Photo Credits: Hayley Stutzman
8:00 am on a Wednesday morning found 8
students, 2 professors, a TA, and a driver squeezed into a van, bumping along
the road away from Las Cruces Biological Station. We spent the first
part of the ride watching out the window and playing various car games from
both the US and Costa Rica. When the paved road gave way to dirt and gravel we
tried not to slide into each other and admired the driver’s skill at zooming
along these steep, winding roads. There was a feeling of excitement in the car;
we didn’t really know what to expect but it was a change from the normal
routine and promised adventure.
As we passed coffee fields and
small, colorful houses we saw groups of people, from young children to adults, standing
or sitting along the side of the road and watching us as we rumbled by. It made
me feel like a foreigner. Mau told us they came to help pick coffee. When someone
asked about child labor, he stated simply that the kids help their parents earn
some extra money. I thought about how different their lives are from those of
the 10 year olds at home, who spend their time at organized sports practices
and summer camp.
Up at the station, while we got a
few introductions to the farm, Pablo, a visiting professor, gathered branches
from surrounding trees and bushes and laid them on the porch. We knew the
drill. We differentiated between simple and compound leaves, debated branching
patterns, looked through magnifying glasses at little white dots in between the
veins, and crushed the leaves to smell them. After Pablo had helped us
determine the characteristics he would tell us the family. We had to ask him to
repeat the names a couple times – Moraceae, Passifloraceae, Zingiberaceae. We
saw plants in the fig family, the coffee family, and the palm family and tried
to remember how to tell them apart.
After pulling on rubber boots and
filling up water bottles, we squeezed through a gap in the fence and tromped
off into forest, Mau and Pablo in the front, Mario (our TA) in the back, and
the 8 students in between. As we got further into the forest, the world around
us changed. It got cooler and darker, the colors endless shades of green or
brown, the occasional ray of sunlight highlighting a clump of leaves or patch
of dirt. I couldn’t get enough of the forest and, as we walked, tried to
simultaneously look at the canopy and between the trunks and still not trip
over roots in the path. The amount of life in all directions was amazing, ants
marching across the path, huge strangler figs towering over us, orchids,
bromeliads, and vines clinging to branches, fungus growing on roots. A little
while later we heard a sound like metal screeching on metal and stopped short.
None of us had ever heard anything like it. Mau told us it was the bell
bird-probably a juvenile practicing his call. We stood and listened to the
unearthly sound for a few more minutes, craning our heads in search of the
bird. The noise rang out even more in the otherwise quiet jungle, a welcome change
from the constant buzz of cicadas we heard in the forests around Las Cruces. When
we started walking again, the path began to slope upwards. I appreciated the
plant identification stops as a chance to catch my breath. If we had already covered
this particular family, Pablo pointed to a plant or passed out small clippings
and had us guess the name. Sometimes we would figure it out with a couple hints
and other times we would never get there and Pablo would explain what to look
for next time. An uneven base on a leaf that looked like it came from a banana
plant identified a Heliconiaceae. A leaf with a joint that helped it follow the
sun was a Marantaceae, or a prayer plant.
We had just started walking again when a
loud rustling came from the canopy up ahead. Wandering ahead cautiously, with
Mao at the front scanning the trees, a few people caught sight of a monkey
swinging through the branches. Soon we had caught up with the troupe and there
were monkeys all around us, a mix of white-faced capuchins and the larger,
almost red-colored spider monkeys. The capuchins quickly continued on their
way, leaving the group of spider monkeys above us. We watched in fascination
and amazement as they jumped from limb to limb, one with a baby riding on its
back. They chirped and screeched, some sitting above us, shaking limbs, ripping
them off and throwing them down at us. Mao told us they probably weren’t used
to humans in their territory, that we were just another primate invading their
space. While we watched them, we peppered Mao with other questions - what do
they eat? How long do parents take care of children? Are the members of the
group all related? I was thrilled at this opportunity to see truly wild monkeys
in their natural habitat. Before coming to Costa Rica, I had only ever seen
them in small cages. But even Pablo and Mao, who seemed to know everything
about the forest, were excited because spider monkeys are both endangered and
highly mobile. They move constantly to maintain a fresh supply of the fruits
and leaves that they eat and we were just lucky enough to have our paths cross.
Eventually, as the monkeys gave up on scaring us away and moved on themselves,
we started up the path again, already feeling satisfied with the hike.
The trail continued steepening. Eventually
we had to put away our field notebooks to make use of our hands as we scrambled
over rocks and clung onto trees. The lush green forest gave way to a shorter,
paler bamboo forest. Then, abruptly, we piled into a clearing that looked out
over a valley towards the Talamanca Mountains and a huge national park that
extends all the way to Panama. From our vantage point, all we could see was
canopy, no roads or roofs or any sign of humans at all, just the green folds
down below and the grey clouds floating above our heads. It struck me for the
first time how rare such an experience was, to be surrounded by forest as far
as the eye could see. In my experience, it has been special to even be out of
earshot of a road. As I hike and enjoy the views and inspect plant venation and
breathe the clean air, I feel incredibly lucky that these kinds of places still
exist and even more so that I get to see them. And I worry that future
generations won’t get the same opportunities. But that is why we are here,
meeting inspirational people with similar concerns who are working to protect this
wealth of beauty and biodiversity. As I perched myself on a rock and took out
my lunch I also realized that, sometimes, it is enough to sit at the top of a
mountain eating gallo pinto and soaking
in the world around you.
Nicki Oppenheim, Washington University in
St. Louis
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