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last night despite feeling tired from being a little sick i went with a bunch of others for to hike up the mountain. we camped out at the mirador overlooking the valley in which sits the small city of san isidro .  

it was a great night.   after the hike up – which was hard for the altitude but not as cold as we thought it would be – we set up the tents and all gathered in one tent to tell jokes and stories.  of course i lobbied hard to have it be jokes and stories, but not scary stories…i can’t sleep if they are scary J … 

every one obliged and there were some great jokes.  one of my favorites was about a bar and a scottsman…maybe i'll remember it and tell you if you ask.   of course i got to tell the trid joke which made me happy - the part about repeating all of those sentences over and over.   telling jokes like that always makes me think of grandpa.   this station too.  it challenges and reminds - me of a life i look forward to creating someday.   the director – carlos and his wife run a small scale trout farm on the side – which is funny and ecologically questionable because rainbow trout aren’t native to anywhere near here!   but he does it really well and doesn’t use any chemicals which is a big plus.   also he is one of only 2 trout hatcheries in all of costa rica (the other is run by the government and uses tons of chemicals).   interestingly lots of the trout is sold to restaurants – live.  in the restaurants gringos get to choose which live trout they want to eat for dinner.  crazy? 

we woke up really early to see the sunrise over the mountains and we watched the clouds waft in from the caribean side and slowly envelope the mountaintops in soft white wisps  - it was pretty neat.    we have lots of work to do.   statistics, writing, re-writing, editing, and then i am trying to keep up with my field notebook so that it is useful for me…and then there are things like a sunrise and a 10PM decision to hike several km into the cold mountain to sleep in a tent, when you can’t breath through your nose and even sitting still you feel like there isn’t quite enough air…it makes me think more of the ar ammons poem:

i’ve been told

you can’t

have it

 both ways

yet

both ways is

the only

way i want it. 

it is so easy to get busy with the work of living and forget about living well…i’m really enjoying all of the learning i'm doing here and i think it is part of the work of find a good center, but it is easy to forget what is important.  we keep having lots of discussions about joan roughgarden’s thoughts against sexual selection.  i wish that during her talk i had paid more attention so that I could talk with our visitors more intelligently about another theory to explain all of the otherwise unexplainable life histories of the organisms we encounter.   this time a group was studying the green violet ear hummingbird which sits all day on a perch and calls out loud for hours on end, for almost two months just to get a mate.   what else beside sexual selection could explain it?

anyway, back to the story, on the way down the mountain, we saw quetzals!   look for the picture of the green bird.   it was great.   today i’ve been working hard, but i'’m about to take a little nap.   despite our good time we only had a few hours of sleep

this site was the best...this is taken on the final evening you can see the mountains in the background.  the oak forest is behind us.