I’m Listening

I want to live in a place where nature has a voice.

And I want to live in a world where people will listen.

Two weeks ago, I went out for my typical low-tide walk. Out my sliding door, down the steps, through the rocky driveway, down the once-paved road, and turned my typical left into the nature trail where I was greeted with a freshly strung barbed wire fence. I widened my gaze to find workers clearing a new path just a few meters right, exposing all the crab holes that had been under the leafy ground cover. I moved through the new opening in the fence, tread the new path, and continued to the sands.

A week and a half ago, I head to the nature path to find a messy chopping of the fauna on the left hand side of the nature trail. Two workers stretching line from post to post along the trail.

A week ago I head to the new path, now already well-treaded, any evidence of crabs’ holes gone. To my left, I look through the saran fence hung up to the vertical planks of wood along the lot border that I just watched the workers measure out days earlier. The lot was cleared… Any evidence of what used to be there was gone. As if the trees that the monkeys would climb in never existed in that plot of land. As if the crabs that made their homes beneath the fallen leaves never dug their holes there. As if one had never stopped on the nature trail to watch an iguana scurry through the brush and up a tree trunk.

A few days ago I was walking down the once-paved road and heard a horrible crying sound coming from the treetops. A baby monkey was pacing along the edge of the crown of a tall tree, none of his troop in my sight. I search. Worried he got separated; not able to make the jump. I find a grown monkey on a rooftop, hunched and looking back in the direction of the babe… on the other side of the once-paved road. The babe’s only chances were power lines and the crown of a broad-leaved almondra tree. The tree looked to me like quite the jump, even for the grown monkeys. But I waited and I watched. After several more minutes of pacing and crying, the babe made the leap. Flying through the air, across the once-paved road, drifting with the pull of gravity. The outstretched almondra branch dipped as the babe latched on. He made his way through the crown of the almondra, to the branch closest to the rooftop, hung from his tail, and dropped to all fours. Landing with a thud onto the tin roof, he scurried right up to his patiently waiting parent and climbed right onto the furry back. Still hunched, papa turned and crawled over the rooftop, babe latched tightly onto his back.

Today I wake with the seasonal winds that come through Guanacaste. The Papagayos. I head out for my low-tide walk. Out my sliding door, down the steps, through the rocky driveway, down the once-paved road, and turned my new left to find all the wooden posts and the saran fence that boarded the now-cleared-lot, blown over.  I smile at the sound of nature’s voice.

I’m listening.