Rain Forests

I am sitting outside our vacation rental in the jungle of southern Pacific Costa Rica and thinking about rain forests.  I live in a rain forest, but northern and cool.  This tropical rain forest has many similarities to my temperate rain forest, but everything  seems to be magnified by at least ten. It's the driest month of the year here so the cicadas are deafening, like summer crickets on steroids. The forest has a palpable presence, a huge organism, mysterious and overbearing. The eerie sound of the howler monkeys floats through the dense growth. It is the stuff of stories and legends, primitive and foreign.

The forest is warm and moist and so very fertile. Life seems to spring from this perfect set of conditions in endless variety. The insects and birds, the flowers, animals and vegetation: all are so flamboyant compared to those in the muted and foggy forests of the Pacific Northwest. I have been here before and I will visit again. Feeling this intensity around me is invigorating and at the same time humbling.
I think I could get used to the forest here if I spent enough time to become comfortable with the plants and animals, cycles and risks.  But today I admit to a healthy caution and respect for the unknowns out my front door.

On Sandhill Cranes

I've been working on a painting filled with Sandhill Cranes.  As I study the cranes I am reminded of my first encounter with them in the Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge.  At first I thought nothing was there in the empty landscape save the dried winter reeds and low grasses, dormant in the icy late winter winds.  And then all of a sudden I saw them, enormous, awkward, yet surprisingly graceful as well, the same bleached violet-brown-gray of the sleeping marsh, comfortable residents of their world.

More recently I saw the cranes at Summer Lake during their mating season. I was lucky to observe the mating behavior of two birds close by my parked car. As the two birds danced and preened in their elaborate mysterious ritual I cautiously snapped pictures through the unopened window, then quietly and slowly eased the car away to leave them to their privacy. Like long distance relay runners, these huge migratory birds carry something with them rare and precious, an unconscious instinct, a seed of survival to sow in the present and pass into the future. Perfectly adapted, the old generation passes on the necessary knowledge to the new.  And the cycle continues.

My favorite memory of Sandhill Cranes is a late summer evening in French Glen, seated on a low hill watching the day dissolve, rosy light giving way to empty blue gray dusk.  Over the Malheur Marsh the whirring calls of the cranes echoed across the wide basin.  Quiet, so quiet, save the bird calls, hypnotic like the ringing of a Tibetan prayer bowl.  Wild, primordial sound in perfect harmony with creation, ancient and timeless. I felt humbled to witness to such searing beauty.

Night skies in the desert

Coming home to the high desert skies.  I forget how big the sky is here, the dry crisp cold winter air, the smell of sage and juniper. Last night I looked into the infinity of stars overhead and gave thanks to the universe.