Sight
was the most obvious and, seemingly, trustworthy thing to use to gain an
understanding of my surroundings. Arriving in Costa Rica, I was introduced to
an environment not too different from the one I had just left in South Florida.
Tall palm trees dispersed throughout the cities, driving in the OTS bus past
the ocean while kids stared at its proximity, and ruffling through the ‘exotic’
fruits that sit out at the markets. I had seen it all before and I was
wondering what Costa Rica had to offer. Granted, there were plant and animals
species I had never encountered but I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I was expecting
to be. The first night at the hotel, with only half the students having
arrived, we sat down to dinner. “Tick tick tick” started to echo in the trusses
of the roof. I had just assumed it was a bird tapping on the metal roof so I
ignored it. As it grew louder Mau pointed out that it was actually a house
gecko. I was immediately confused because I had been with gecko’s many times
but had never heard one make a noise like that. In that moment, seven hours
into the start of the program, I realized that in order to learn from Costa
Rica and from my experience I needed to stop comparing everything to back home
and open up the way that I gain information about my surroundings.
I began to focus less on sight and
more on hearing, touch, smell and taste in order to ‘research’ what was around
me. Each of these senses offered new perspective into how I viewed my study
abroad. Hearing was the easiest because of the bombardment of sounds that you
receive once you set foot in Los Cruces Biological Station. Right outside the
window in my bedroom is a tree and each morning perched on that tree is a
different bird. From songs, to chirps, to squawks, I frantically search through
the pages of the Costa Rican bird identification guide trying to see what’s
talking to me. The first night hike we went on was a perfect place to practice
listening over seeing. With ten students excitingly looking every which way, no
light source was strong enough to penetrate the over-looming darkness of the
night. The hike introduced me to glass frogs, scorpions that fluoresce under a
black light, and more katydids than I could count. While it seemed like the sound
of crickets was droning the world out I see Mau lift something up and put it
next to people’s ears. Curious, I stepped closer to see (or hear) what all the
ruckus was about. “Vrrrrrrrrrrrrr”. All
I thought was “Someone must have seriously made this bee mad”. When I turned to
see what had been 3 cm away from my ear, a little dark beetle was illuminated.
I thought my hearing was playing tricks on me but I was just learning how to
experience nature differently.
My sense of touch and taste hasn’t
been as forgiving to my acclimation to Costa Rica as my other senses have.
Within the first day at Las Cruces I slipped down a muddy slope, grabbed onto what
appeared to be a mossy tree and felt the prick of little spines burrow into my
skin. I’ve encountered serrated leaves that have cut my finger, slimy moss,
rough faced leaves, and the myriad of fruit textures (some pleasant and some
not so much). Despite the pain that it has brought, being able to have
hands-on-learning has reinforced key ideas that we’ve learned in class. While
completing my plant dichotomy homework, feeling and comparing the textures of
all the different plants has allowed me to better remember the different
characteristics of each plant family. Now, while I take walks around the
garden, I am able to feel the leaves (their surface, edges, branches) and
narrow them down to a handful of plant families. Igualmente, I haven’t had the best luck with taste. Thanks to the
fruit lab, I was able to taste more fruits (~47 to be exact) than I had ever
seen in one room. I could handle the slimy passion fruit, sticky tamarind, sour
raspberries, sweet sugar cane, and woody roots. When I saw Kiersten with her
phone out ready to shoot my reaction video to the eating Nance, I knew that it
wasn’t going to be good. I had never tasted such a little fruit that packed so
much punch into one bite. The taste of rotting fish enveloped each of my taste
buds while I ran to the trash to spit it out.
The gentlest transition has been on
my sense of smell. I normally don’t have a keen smelling ability so, in my
everyday interactions, I haven’t noticed too many different smells. This had all changed once we went on our hike
with Pablo. We passed a plant from the Piperaceae family and Pablo ripped off a
leave, gave it to me, and said crush it. I ripped it near my nose, took a large
whiff and was overcome by the smell of pepper. We moved onto the Myristicaceae
family and I did the same thing. I smelled it and my mouth began to water
because the leaves smelled spicy. I had never known that leaves could smell
like anything but the “leaf and dirt” smell that I had always associated them with.
Coming into Costa Rica I had just
taken everything very superficially. I judged everything solely on sight and wasn’t
able to see the complexity and layers that it had to offer. One and a half
weeks into Las Cruces changed that completely. I learned how to use my sense of
touch, smell, hearing and taste to expand my information collection. Even more
importantly, I was able to draw connections between the things we learned in
class with real world examples which has strengthened and increased my
curiosity to experience more of Costa Rica.
Tanner Waters
Duke University
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