COSTA RICA -- TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS ON

 

~ A MANZANILLO MORNING ~

We have always loved our adventures in Costa Rica.  We first came in October 1997 with our friend Jen on a nine-day self-guided tour complete with car (Suzuki Sidekick), airline tickets, hotel reservations in San Jose, and lovely places to stay in Monteverde, Manuel Antonio and Arenal National Parks.  

Even though it was the rainy season, we had sunny or cloudy days and rainforest downpours at night.  We slid down a hillside road of mud in our Suzuki.  We walked the newly opened suspension bridge at Monteverde, eye level with howler monkeys and birds -- so many birds.  We sat by the road at the Arenal Volcano at dusk and didn't see much action until we started to drive away. Then the volcano sent up plumes of smoke, ash and a trickle of red, red lava.  

We saw quetzels and scarlet macaws.  At Manuel Antonio the howler monkeys bounded by our second floor room at dawn and we all leapt out of bed.  Squirrel monkeys danced through the treetops and big iguanas paraded around the small pool.  The local guides introduced us to cloud forest ecology and later, tropical forests on the Pacific Ocean.  The local people sold us good fruit and locally created crafts, and they told lots of stories, some true and some maybe not so...

 Monteverde National Park:  Walking the New Suspension Bridge with Jen and Samuel

Costa Rica and its principles of No Standing Army, its emphasis on Education, and the overall commitment to the protection of the Environment inspired us to come and learn year after year.  Barry, the biology teacher and photographer, and I, the writer, teacher and anthropologist, brought back stories and slide shows for our community. We spoke at schools and libraries.  It was a rich, rewarding time in our lives.

We followed our friends' suggestions to go to Drake Bay on the Pacific Coast and travel south towards Corcovado National Park.  Remote and reached by a combination of small plane, the back of a truck, onto a boat at Sierpe and out into the Pacific Ocean where we had to traverse the waves and hope the captain was experienced -- or maybe even a pirate, we found kindred folks at Puerto Marenco, a small family-run lodge.

The Pacific Ocean

   

Over the years, we revisited the people of Punta Marenco -- Maroto, guide, carpenter, wise man;  Oscar and his family; Carlos, the man who taught us the birds of Costa Rica... and so much more at the lodge and throughout the area.  These were the times when we walked under almond trees surrounded by scarlet macaws.  There were few, if any, cruise ships and at times, more scientists than tourists at the Corcovado ranger stations.

Now, twenty-seven years later, we feel incredibly grateful we traveled to Costa Rica when we did.  We hiked long and tiring trails to be rewarded by hidden waterfalls and swimming.  The rainforest was alive with birdsong and insects.  Each day we were out, we saw different kinds of monkeys, spiders, small mammals like agoutis and so many frogs, lizards, snakes.  Pelicans flew in long V's against a backdrop of cliffs covered by massive trees and vegetation.  We snorkeled at Canos Island and later saw relics of peoples gone by.  

It felt truly as if we were in paradise, where there were more shades of green than we had words for... and the wren with fourteen voices sang.  And the majority of tourist places were small, friendly and run by local families.

We traveled many places during our lives.  Peru.  Ecuador.  The Galapagos Islands.  Kenya.  Scotland.  England.  Indonesia.  Nepal.  Dominican Republic.  We always visited schools and gathered experiences in the natural places each country set aside for protection.  Canada.  Bali. Switzerland.  Alaska. Costa Rica.

And little by little, we have watched how "progress" moves into special places.  Drake Bay now has a modern airport with its sights on international travelers coming to all-inclusive resorts, no longer owned by the local folks... more like parts of global corporations.  The tour ships send zodiacs loaded with passengers to walk the paths of Corcovado in lines of 50 people or more.  It's unfair to the passengers, the guides, the animals and the reputation of this wild, biologically diverse place in the world.  Whoever plans these itineraries have never stepped foot on the ground here, or the plans (of course) put money first, environmental protection last, and tourist surveys are like, "who cares?".

But we have continued to explore and found ourselves on the Caribbean side of the country.  

 

Yawning Two-toed Sloth

Here in Cahuita, Punta Uva and Manzanillo, we enjoy the beaches, a reggae culture, national parks and new wildlife -- two-toed sloths, great green macaws and an amazing night with leatherback turtles, as big as Volkswagen Beetles, who dug the holes and buried their eggs on the same beaches of their own hatching. It was a gift to be there that night to witness one of nature's ancient rituals of migration and regeneration of the species.

 

Howler Monkey - Great Voices of the Forest

Caribbean food, music and people!  Animal refuge and rescue organizations.  Best of all -- a family-run "ecovillage" where we find lush rainforest, a path to the beach, a cabina complete with cooking facilities and a funky little town for food, groceries, music, local people and the national park.

 

 

So, this brings me back to the photograph at the beginning of this blog.  I am only two weeks returned from our latest trip, the first after four years of COVID and the pandemic. I have so much to reflect upon. Sitting there on the open deck, surrounded by thick, lush greenery, I fell into a rhythm of life that still feels restorative.

 

We had left New Hampshire in gray skies, snow showers and mud.  The brilliant sunlight and colors here enveloped me.  The heat slowed me.  I sat with my maps and journals, sipping rich Costa Rican coffee.  I simply read or wrote or watched the hermit hummingbird dip nectar from the nearby heliconia blossoms. I didn't know (or wonder) what the time was or even the day.  I was there, in the present moment, and I needed nothing more.

I have read and practiced being "present" and in the "present moment" for many years.  My good philosophers say it is the Way.  I can't change the past and I cannot predict the future.  There is only Now.   And here I am.

Yet I am deeply saddened by the changes I see in the world of today.  It's our first international trip in four years.  Much has altered -- and I don't seem to fit well with these changes.  

Travel (and Life) has always required an open mind, flexibility, a sense of good humor and the ability to adapt to new situations.  That said, the changes I object to are not related to individual countries. I object to the insidious spread of technology -- smart phones, AI deciding what's available, and our human addiction to "the phone".

I watched people -- young, old, different nationalities -- walk the beach with eyes on the small screens in their hands, ignoring the beauty around them.  Others stood in the waves taking selfies.  Once caught by the waves, they leapt out of the water, cursing not their own bad judgment, but the water.  It seems the urge to capture ourselves spread-eagle, hanging over railings or other dangerous places outweighs anything else that might be noteworthy.

 

Some changes stem from COVID days and we seem to have kept them on. There are hotels that require phones to check in, doing away with the personal greeting at the traditional front desk.  Banks have cut back on personal money exchange, instead pointing to the ATMs outside buildings.  National parks can be too popular and require tickets and timed entries.  

 

It takes time to enjoy the rhythm of a place and its people -- exactly what our new world ignores.  Stay one night and move on.  Move fast!  Lose patience over simple things.  Get angry.  Complain loudly.

 

This is Costa Rica, too.

But overall, I struggle with the grave changes in the world's climate.  Four years ago, this part of Costa Rica suffered flooding that eroded mountainsides and beach fronts.  Today the local people recount three years of drought and trouble with their crops.  Everyone spoke of the serious effects of weather and climate change on their home communities.

Even Costa Rica, a country that leads in preservation of its wild places and creatures, has given way to the call for adventure travel into pristine areas and action-packed packages infringing on the wild.

The price we pay in this new world order is too expensive for me.  I'm talking about the loss of people-to-people relationships, diversity of local cultures and products, time to absorb and enjoy new experiences, understanding of the people and places we visit, and most importantly, protected areas where human activity does not have the rights to trample the creatures, water, trees, plants and natural resources of a country or a community.

 

It's political.  It's personal.  It takes thought and courage to admit what we are doing now -- in the present time -- is as destructive as all-out war on ourselves and the living planet. 

 

Beauty is not enough. Neither is "contained pollution" and "limited nuclear" and "just one more coal-burning factory." Staying a victim  -- "what can I do?" -- is no longer enough.  Neither is hearing from hypocrites, liars, bullies and wimps.

Humans have never solved this problem of:  "What is Enough." 

...Maybe we could at the very least work together and try...

                                                                  

The Endangered Great Green Macaw

THOUGHTS FOR THE NEW YEAR -- AND BEYOND

 

     

    My name is Simplicity,
guide, guardian, angelic
companion, lost in a shop
of cast-off tools, linens, photos
and cut glass knobs, where I languished
beneath crocheted doilies,
choking on dust and mouse.

 

Not a simple nor straightforward end

for me, the Angel of Simple Things.

For I am a sign of truth and clarity,

 nurturing joy in the good

and the basic. No frills.  No excess.

I harvest the wheat and banish

the chaff to the winds.

 

She found me there on the floor.

A kindred spirit in search of what

I could teach -- sharing wisdom,

 echoing the past, telling stories 

and dreams. I sit on her desk,

 aside books and cats and

whisper that simple truth.

 

Find your true self.

Be that true self.

Let the confusion go.

 

END OF SUMMER... AND INTO FALL

Newfound Lake ~ where we walk from early spring until snowfall.  

This is the last boat at its mooring off the beach 

on a chilly and damp October day.

Phenix Morris Team Revival

    

THE CANTERBURY FAIR  2023

Never let it be said the spirit and the love of a thing can be lost to age!

We danced in the 1970's when we were young and twenty...

Now we dance again in the 2020's when we are aged and seventy.

Hey, ho and "I like to rise when the sun she rises,

Early in the morning..."

THE MOOSE ARE BACK!

EAST INLET during the SUMMER SOLSTICE

 

These are the first hale and hearty bull moose we have seen in many years.  The tick infestations due to recent warm winter temperatures killed off so many of this iconic breed. 

These two males may be the start of tick-resistant genes.  So:  STOP THE ANNUAL MOOSE HUNT and allow them to flourish once again. 

FRIENDS

There are those friends with whom all is said 

in quiet phrases, moments of silence,

years shared through work,

family,  joys and trials.

And as we age, we discover 

a common puzzlement

in life.

 ~

 

OUR FATHERS WERE SOLDIERS

Simon E. Draper, Jr.  Southern France

Signal Corps US Army about 1944

Donald S. Dorrington

Veterans' Day - Westfield, Massachusetts
 US Marines Fifth Division  1943 -1946

MEMORIAL DAY THOUGHTS  2023

Growing up in the 1950’s, many fathers I knew had been soldiers. It was the same for uncles, brothers, grandfathers and women who served in the military.

My grandfather fought in the trenches of France during World War I.  He never spoke of it until he was a very old man.  He’d rather share stories of his father’s farm, where he had driven horse teams for logging and rolling snow.

His references to war were short and grim.  He remembered the waste of farms and fields. After the war, he loved the Maine woods and his camp.  It was isolated— just Gramp and his oldest buddies, those same men who later buried his ashes there.

My father and my father-in-law were young men during World War II.

My father joined the Marines days after graduating from high school.  He turned eighteen on the island of Iwo Jima, one of the worst battles of the Pacific.  He didn’t speak about it until much later in life.  He was of two minds — proud to be a Marine and proud of the men and women of his generation for stepping up to the call for service.

But he also carried the silent grief war leaves — like the men he fought with who didn’t return home.  The desolation he witnessed at Nagasaki.  His uneasy return to civilian life.

Later in life my father spoke with students during Memorial Day ceremonies. He didn’t glamorize war, rather he told them about the need for diplomacy and other ways to manage disputes.  He gave them a glimpse into his life during WWII.  He was rewarded by letters he received from those students and he saved every one.

Finally, my father-in-law was a few years older when he joined the US Army during WWII.  He served in the Signal Corps in southern France.  Although there was danger, he never saw active combat.  His was background work keeping communications open and safe.

When he came home, he started a career with the telephone company.  He shared his photographs of France, yet never really gave details of his wartime life.  He was the kind of man who could find the good in most situations, even war, and move on.

So, I listen to the stories and watch how the storytellers live. They offer me insights and ways to cope no matter what may come my way -- good, tragic and ugly.

 

WHO WERE OUR MOTHERS?

Who were our mothers before they were mothers? 

 
Do you know if your mother worked before she had children?  Was she a teacher, a nurse, a secretary.  Did she clerk in a store or style hair in a beauty shop?

Did she do a job considered “men’s work” back in the day when things like that were thought important.  Maybe she farmed and did chores.  Maybe she milked cows or organized and fed farm workers during harvest.

She could have been a cook or worked in local schools.  She may have been a lawyer or doctor and continued a profession throughout her life.

Women have held jobs in factories, mills, insurance offices and banks. They could be police or EMTs.  They’ve driven trucks and big machinery and owned their own businesses.  They cleaned others’ houses, ironed and laundered clothes and became caregivers throughout time.

Our mothers were also artists and quilters, writers and musicians, potters and weavers.  Women have always been artisans, stitching, knitting, dreaming and creating.

So much has depended on when our mothers were born and what kind of work was available.  What were her choices?  And, who encouraged her.

What else did our mothers do before they became mothers?

Did they love to dance?  Play sports.  Paint or write poems.  Did they hike and swim.  Who had horses and special pets?  Who were friends?  Who was family — and what was the good as well as the sadness in their lives.

Shirley J. Alger - Springfield Hospital School of Nursing Class of 1946

 

Before my mother Shirley became my mother, she was a nursing student.  Her high school class of 1943 graduated into the thick of World War II.  She joined the Cadet Nursing Corps and graduated as a registered nurse just as the war ended.

Before that she worked at an airport canteen where men flew to the war in Europe.  Her dream job was to be an airline stewardess after the war.  Never happened.

Her mother Lina was born in 1901 and adopted into a prosperous farm family.  She grew up with horses and dogs, books and music, two years of college and a job as a Kindergarten teacher.  She played piano.  But Lina never made peace with her adoption and it was the shadow of her life — before and after she became a mother herself.

Lina K. Belden - Circa 1920

Everyone has a story to tell, full of riches and surprises.  Be sure to ask, then listen carefully.                       

TIMELINES

 How We Become Activists

 

There is a big interest in genealogy and writing life stories these days.  After all, we know things no one else knows.  We have memories of families, traditions and places.  We’ve lived through good times and bad.  We’ve been alive during historical events and hold our own thoughts on what happened and how we felt.

Our stories get set down in scrapbooks and journals.  We share photographs. We visit cemeteries or take road trips to places we once loved well. In the telling, our reminiscences are a moment in Time.  Someone asks, “When did it happen?  What time of year? Who was there?”

Recently Barry and I talked about life events with high school students. We hoped to show that what happens in life can change us in unexpected ways.  To do this, we created panels in a Timeline.  Each panel represented one decade and important things about that particular time.

We started with the 1950’s when we were both three years old.  We lived in a small town during the post-World War II days.  We linked facts and questions about world events, personal events, politics, news and everyday happenings to our memories.

In the 1950’s, it was the Cold War.  As second graders we hid under our desks during air raid drills.  Polio was an epidemic in the US.  “No swimming and no parties.”   Life Magazine showed rows of children and adults in machines called Iron Lungs that kept them breathing.  Then Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio and we lined up at school for our shots.  Everyone received the vaccinations.

October 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite.  It shocked the world and especially because the Russians were first in the big race to space.  We students started studying more math and science and got something new in our lives — homework.

The 1950’s timeline covered Civil Rights, Elvis Presley and our individual passions:  rivers, streams, snakes and critters (Barry) and books, libraries, stories and the outside (Gretchen).  

And so the Timeline continued, decade by decade. The high school students identified problems we still puzzle over, still worry about today.  Clean air and water.  Education.  How to solve conflicts.  Bullies and cheats.  What is good for all people?

It’s time to listen even more carefully to our stories and memories and decide which ones are best to live by.

~ NEVER TOO OLD ~

 

A Memory of Music (in Motion)

    

When I was young, 

  the dancing was done

in halls with wooden floors.

In lines and squares, circles

and pairs, the caller was king,

the fiddles could sing and joy

drove the miseries away.

 

~ MAY YOU FIND JOY AND DANCE IN THIS NEW YEAR TO COME ~

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  

 

 

 

 

   

SUMMER 2022: War and Women

 REMEMBER HER FACE

            What do you see in her gaze? 
Apprehension.  Fear.  Vigilance. 
A woman watching the sky.  Watchful for
planes, great streams of fire,
gathering storm clouds of war.

  

This is how it feels to be a woman in 2022.  We are alone and betrayed by our cultures and societies.  What once was legal -- the right to decide on healthcare and pregnancy -- is now kicked down to the states where abortion may be gleefully outlawed.  Women and medical personnel can be considered criminals for claiming basic healthcare, well-being and respectful decisions about our own bodies. 

It's political.  It's damning.  It's a way to take away women's power.  In this country where we have No universal healthcare, No universal childcare, No guaranteed right of maternal leave after delivery, limiting abortion is basically cruel and stupid -- and deliberately designed to hamstring the freedoms and personal progress of women as equal citizens.  Equal in the "eyes of the law".                                          

 

What's next?  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is on a vendetta to make contraception illegal. Same-sex marriage illegal.   And who knows what else.             

 

I was a young adult woman before Roe vs. Wade was accepted as law.  Women's choices and sexual behaviors were met with shame, scorn and contempt.  Young women could be disowned by their families.  Some kept their pregnancies secret and gave up their child to adoption.  Some married, successfully or not.  Some sought out illegal abortions.  Some were treated by a "family friendly" physician in a private hospital, a practice I would expect will continue on for those men with power and money.

                   

And the men -- what about the men who are the other half of this equation.  What will you do now?  What did you do then, before?   Did you use contraception?  Did you disappear?  Say:  "Not mine".                                          

 

What is lost in our culture is simple care.  Every decision taken by a woman to carry a pregnancy is complex, laden with emotion and carries consequences -- welcomed or not --for life.   

 

It is not up to Congress or the deliberately skewed Supreme Court to take away liberties already granted.  We, the majority of people in this country who support choice, must stand up to those self-righteous bullies and remove them from office and power now, not in ten or twenty years.

                     

Sometime, someone you know may need a choice.  Where will you stand?

 

~

Note:  The statue used in this entry is in the Zahm Courtyard at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.  The artist is English sculptor Thomas Bayliss Huxtable-Jones.  It was a gift of the Class of 1943 in memory of their classmates who died in World War II.                 

 

ACT THREE

It's the first day of Spring and I welcome the promise of change in the air.  Our New Hampshire landscape is fresh, running with the water of melting snow and ice.  I walked our road in an early morning chill with mist still covering the beaver pond and the patches of lingering snow at the end of the field. 

What a long and complicated journey since my last blog entry in 2019.  I am not the same woman I was back then.  In fact, there are times when I don't recognize myself now -- older, grey-haired, solemn, curt.  I have no patience with cruelty, deliberate ignorance and division simply out of spite.

This, after three years of man-made horrors and the constant attacks on freedom, compassion and respect for diversity across the world -- and then, the scars of Covid-19, a pandemic turned to political theater, panic and grief.  And now, we face Russia's attack on Ukraine. 

Change and transition. Fear and despair.  The seasons shift and here we are in Spring, a time of hope and wonder, yet we hold our collective breath.  World War III?

Change and transitions and loss.  As I said, it's a long and complicated road we travel moving through light and dark and back to the light, shadows to our right, flames to our left.

Here's a poem I wrote in early 2020.  My mother had just moved to a nursing-rehabilitation facility, her "new home".  But Covid-19 was on the move, too.  March 12, 2020, the center closed to in-person visits.  My mother died a year later. 

 

In March, I last kissed your soft cheek

squeezed your hand,

tucked the quilt about your frail body.

 

Yet all the while, the chill winds blew

fever and fear under the doors

and into the cracks of our lives.

 

Thick glass walls rose up between us.

I watched your eyes meet mine,

steady with grit and shared courage.

 

I smiled and waved,

then looked back --

one last time. 

 

_________ 

 

                                 

THE CORPSE

The Corpse

In our lower field,

within a ring of hair and

trampled earth, lies the body

of a fully-grown, female

moose.

Cause of death?  Brain worm,

the Warden says, that parasite

carried by white-tailed deer and spread

by snails on water grasses.

Pity.

Will you take her away?

Record her death, place and time?

A shake of his head.  No.

No more state biologists here

for moose.

The dead moose still lies

in our field, ignored by bureaucrats.

But what do they know?

Better to heed vultures,

ravens and jays. 

Hear the coyotes who come at dark

to crush her ribs and pull her limbs.

They bay at the moon and stars,

praise and proclaim reverence for

the Goddess.

...as she slowly becomes Earth...

A SLIP OF THE SOUL

   

 Maybe it was because I sat two rows from the front of the church, no one between me and the minister, me and the pulpit, me and the choir in its stall above the congregation.

Or maybe it was because the interior of this building has changed so little from 1860 when it was built and from 1960 when I was girl beginning my journey into church membership.

It may have come through collective family memories deep in my bones.  My grandparents worshiped here from time to time.  My mother and father married in this sanctuary in September 1946.  I married before this same altar in September 1969.

Perhaps my New England roots travel back to 1671 when the Reverend Edward Taylor, a minister-poet, gathered his flock and composed a congregation that bears witness even to this Sunday  two weeks before Easter 2018.

Whatever was stirred within my heart, I slipped in time.  The sun shone through the translucent windows, no grand colors for stern Congregationalists, and lent glory to the white interior.

A patch of deep maroon of the pew to my left glowed.  As the hour passed, those rays moved from cushion to floor covering to blue hymnals to the wooden rails.  Above me I remembered the quiet independence of the balcony, aloof and closer to what -- God?

But mostly I thought how old and anonymous I have become in this space once the stage for my life's great dramas.  Marriage.  Faith.  Illusion and loss.

Here I am being invited to search my soul and join with these others in celebration.  Yet I still sit with strangers and still feel the ousider, even as I marvel at the fire in those memories and mysteries from so long ago.

UPON WRITING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY

WHAT I LEARN WHEN I WRITE WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

From your shared introductions, I learn Vulnerability.

On your list of Causes, I read Fairness, Equality and Freedom.

When you write, I hear Violence and Fear.

When you leave, I wonder about Gender, Ferocity and the Tribe.

ALONG THE ROAD POEMS...

Cemetery on Sam Hill in Worthington, Massachusetts

For many years, I have written "Along the Road..." poems.  They fit my belief of life being a journey and how we make our own paths by walking, traveling, moving along roads, unexpected or well-worn, throughout our earthly days. 

This past year I lost my way.  For many reasons the road disappeared.  I wandered, wondered and only now edge back to the page to find the words that ground me. 

Along the road in twenty-sixteen,

I somehow lost my way.

Lost my writing, lost my time,

lost my lovely wayward moments.

I wandered through snowy mountains,

 mud and soft Caribbean sands.

Snapped and trapped in the corporate gulag,

one cold Hell and back again.

Write that I lost my father,

thin like leather, gasping for breath

in the downstairs room on Trouble Street

 where breezes carried him birdsong

and the sent of early summer flowers.

* 

In that dry year of twenty-something,

all the bad times re-exploded.

Tell how I lost my temper, flawed

goodwill and old illusions.

Say I still taste the sorrow, 

droning on harsh winter winds.

The soldier sheltering his trauma,

the girl on-guard, alert to fear.

One war ends in wounded peace,

where the grass is ever-greener, 

along the writing road, 

lost in dreams and should-have-beens, 

thick with gifts and demons.

BLESSED BE THE PEACE MAKERS

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Click on the Picture to See...
"THE BELOVED COMMUNITY IS THE FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE."

Looking for Root Causes

Spring Valley High School

           October 2015

Unsafe in my school

Unsafe at home.  Rage dogs me,

drags me by the hair

targets me, the throw-away kid.

Someone.  Somewhere.  Hear my story.

NEW HAMPSHIRE IN OCTOBER

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

White pine in granite

anchored by tenacious roots

straight trunk, weathered bark

limbs outstretched in feathered green

surveys the cascades below.

LUNAR ECLIPSE: SEPTEMBER 27, 2015

MIDNIGHT MOON

Adrift on the third 

rock from the sun, we watch

light play the russet

marble suspended in black,

blessed with one luminous edge.

AFTER NEPAL, NOTHING IN LIFE IS THE SAME

The Himalayas from Nagarkot

In March 2015, we traveled with our friends and students from the University of Rhode Island to take part in the Kingian Nonviolence and Conflict Reconciliation Orientation and Core Training in Nagarkot, Nepal.  

We were introduced to the nonviolence philosophy and education of Martin Luther King, Jr. with students, lawyers, educators, social workers, NGO staff, and military officers from Nepal and other countries in Southasia.

After the training, we joined the URI students on a cultural tour of Nepal and then spent time on our own, exploring Kathmandu and the countryside.

As we learned, nothing in life is the same after Nepal. 

Boudhnath Stupa - Kathmandu

On the way to Bhaktapur

The Peacock Paper Factory - Bhaktapur

Namo Buddha - Edge of the Kathmandu Valley

Boys of the LRI School sing "Imagine" by John Lennon.

Chitwan -- On the Border with India

Guardians of the Road

Thamel

Three weeks after we returned home, on Saturday April 25, Nepal was hit with a 7.8 earthquake.  The country has been devastated with loss of life, loss of entire villages, homes and workplaces destroyed, cultural and historical sites gone.

 Swayambhunath is now rubble.

Bhaktapur -- a medieval city is a pile of bricks

People we met now live in tents -- no jobs and no homes going into the monsoon season. 

On the way to Paulines Guesthouse -- all buildings destroyed

Paulines Guesthouse has collapsed.

I find myself caught between tragedy and sorrow, and the utter grace of our trip and its timing.   

It's my koan, a paradox for meditation.  Abandon logical reasoning, the Zen master might say to me.  What happens, then?

A NEPAL COMPASS ROSE

Chhetrapati Chowk

Five dirt roads converge
like five spokes of a great wheel
steer me to Thamel,
Mithro, the booksellers street,
Swayambhnath and Home.