Day one and settling in. Day one I tried to relax with the ocean, vacation and family. Suggesting to myself to turn inward, grow my beastlings' understanding and love of the ocean and use the time to play.
She said, she said to a full and busy head.
We are renting a small apartment in Guanacaste at the surf side of Playa Potrero. The houses are set back like fortresses, and are decorated with gates and barbed wire. I ran at 6am to explore our dirt roads and the paths to the beaches. I woke up the guys to continue running, and we set a beach 3k away, Playa de Penca, as our finish line. On the way, we saw floppy ear cows, one story, thatched yurts and brightly colored ranches, lots of land for sale, suzukis galore and teeny kids on big bikes chasing chickens down the road. We also saw resorts with sprinklers and automatic open-sesame gates, as well as two to three story homes flying Canadian and American flags. All the homes were wired and fenced, most had dogs. Ah, the dogs, they are everywhere- both behind the gates and roaming the streets.
Hard to say if we were among local Costa Rican people, or adding to the stream of tourismo that both fuels and drains this country. This hits my soft spot, and can't be looked at directly until I settle in more- because I can easily over react.
We ran to the beach, ran on the beach and I introduced the boys to warm waves and mud castles. Swimming in warm waters is worlds better than the ice dips into New England's Atlantic. It means handstands and flips, it means floating like a mermaid, it means enduring beating waves enough to learn how to ride. It means never wanting to come out.
I floated. The air shut off, the water poured into my ears and closed the sound. My breath filled the space and made the sky and waves and far off sand look like a movie. Lying there, I flashed through so many understudied memories of floating like this, throughout my life. Nothing noteworthy, just a super8 mind movie; as I became my 12 year old body floating, my 24 year old body floating, even my 8 year old body floating. Is it a true juxtaposition of being when sitting in the silence of my amplified breathing? Whatever it is, the sensation is for real. It occurred to me that the soothing and lifetime of personal epiphanal relations with the ocean, lie simply in its ability to calm and slow me. To shut me up, and float me.
Next door
Floppy vaca
Barbed palm at dawn
Float