way when she would likely have been most useful as moral support, but together we pumped up another bike's tires.  I assured her that it was no wrong-doing on her part and that her establishment's name would not be tarnished and set off down the road with renewed energy!

The road curved aggressively, snaking its way down toward the lake, my tentative destination.  At the roundabout I had no time to pause and think, and before I knew it I was headed past the road to the lake and up toward Sacro Monte again!  Yes, of course!  It felt so natural!  The decision would lead me up a thousand meters or so of steep, curved switchbacks - a formidable hill climb for my undersized bicycle (or oversized rider?).  My muscles were loose in the 34°C air and I surged up the hill in the half the expected time, breathing double as hard, and entirely alone on the road to this hidden World Heritage site.  All the tourists had long drifted home, or to the lakeside for an evening meal.

The evening faded slowly; it was getting late but there was still plenty of sunlight left.  The sun was hidden behind trees but the sunlight was still all around me.  If there has ever been a great truth made metaphor, its that just because you can't see the sun, doesn't mean it's not there.

But alas!  I was not exactly a tourist; I was, and still am for the moment, a wanderer.  My restlessness, so befuddling to some friends and family, was really a desire to explore, for solitary exploration, for alone time, yes, but more so for intuitive wandering in the way that can only be done alone.  "Sounds like quite the adventure," comes the refrain from city folk - yes, but for me an adventure is about traveling with others.  This, instead, was wandering.  Aimless, free, and untethered.

As I reached the top, a middle-aged woman waited in her car in the parking lot.  Her face betrayed her desire to leave the Sacro Monte, she was waiting for someone (or something...God knows what).  In that moment she existed as everything I was not and might never be.  She looked upon me with some mixture of fear and distrust; surely, the sweaty beast that I was terrified or disgusted her on some level.

- Buona cera, Senhora - I said happily (too happily, she thought.)
- Cerá - she responded warily.

I blew past her and the climb was finished!  Sweet victory!  The blood rushing through my limbs seemed to return to my heart and head as I left my bike and walked up to the second oldest of the twenty-one 16th and 17th century chapels that characterize the Mount.  Each chapel has a unique character, and painted in the mannerist style each contains a unique scene from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  The Mount is unique in being dedicated to a saint and not just to boring old Jesus or the Madonna, and I appreciate it as a more honest place for just that reason.  

To enjoy the chapels for a few hours one follows a spiral pattern, Chapel I to Chapel II, Chapel III and so on.  It is a place of sacred energy for all who visit, though sacred for the child comes in the form of picnic snacks and the way his soccer ball wants to hide in the tall grass, and for older ones in the way each breath and each spoken word vibrates in the walls of each tiny chapel.  I approached a retaining wall at the top of the hill and looked out over the water.  Then I took a few more steps to see past the trees and brought into clear view that other sacred place out in the middle of Lago di Orta.  The Isola San Giulio.

The light from the sun, visible now from atop the Mount, fell on me softly through the pine trees for a few minutes.  I sat on the wall, letting my legs dangle.  As my breathing slowed and things fell into focus, the earth turned slowly and moved the mountains between my eyes and the sun.  I thought about all the suns of my life, all the people who were as suns to me, that have since been taken out of view by forces greater than my own.  I came to make peace with that for just a moment, and then for eternity.

My back was tired from the ride and I sat up straight, allowing my lungs to take a deep breath of breaths, the light of the sun, gone but still present, made the air thick in my lungs.  A young couple, only a few dozen Springs old, wandered up and silently greeted me, taking a few photos.  We breathed in the lovely, hazy evening light together, yet individually as well, above all as individuals.  The couple drifted away slowly and made kind gestures to acknowledge what we had shared.  I wonder, as I relive this story so often, if they remember and appreciate me as I do them.

The next moment had been waiting for me for all the while, for my whole life perhaps.  All the mountains, forests, ripples on the lake below, and all the tiny human structures came into divine focus, and I breathed a timeless breath - the same breath that thousands of poets and priests, farmboys and milkmaids, saints and thugs have breathed.  My senses and the lakescene forgot about the game of duality and a sensation arose that I had been missing for ages!  It was just that my wanderings had not been free enough to bring it about until that very moment!  

As the next rippling breath vibrated in my lungs, an unexpected mystery rattled my whole being.  Without warning, the ancient churchbells no more than forty feet behind me rang with praeternatural intensity.  The air shook, the mountains were blurred and indefinite, the whole world was no longer fixed.  I was nearly shaken from the rock wall down to the grassy knoll forty feet below!  But as the vibrations dissipated slowly, the earth became solid once again, past and future fell back into place, and I breathed a calm breath of relief, the kind that only comes after such a fright.

That space was odd and it was unforgettably mine, and I desired to share it with no one and with everyone.  But who could understand it as I did then?  Appreciate it as I do?  Even what I have of it is a memory fading.

I gathered my bike, my bag, and my thoughts and rolled slowly down the steep path, applying the brakes liberally and occasionally stopping to give their hot surfaces a moment to breathe as well.  Upon reaching the roundabout again, the only plan that could have ever been kept me leaning left and continuing down the road, not home, but to the lake.  It seemed so obvious that the heat and love and energy of the Mount had to be taken to the lake.  I went back to a lakeside spot where I had relaxed earlier in the day.  When I arrived, there was only a solitary couple in a space which held hundreds of swimmers and sunbathers, mostly youths and families.  I suppose, after all, that life is mostly full of youths, and families.  There is really no room for us wanderers in any one place for long.  We have left youth behind and family is but a dream.

Earlier in the day on the shores of Lago di Orta, Orta San Giulio, Italia.

The large trees continued providing shade right along the bank as they had for decades, and the water in the ground seeped slowly toward the lake underneath the grass where I threw down my shirt and shorts.  Those same forces carried me toward the water, slow steps, mindful of the various shapes of rocks mixed with sand.  I looked down the curved shoreline at the last families of campers gathering their things and their small, sun-reddened children.  It was a late Spring evening in the southern foothills of the Alps, eight o'clock and most families were preparing dinner or resting after a long, hot day on the lake.

I found myself to be the only person in the water.  Slowing my entry at waist height I began to consider if all the other potential swimmers knew of some danger endemic to the evening at this particular lake.  I determined large fish and and a rapidly cooling surface temperature to be the only present dangers, and being a strong swimmer I would bring my own heat to the water.  Several male ducks paddled along, clearing a path for me to swim out into the deep, cold, ancient glacial lake.  I swam fast, then slow, front crawl, sidestroke and corkscrew.  The water was crisp and cold, refreshing in every way and after about one hundred meters of swimming away from shore, I turned over for my first backstroke.  

As I gazed back toward land, there, up on the mountainside above a small, glowing, pale-red church rose my old friend, my lover, the sweet moon.  I'll save you the background on my fascinating love affair with the moon, but suffice it to say that she is as near to a God as I have ever known.  Forgetting my surroundings and the physics of buoyancy, I sank into that familiar trance into which the moon often draws me, and sank for a moment below the water.  I surfaced and swam out farther and farther with childish gusto and vitality.  The farther I swam the more magnificent and luminescent I found her to be.

I must have swum five hundred meters out into the lake, stillness all around me and the rising moon to the southeast, when a deep cold seemed to start to pull at my legs.  I was instantly taken back to Hermann Hesse's stories where blissful bathing protagonists end their tales and lose their lives during early morning dips in serene, cold alpine lakes.  I would not be that sort of protagonist, I resolved, and reluctantly swam toward the shore.  

As the water got shallower around me, I slowed my pace, death no longer tugging at my toes.  I found myself near a group of ducklings - the cutest of things - half of whom, unaware of my presence, continued passing by, and the other half following their mother more closely as she gazed at me with wary but confident eyes.  I made movements to herd the stragglers toward their guide and made my way to the shore, but at that moment, from the bushes where the ducklings were foraging sprang a tiny garter snake!  What a fright!  I was startled in that primitive part of my brain dedicated to the fear of snakes and spiders and I made quick strokes to let it swim by as well.  I gazed back to see if the ducks had borne witness, but they were already gone, on their way to a place to rest safely and comfortably for the evening.

My creature friends gone, I was alone in a few feet of water, gazing through the liquid crystal down at the arabesque of rocks below.  I saw the sheen of a thousand stones lying happily together.  They were crystalline as well, full of energy, part of the mountains just as much as they were part of the lake.  I found a few that would be worthy gifts for faraway friends and stashed them in my back pocket.

I exited the water and then turned about for one last look.  A thick haze was now visible as the lights of the setting sun and the rising moon comingled.  The lake drew a darkness from below and I was glad to be on the sun-warmed shore.  The mountains in the distance and the impossibly high peaks behind them took on a bluish color, ready for a good nights sleep.  I took in the scene in a way that one can only do when he may never see something again.  I smiled, breathed a full and intentional breath, and mounted my sturdy, undersized bicycle to ride home.

More photos from Orta here.

Dias de Luto, Dias de Gloria

  They're back in my mind today.  Those crazy Brazilian kids, their crazy translations: "Mason, you have beautiful hair - please don't wear caps."  Their crazy pop songs from Brazil and their corresponding dance moves.  Just when you think you're getting serious about your life, when you think you're getting old - kids come along to remind you that nothing has changed.

The whole group at Boston College

Socializing during free time

Learning about American food

My group!  Group 9 Forever!

Luiz, a fellow mountain biker and hooligan

Gabriel e Pedro, very bright kids - made my every effort worth it

Last minute lessons...

  They're back in my mind because they sent me a few of their favorite songs.  One is called "dias de luto, dias de gloria", it's really a beautiful song.  They told me that capital E everyone knows the song, and that they can all sing most of the lyrics.  Immediately, some of those songs from my youth pop into my mind.  I'm amazed at a young person's ability to learn so many strings of words by heart.  These songs are very important to understanding a culture, there is a reason they are known by everyone.

  I was going to make some awesome comparisons to particular songs, but I am really not that good at pop culture - unless of course you ask me to sing "Jack and Diane" or "Mirrors".
  So they're gone now, pretty far away - a few thousand miles.  They were here for two weeks, sixty or so Brazilian middle school kids.  I was lucky enough to get hired on as a mentor and to spend every day, 12-8pm with them for fifteen days.  There was a lot of things that stand out:

  I know most of that song by heart.  I had never seen the video before I posted it right here.  And I am beginning to understand the lyrics better so I like the song less and less.  But the smiles of the kids singing it don't get any less amazing.  It's really easy to take kids up as little brothers and sisters.  The affection is mutual, the mentors and I loved spending time with them and they with us.  Every moment was a new joke, or a and hilarious misunderstanding.

  The camp was a leadership and science camp.  But most of the lessons in leadership were learned through osmosis.  Once again, like my experience in the Peace Corps, with my many little siblings adopted from families where siblings abound, I found myself examining my every word and behavior to see if I wanted to see it spoken or reenacted ten minutes later.  And who knows which lessons will be the most lasting for them, likely not the ones that I gave intentionally.

  But most importantly, music has become a new form of dialogue for keeping in touch with my mentees, my little brothers and sisters.  As a good friend, Stephen, once said: Music started this conversation so let's use music to keep it going.  Several of my best friends and I exchange many more songs per month than words.  When a song rings true for me, I just have to share it.  So here's a few of the songs that are ringing really true for me right now - given to me by kids, just starting to understand friendship and family - and adolescents, understanding those things in a way that I have long forgotten:

This song is amazing.

This song was described to me as the "Piano Man" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" in that everyone can sing every single word, especially if it's in a group.

This is the wierdest post ever - blame Gabby.  Hope you liked it.

Here are more ridiculous songs that these kids love:

This next one is a genre called funk, look it up online if you wanna see how it's danced...

Rural Community Development Program

  The RCD program’s success can be gauged among Costa Ricans in many ways. Perhaps the most compelling among them is the impression that volunteers leave on their community members.  These range from coworkers to students, community leaders to the youngest of children.

  There is something to be said about the phenomenon wherein the further one travels from the largest cities, that is, the deeper into rural areas, the greater the affection with which volunteers are remembered.  

  This affection can be partly attributed to novelty.  Unlike regional capitals, rural towns rarely see a U.S. American spend two years alongside them as a committed member of the community.  

  However, more notably, these rural volunteers often integrate along an exponential curve.  Where a semi-urban volunteer might struggle to find connection due to the nature of city life, RCD volunteers become townspeople faster than coffee and picadillos can be readied.

  RCD volunteers have always joined communities with abandon.  They become entrusted with all of the community’s inquietudes, all of its joys and nearly all of its relationships.  True chameleons, they are remembered as being part of the town’s grander cause to overcome hardship.  Sometimes the memory of an ebullient volunteer is for a community member the most vivid and positive image of the town’s hope.  

  Volunteers provide a unique reflective experience for the community.  They reproduce the town’s essential character with an exactitude that only an outsider can achieve.  As the saying goes, the town members come to know that the community’s character and its fate are two words for the same idea.  RCD volunteers have influenced this process positively for decades and the result has been praiseworthy.  

  It seems that hope often wanes harder in rural towns, burdened as they are with longstanding family discord and antipodal perspectives on community issues.  Volunteers are rarely if ever able to overcome such antipathies and they often, in fact, give into them during integration.  Such difficulties must be accepted to be overcome and, usually around mid-service, volunteers break free of these fatalistic mentalities, and are famous for bringing other community members out of the darkness with them.

  Those children, educators, women and men, become the legacy of Costa Rica’s RCD program.  They press on with myriad skills and attitudes imparted through workshops, classes and countless informal (practical and psychological) motivational conversations.  

  Many staff members and volunteers believe that the Peace Corps should continue, as it has since its inception, dedicating itself more to cultural exchange, friendship, and peace than to skills-transfer or infrastructural initiatives.  Accordingly, and with no intention of downplaying the tremendous successes of the latter, the RCD program will be remembered more fondly than any other program in recent history for its intercultural successes, for its peacemaking and its friendships.

  It can be said that youth in rural Costa Rican towns develop a sense of respect toward teachers, elders, and mentors that often seems absent in urban areas.  Volunteers are simultaneously overwhelmed by and grateful for this incredible quality of rural youth.  It has given the generations of volunteers the ability to be mentors to hundreds if not thousands of children and adolescents in a unique way.  This closeness with youth is a hallmark of the RCD project, not by force due to its project framework, but due to the nature of working and living with rural peoples. 

  Notwithstanding, the RCD project’s impact often shines brighter than many others thanks to its infrastructural project successes.  This is largely because of its volunteers' ability to influence the people of a community through kind actions and thoughtful behavior.  A lasting impression of the best humans that the United States has to offer will remain long after the last RCD volunteer boards her plane home.

Foco de Dios

  

  “Where’s this bus going?”The young man asked me.

  Startled, and unsure if I heard him correctly with the heavy rain on the roof, I responded: “Excuse me?”

  “Where are we going in this bus?” He repeated.

  “This bus goes to Zapatón.”  I informed him, a little wary and certainly surprised to be asked a question with such an obvious answer.

  “So we already passed Salitrales?”

  “Ooooo – yes, my friend, almost an hour ago.  Remember when the driver got out to drink coffee, the bathroom stop…?”  He gave me a blank stare, as if his eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “So where are we now?” He asked, realizing he was far from his target.

  “Thirty minutes from Zapatón.”

  “I fell asleep,” he said, “and when I woke up I looked out and all I could see was thick forest, and I knew…I had a feeling.  So we’re really far from Salitrales.”

  “Yeah, man.” I insisted.  “And this bus stays in Zapatón until 5am tomorrow morning.  Maybe you could find a place in town, you’ll have to talk to the driver.”

  Just as I was realizing that this guy was on the tail end of a drunken slumber, a familiar thing happened.  The bus stopped, moved forward and back a few times, and as the October rains continued to fall heavily, the tires slid sideways as much as they did forward, and we sunk down just enough to be noticeable.

  “Hasta allí llegamos.”  That’s as far as we’re gettin’, said a grandma from my town.

   I shushed her in an instinctive response to negativity and a few people chuckled.  Then people got to their feet: to help gauge the situation, to give optimistic commentary, or just to watch as we got stuck even more.  Sticking their heads out the window, people realized we were sunk.

  I quickly forgot about the young man lost in the outskirts of our mountain town and grabbed an old man’s flashlight, foco in Spanish, to light up the ground where the back tires were stuck so the driver could see.  Another guy shined a foco on the hole on the left edge of the curve we had to get around.  The rain intensified, and lighting cracked down on the top of the bus.  The seven of us jumped a the sound, some shrieked, and then we giggled.

  “Don’t move the bus any more or we’ll fall in that gulch!”  Said the grandma.

  “Sit down ma’am.”  The driver said curtly.  We all laughed, except for the driver, because he was the only one who knew for sure that we weren’t getting to town that night.

   The next familiar step began after a collective sigh, not a blaming or overly negative sigh, but just a sigh of calm acceptance, a sigh that lets out the last hopes of a normal trip home and that readies the mind for the wetness, the puddles, the mud, the thunder, and the hour-long walk with a group of oddly assembled community members.

  If I were a regular gringo in rural Costa Rica I would have been startled by the rapidity with which people plunged noiselessly out the bus door and into the heavy rain, with and without umbrellas.  But this time I was out just as quickly as the rest.  It’s an activity one comes to expect in October.  I had my backpack on my chest (with computer, camera, and signed documents from the Japanese Embassy inside), my dufflebag strapped on my back, a reusable shopping bag full of six or seven kilos of fruit, veggies, and boxed wine in my left hand, and an umbrella in my right.

  “Ayyyy!”  An older gentleman ahead of me yelped as we assumed our mission with positive spirits.

  “Ahora si…” I said, now we’re getting after it.

  Gamboling about in the rain, the tone of our troop was hilariously jovial and with no flashlight among us we reveled in the brief assurance given by every lightning bolt, and the brief impulse given by every thundering blast.

  CRACK!  Another couple tenths of a second of fleeting light guided us momentarily.

  “And nobody has a foco,” I said, “que tirada…”

  CRACK!  The brightness lasted longer this time.

  “But muchacho…” the old man said, trucking along fearlessly, “we’ve got the foco de Dios.”  God’s flashlight.  

A Brief History of Life Post CrossFit

To my CrossFit Family:

  After two years with the Peace Corps in Africa and Costa Rica, CrossFit Flagstaff (and Hoboken) is something of a mythical place for me.  I mean honestly, did I really throw loaded barbells backwards over my head outside of the old gym under Steve’s supervision?  Could my 4:29 Karen time in 2010 be accurate?  Did I actually do Eva, albeit scaled?  Did I really do Badger prescribed next to Jaffe?  More importantly, did he really beat me? Damn, he really did.  Schmuck.

  Some of you might be thinking, “Africa, that sounds primal.”  It was in many ways.  I squatted to shit every day.  I ran with the rising sun through fields of sand, chased by flies as big as my thumb.  I ate sheep heart, goat liver, and cow testicles.  And I picked mangoes from trees with black vipers living in them.  I installed a pull-up bar and made some make-shift KBs. 

  I wrestled in the traditional Nigerien fashion surrounded by hundreds of my villagers, and beat a strong young guy, and gained a measure of respect.  Then I got the smackdown laid upon me by a high-schooler.  I crashed a motorcycle, distracted by a giraffe.  I turned a corner in a market town one morning to find a man with a 250lb hyena on a leash, yes.  I smoked a pipe of rattlesnake skin, don’t ask.  I fasted some of Ramadan and, of course, slit a sheep’s throat on Tabaski, and I couldn’t help feel my own power and a simultaneous obedience to God.  I prayed with the thousands of others that day and lost myself in the chants.  I let myself be liberated in that oldest of human rituals. 

  I often joined women as they pulled water from the wells every morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and walked the 3k back with 50L in two jugs.  They were vehement about not letting me help, but I insisted – until their husbands scolded me fiercely.  I’m glad I didn’t have the language skills necessary to say what I was thinking.

  But other aspects weren’t what I expected.  Most days, all three meals were millet and rice ground into a paste, then doused with a canned tomato paste-based sauce.  Some days we had rice and beans with fried onions.  Only one type of oil, peanut.  A few of the miracles that Niger offers its humans are year round onions, garlic, and peanuts.

  I went from 188 to 172 over the first four months.  I got malaria.  The cold shivers wouldn’t let my fingers get the key in the door to my house, so I threw up outside on a chair.  I got E. Coli, and stomach amoebas enough times that I laugh about it now.  I spent hours in metaphysical crisis squatting over a pit latrine hoping the previous night’s monsoon rains didn’t sully the foundation enough to make it collapse while I was on it – something that happened to a friend of mine.  She laughs too.

  But remarkably, when I was healthy, I destroyed my bodyweight workout PR times.  And I was running longer distances than I ever had before.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have slammed Linda or Fran, but escape from a hyena?  Well, probably not that either.

  Then, what I never expected.  Just as I started to adapt to the illnesses, diet, and heat there was a kidnapping in the capitol, Niamey, of two Frenchmen, and their subsequent murder in the desert.  They were taken from the go-to Peace Corps restaurant.  There followed my rapid and dizzying evacuation from Niger, along with all the other Peace Corps volunteers in the country.  My time in Africa was over before I had even settled in.

  Long story short: I was given my options, made some choices, fluttered around the night markets of Marrakesh in Morocco, ate clams, got swindled at a shell game, hiked the mountains of Chefchaoen with a chocolatero, hashish producer, saw rainbows in the countryside, danced into the early morning in Málaga, glided through forests in Portugal, and gazed upon Guernica in Madrid.  From the time I flew out of Amsterdam for the U.S. I had been out of Niger for two weeks.  Two weeks after that, I was already in Costa Rica, starting my twenty-seven month service all over again.

  Now I’ve been here for fifteen months.  Time flies.

  Costa Rica has been much more the primal paradise that we all desire.  Ten or fifteen types of trees have edible fruit at any given time.  The indigenous territory that I live on has hundreds of edible plants that are like spinach.  We often cut down Royal Palm trees and eat the heart, a two foot long cylinder as thick as my thigh.  Pork and chicken are the meats of choice, and avocados are around all year.

  My first six months were a physical rebound from the famished Mason that I knew in Africa.  My weight was up, but my emotions were down.  I was in a sort of shock after having the carpet pulled out from beneath me.  But, I used exercise as my medicine.  I had two friends who wanted to learn about my exercise mentality, so I taught them everything I knew.  (They both have gymnastic rings in their houses now.)  We ran hills that made me cry faster than running Humphreys ever had.  I threw up brilliantly.  Eventually, I was in my site, out in the middle of the rainforest, training for my first marathon.  I ran the Panama City International Marathon in December of last year.  But, there was a slight issue – my back.

  It started for the first time after a 150 burpee workout with some friends.  The next day I had a weird looseness in my lower back on the left side.  The next day, it was worse, and the third day, it was unbearable.  I got a wonderful shot in the buttock from the ER and some muscle relaxants.  That was two weeks before the marathon.  I rested and assumed it was a pulled muscle, nothing serious.  Up until the day of the race I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run.  And it had since entered my mind that something in my lower back was threatening not only this race, but my future as a CrossFitter, my future as being the most ferocious person in the room.  I got down on myself.  I realized that I had jumped back into things after Africa really fast and really hard.  It was my own fault.

  In the end I ran the race.  It was miserable.  There’s a bridge that still appears in bad dreams, the longest bridge in history – not really.

  What I really learned, after two months of physical therapy, MRIs, x-rays, consults, second opinions, chiropractors, etc., is that every person has her own pace, and limits.  In this case, I thought a homemade 80lb kettle bell was a good idea.  I thought a muscle-up ladder and 150-burpees twice a week was a good idea.  They may have been, in that mythical land where I built up to my hard workouts, had people around to tell me to scale something, and when I was 20 years old.  Slowly I’m building back my strength.  But there’s no doctor or chiropractor who has been able to tell me definitively what is wrong.  I’ve had to take a huge step back, and accept a life where I don’t do burpees.  And…surprisingly…it’s still a wonderful life.  Children still laugh.  Roosters still wake me up in the morning.

  Here, I don’t have Steve to tell me to scale this particular workout.  No Lisa to switch out my kettle bell to a lighter weight.  No Matty to use as an example, and scale my own workout because he didn’t let his pride keep him from scaling his.  No Ben to skip a tough workout with and go play Ultimate Frisbee.  And no group of close friends, nearly family, to keep me from doing any other array of stupid things.  CF Flagstaff:  it’s been almost three years since I left, but the things you all have taught me, and the memories we shared have been with me the whole time.

  Now, come visit me y’all!

Copa Indigena: Maleku Tournament and Cultural Activity

Letter to the donors of my PCPP project:

I'm sure you're all anxious for an update on the activities which you helped fund for the Second Annual Copa Indigena de Costa Rica!  Well, wait no longer!

Friday morning, May 11th, thirty indigenous boys and girls ages 12-17 boarded the bus that my community counterpart, Fernando Sanchez, and I contracted for the eight hour trip to the Maleku Indigenous Reserve near San Rafael de Guatuso in the northern part of the country.  All the kids and the few parents that were going on the trip were rather anxious, some had bags that were obviously packed too ful, and others had forgotten some absolute essentials...like soccer cleats!  After waiting for a few stragglers and taking a pre-departure picture in front of our antiquated bus (below), we left Zapaton at 11am.

The first two hours were full of excited shrieks and screams from the back of the bus where the more gregarious youth always tend to congregate.  In a strange role-reversal from my summer camp days I was in charge of making sure the girls stayed on one side of the bus and the boys on the other!  Luckily the kids were very respectful and we didn't have any problems.  Two hours in we stopped for a bathroom break.  Once back on the bus all the kids were pretty tired and things quieted down.

We passed through the capitol, San Jose, and the airport.  The kids were super excited about seeing planes on the ground, and one taking off seeing as most of them had never seen a plane that didn't look like a fly in the big blue sky.  We passed Taco Bell, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Outback Steakhouse, KFC...etc.  They all said: "Oooh, que rico!"  How delicious!  And I got excited for an opportunity to express to them my intense disgust toward most of those locales.  We had a fun argument and I tried to dumb down the science enough to get a visceral reaction out of them.  Only one kid said he wouldn't eat french fries if he knew it would shorten his life!!  Behavior change is a process, that's for sure.

We passed through the metropolitan area and entered the mountains north of the city, through Alajuela and past Volcan Poas, up through San Ramon and out towards La Fortuna and into a cloud forest type climate.  The region was very dry and hadn't yet received its first rain of the year following dry season.  La Fortuna is home to Volcan Arenal, one of the largest and most iconic volcanoes in the area, again something the kids had only ever seen on television. I can't underestimate how much these kids were impressed by seeing these parts of the country, parts that they had heard stories about, which their parents had visited on horseback 35 years ago, where their grandparents had gone to pick coffee 60 years ago.  They will be taking stories and an expanded awareness of their country back to their families and their community.  All thanks to you folks.

As the sun started setting our bus driver turned on the stereo and a Mix-CD titled "Party Time", yes, in English.  Songs like "Jack and Diane", "Hurts so Good", "Jungle of Love", some ACDC tunes and Aerosmith got everybody singing and dancing on the bus. It was a riot, spirits were really high. The parents and I made the executive decision to not force them to sit in their seats.  After all they may never get the chance to dance shamelessly while propelling 45 miles per hour around dangerous curves and over precarious bridges again in their lives.  But the drive proved to be longer than we had planned and after asking countless people on the road-side we finally got there at about 7pm.

Driving into the Reserve we saw ranch houses made of palm trees and some great big wooden sculpted pillars.  We were welcomed into a huge ranch with drums and rain-sticks inside, and given a quick lesson in the indigenous language of Maleku.  There were some amazing carved masks.  The man who greeted us, also known as Jaguar, immediately informed my 30 adopted children that there were 80-90 SINGLE YOUNG PEOPLE in the reserve, and he encouraged them to get to know eachother!  I was a little thrown off.  Here's me, separating girls and boys on two sides of the bus, and here's him, promoting the romantic mingling of my youth with his!  In the end I realized how funny it really was.  And of course, the young guys were hooting and hollering about how many girlfriends they'd have by the end of the weekend. 

The next morning we had the day-long soccer tournament.  Amazingly, it started raining!  We liked the idea that we brought the first rains, rejuvenating the soil and filling the rivers.  Each of the territories shares the belief in the importance of protecting nature and river systems especially.

Zapaton, our team, played really hard but they were just outplayed all day.  In fact, we didn't score ANY goals!  I felt pretty bad for the team, but I enjoyed it as a learning experience for them.  Now they realize why I have been trying to put pressure on them to train with concentration and intensity.  Hopefully they take to training with a new passion now that they see how much more fun it would be to be winning!  By the end of the day our four games were all losses, but we made so many friends.  Almost all the kids made at least 5 or 10 different friends from reserves as far south as the border with panama and as far east as Limon and the Caribbean coast.

That night we did some presentations.  Each territory gave a presentation about the specifics of their culture and their traditions.  Everyone learned a lot and had fun.  We talked about the importance of indigenous solidarity and political involvement from the youth, the future leaders of each territory.  And I turned a blind eye to a boy from my town having some "close-quarters" conversations with some Maleku girls - however, his Mom didn't have the same reaction!

The next morning we were out of there and got back on the bus after a dip in the local river.  We got back to Zapaton at about 4pm and had some more fun on the bus.

Overall, I can't begin to express the totality of emotions, knowledge-transfer, and individual growth that I noted amongst my kids and the other groups.  For all of their lives they've felt isolated when they leave the reserve.  They are surrounded by a sea of lighter-skinned, curly-haired Costa Ricans.  But this weekend, for the first time, they were able to feel A PART of something bigger.  They had never had the experience of being surrounded by young, indigenous youth.  They didn't notice until afterward how comfortable they had been in that milieu.

Next update for the week of June 1st after the Final Tournament which will take place in the ESTADIO NACIONAL!!!

Here's where you can see more photos.

Much love from the youth of Zapaton, and gratitude from me, and from the Peace Corps as a whole.  You've really made a difference in these kids lives.

Nature In My Heart

It's concern. It's a deep and heartfelt concern for the entire planet, all of nature, the living earth. It's the fiery blossom of ire that explodes within me when I witness ignorant injustice toward nature. It's what drives me to lose friends because I tell them instinctively that I'm disgusted that they burn plastic and old computers. It's what makes me jump out of my seat and reprimand a 60-year-old woman when she throws her Tetra-Pak juice box out the bus window. It's my explosive, protective, instinctive rage when I see littering in a place as naturally beautiful and diverse as Zapaton. But, when the rage is quelled by the innocent and apologetic smiles, I realize that my concern is not natural, but learned. It was taught to me, or learned by me. And I could have just as easily been one these of the children who never knew a better way to take care of old tires, plastic bags, and three layer juice boxes. I realize that now that I have entered "The Understanding," it is my duty to bring in others as well. They will feel its depth, its heart, its importance, and they will find the same passion that I have to protect our Mother, Nature, that from which we mysteriously blossomed.

Developing a conscience is a life-long activity. I learned from my family and my friends, through stories and books, through movies and hikes through the woods. Now my goal is to infect these children with the deep concern that I possess. Starting with concepts like synergy (in nature and among humans), symbiosis, mutualism, codependence, coevolution, and COMPASSION. To me, true compassion is the same is being completely present and perceptive. Being completely aware leads to complete respect and compassion. Try it.

I am beginning to realize that they see it within me, they don't know what it is, but they see it, they're curious. They ask themselves why is it that his eyes gloss over when he talks about the mystery of creation, of evolution, of species growing together and relying on each other. Their jaws drop slightly and their brains relax, looking for connections, allowing for new modes of understanding. They see value in my perspective without knowing what it is.

The moment only lasts for as long as I can keep my (Spanish) sentences flowing and coherent. The flow eventually ebbs and I know I've lost all but a few of them. I search for eyes and find one young girl and one young man. They're still captivated. They want in.... The lesson has ended on a highly emotional note, and it is my DUTY to bring them the same intensity next lesson, if indeed I truly believe in my own perspective. And I do. I really do.