Monteverde Life

Monteverde Life

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World of Mushrooms

World of Mushrooms

These months of social distancing have brought the beginning of the rainy season here in Costa Rica. We have shifted our hiking times, depending on when the thunderclouds form and the mist turns to larger drops. Our walks in the cloud forest between storms reveal new treasures every time. There

Fallen-tree Tadpoles

Fallen-tree Tadpoles

It's tadpole season. A delight of Alia's since we returned to Monteverde has been visiting the tadpoles in their puddles. Fallen strangler fig trees are a perfect tadpole habitat: crevices among the entwined cords of the tree's body, tipped sideways, hold families of newborns.

Harmony

As we prepare to leave Monteverde and move back to Oakland (tomorrow!), I am thinking about a sort of harmony that we've experienced over our two years here. People and the many living things around us are basically getting along. Whether we are flora or fauna, vertebrates or

Hello, Big World!

We've been spending a lot of time recently with little creatures newly hatched out of eggs. On a trip to Nicaragua, we spent a few nights at the Juan Venado Island Nature Reserve, where we were just in time to see a few hundred sea turtles hatch. The

Contemplating Community

Since the last post here, we've been contemplating community. (Maybe it's kept us too busy to even post...) Some bugs are born into community... but quickly they disperse. Some spiders seem to want to stick together for a few weeks after they enter the world, not

Here and There and Back to Monteverde

It's August, three months since I last posted anything here, and we're back in Monteverde. What started out as decidedly a one-year adventure has become a two-year adventure. Why stay another year? Well, on our first day in Monteverde after summer travel, we met two bugs

Curiosities

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2017/05/IMG_5755.jpg] We find ourselves asking a lot of questions lately, about all sorts of things. Like, why are these orchids green, such an unusual color for flowers? And why do they last for 6 weeks or more? … while these day

New Discoveries, Here and There

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2017/03/IMG_5573.jpg] We’re in a nice routine now — school, work via laptop, Spanish classes, trips to the farmers’ market, visits with friends… Alia is building friendships with a fun group of bouncy kindergarteners. [https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2017/

The Windy Season

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2017/02/IMG_3593.jpg] November, December, January, now February… We’ll call it the “windy season.” It’s not the “wet season” of torrential afternoon thunderstorms. We experienced those when we first arrived here in the fall. And it’s not the dusty

Simplicity

This blog has been silent since sometime before the U.S. election. What can we add to the flurry of news and commentary, words and images? Every year, the Escuela de los Amigos de Monteverde selects a theme. This year the theme is Sencillez, or Simplicity. > “Buscamos enfocar nuestras

Beautiful Granada, Nicaragua

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2016/10/thumb_IMG_4803_1024.jpg] Alia’s first school vacation came for a week in October, and we headed north to Nicaragua. Ed, Jennie, Alia and cousin Richard chose the slow, local bus and spent a little over 3 hours getting through

To Our Animal Neighbors: Thank You for Sharing Your Forest With Us

There's plenty to write here about our human neighbors. Somehow, though, we end up with a great number of photos and stories of our animal neighbors. So, I'll take this opportunity to say to them today: Thank you. We're borrowing a small corner of

Settling into a New Day-to-Day

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2016/09/IMG_4471.JPG] I like to go new places to shake up routines and see what I uncover. We shook things up by leaving Oakland for a year and getting here. Now we play with finding a balance, between the excitement of

Our Home with No Address

[https://monteverde.dorrington.org/content/images/2016/08/IMG_4379.JPG] We can’t tell you the address of our home, because it doesn’t seem to have one. It’s in the Bajo del Tigre neighborhood, which is known mainly as the entrance to the trails of the Bosque

We’re Here!

After a tumultuous week packing up our house, moving Mara over to Peter’s place, and some crazy airport delays, we finally got to San Jose and the comfort of our favorite sanctuary, the Hotel Aranjuez. Here’s Alia toasting our arrival with a chocolate muffin, while Maya monkey rests