Everything Is Illuminated

A strange thing about the dry season here: even the leaves of the trees suffer. Over the course of five months, they accumulate a thick layer of dust until finally the first rains of the season wash them free of their burden, their dirty souvenir of summer. That same dust cakes the dashboards of your car, sinks into the air vents, the control panels, and whatever crevice it can find, including your pores and fine lines. You smell it, you taste it, and you better get good with it because, even though everywhere, it's going nowhere.

When I previously lamented about my lack of beach-walking partners, there was one thing I didn't realize: this place I live in is a bit bipolar. The difference between low (rainy) season and high (dry) season is extreme. While the verdant land dries into a spectrum of yellows and browns, the snow birds flock from all the great lakes and those 40-below states. Suddenly our small group of 25-35 more than doubles to 75. And when it comes to a social life here, it's feast or famine, and if you've a tinge of introversion, prepare for social indigestion (imagine the equivalent of ending a fast by eating two in-n-out burgers and fries in one sitting). I went from having no roommate and a very limited though fabulous group to spending literally 622 hours in a row (that's 26 days minus a two hour separation when I missed meeting) with my new roommate, Kady Hexum. [*digression: that Kady and I have spent the last 3.5 months all up in each other's business with only approximately 2.5 conflicts may in fact be our greatest accomplishment to date*] Meanwhile our hall was bursting at the seams with loads of cool people who'd come down to preach and beach. But keeping track of them was another matter. Those friends I'd spent the majority of my time with during the lull I barely saw (and still barely see) because..well, I guess because there's only so many cars to go around and there's a whole lot of us. I know, I know, this doesn't really sound like a problem, but when it's 95 degrees and you're sweaty-filthy-crusty-tired and there's seven people crammed into a Tracker and you're driving around the insufferable one way streets of Santa Cruz looking for a lost sheep of Guanacaste but you've forget the landmark, and you can't even yell Kady! because now there's a Kady and a Katie, it may be a challenge for some. Ok fine, for me, because I'm stressy like that.

But then: a full moon. I was tired and wanting an evening of hibernation, but Katie and Jon wanted to walk on the beach, and how could I say no after blogging my woeful tale of solitude? We started at Brasilito, a black sand beach, and worked our way over to Conchal, a beach made up made of a multitude of broken shells. I'll never do this night justice, I've never seen another like it, and I hate that I can't convey it properly. It was ethereal, the way the moon reflected off the shells and the foam of the water: so bright, as if we were walking on the moon itself, or some other planet not our own. But for me, the most incredible visual aspect was the way the moonlight reflected off the leaves of the trees. That vile dust coating the leaves in daytime turned itself into something bewitching, something you'd willingly tolerate for all those months just for this. This view, as if through infrared goggles. We gawked nearly every step of the way and lay in the sand for hours just to make the night last longer. And you know those trying people who like to find meaning in everything? Ah yes, well I'm one of them, and I couldn't help but see those leaves as a metaphor for life's challenges [fill in metaphor here]. It was strange to think I could have missed that night, and I wondered how many such nights I've already missed, and what I could do to make sure I don't miss more.

But before I leave off waxing philosophical, let me tell you how the night ended: with us, like giddy children, driving back home, and Jon, the driver, slightly distracted and not noticing the ant eater (yes, ant eater) trying to cross the road. He swerved, the car squeeled out of control, we almost died (not really), and that stupid animal was just fine. Scientists better discover some cure for a rare disease within the DNA of that stinking animal for what it nearly cost us (perhaps you had to be there, the joke was very funny at the time).

PS ant-eater: you are not doing a very good job because there's ants all over the place!!!