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Surrendering to the Intelligence of Nature

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Do you see the two animal portraits that the creative hand of Nature has painted on this butterfly wing?

You know what I think has been one of my greatest lessons learned from my travels? Appreciation of the absolute and astonishing Intelligence of Nature.

Why Humanity seems so concerned with trying to control, organize, and profit (exploit) from the Natural Order instead of just letting ourselves fall in Wonder of its own grace is absolutely beyond me.

When I watched the scene of North America being blanketed in a snow of death in, “The Day After Tomorrow,” I was overwhelmed in a wave of peace. My eyes actually watered up in joy of the vision of the Earth demonstrating its equanimous love of humanity (in relation to all the other ages and populations that have inhabited its house).

Equanimous Love.

I’ve been using this term a lot lately and I think an explanation is due.

Since my Vipassana sitting last February, I’ve been a regurlar practicioner of meditation. On a *near* daily basis, I sit until I find inner silence and stillness and then I go into the quiet. And there I consult with the Voice of Inspiration that delivers to me the daily news of my Theme and Reason for this day of living. (And today, by the way, that voice says, “Speak. Speak from your heart, for there are NO other words worth listening to.”)

Now I begin and end each of these mediations with daily resolutions (that were themselves given to me in meditation);

1. To give unconditional, equanimous and undefended love to all beings.

2. To tirelessly seek inspiration and share it.

3. To be an instrument of the hand of the Creative and an open channel for the flow of the Divine Spirit.

4. To walk in the physical body whilst living in the spiritual and eternal body.

5. And to think *namaste crown*, intuit *namaste temple*, envision *namaste eyes*, listen and speak *namaste mouth* only in accordance with the Truth of my heart *namaste heart*.

When I started making these daily declarations, I did not — and perhaps still do not — understand the true power of making such resolutions while in meditation.

“To give unconditional, equanimous and undefended love to ALL beings.”

But now after nine months of repeating it twice a day, I am beginning to understand both the essence and implications of this resolution.

Focusing my love on the sick or hurt or dying was easy. So instead I focused my love on the angry, mean, and mentally tormented. I focused my love on those trying to kill themselves. I focused my love on the corrupt and greedy. And I even focused my love on the president (that one sometimes took an exhausting amount of effort). I focused my love on the prisoners, but even more so on the guards that did the torturing.

And to my surprise, I found my unconditional and undefended love for all these beings. I realized that for any energy body to exert an amount of pain or torment, the tormenter him/herself must live under and equal amount of pain and/or torment; Good ol’ Newtonian logic. And the only way to heal that kind of pain is through compassionate love. Easy!

I thought.

But there is a trick to this equation that I was not conscious of when I started making the resolution…

For equanimous love leaves no room for favorites.

While deep in meditation on my love for the man who held me up at gunpoint, I did not notice my love for those physically close to me…distancing.

So now I may love the man that held me up at gunpoint as much as I love my mother. But NOW, I love my mother as much as I love the man that pointed a gun at me!

Do you see this? Do you see understand the implications of this kind of love? It means I cannot attach myself to any one love as greater, more passionate or more true than another.

Now there are things about my life path that I have never declared on this site. Perhaps because the declaration of these ideas to people around me have never resulted in any comprehension. No matter how many times I say, “I will never get married. I can’t make love into a contract of business,” or “Having children is not part of my life path, I have other things to produce,” or, “I won’t live in the States again because my personal myth cannot be contained to a country,” I always get a hit on the shoulder and a smirky smile that says, “Ah you just wait, Society will get to you one of these days! You’ll fall in love. You’ll want children. You’ll want a house and car. Just wait. And then this life of abandon that you’ve chosen will turn on you.”

But it won’t. This I know. For I have surrendered all these things in exchange for participation in my experiment with equanimous love.

How could I ever get married, if I love my partner as much as I do the Iraqi prisoner of war? How can I have a child if I respect its life the same as I do the child starving in the dumpster community of Guatemala? And how can I mourn the death of my parents when I believe with all my heart that their, and all our demise, is only part of the natural cycle of life?

When I first began to feel this, this distancing from everything that used to be important to me, I cried. Because the truth is, we treasure our attachments; We love our struggle to stay close to anything that brings us fleeting feelings of happiness. Because if for nothing else, struggle and pain make us feel alive. And feeling alive, regardless of the nature of the sensation, be it joyful or painful, is better than feeling nothing at all…or equanimously about everything.

Or is it?

Now both you and I are watching me near the end (or beginning?) of an interesting cliff. Somewhere, unconsciously, I made the choice to take this path. And the seed of that subconscious being grew, evolved inside of me, till it assumed its own walking and talking power. And now my conscious has awakened in agreement; My life is not my own. I’ve surrendered it.

I surrender my past, my future, my contracts, my relationships, my attachments, my beliefs, my opinions, my ego, and my partisan love.

All in exchange for my participation in this experiment with equanimous love.

“It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks wildly, or, “with the flower of the mind”; not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from the celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveler who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse’s neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Talk of speech like thunder! That passage deserves a moment’s silence.)

So I surrender everything. I let go of the reins of the divine animal that we all ride upon and hand over control to the Instinct and supreme Intelligence of Nature.

I hereby make my life an experiment in the attempted creation of a personal Universal myth.

I’m gonna jump off this cliff. And anyone is free to watch.

I might go down in flames. But is there a better or worse way to go?

The eye of the Owl and the head of the Snake.

I dare anyone to think about this for more than a minute and not be left in undulating waves of Wonder.

> More New Pictures in the Ecuador Album

(sol’s travel photos) (about sol) (some sol stories) (LeapNow.org) (travel disclaimer) (packing list)

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Re-discovering the World as Round

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(Leaf from the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha became enlightened.)

It’s been a year and a half since I started wearing the Buddhist Eternal Knot — a symbol for love without limits, compassion without constraints and the impermanent and cyclical nature of life and death. I sometimes take the symbol off its silver chain and trace its curves. And as I do so, I remember a day when I believed the world flat. When I thought the future was written in simple, short sentences. When I assumed that life ended in a single period mark. Full stop.

I’m not certain where I got the idea that life was a flat line. I’m sure at some point I asked, “Where do we come from? And where will I go when I die?” And I’m pretty sure I was told one or another version of a creation myth where everything was created in one miraculous moment from nothingness.

And I’m also sure I challenged this explanation. Because as I looked around my living playground through the tirelessly curious eyes of my 7-yr old self, I saw evidence of another story of creation…

I watched the fuzzy brown and black caterpillars disappear into dark homemade caves that appeared to house death, and miraculously reemerge transformed into entirely new flying forms of butterflies. I watched closely as the trees reached out their branches to sprout small buds that would roll out their tiny green leafy lives to embrace the light of the sun. I watched as these leaves grew with the grace of summer till they could take the heat no longer and turned color with contentment and finally danced to the ground. I watched the small brown seeds of old fruits from last season sprout from drops of hidden potential into vines that bloomed into the flowers and fruits of their secret inspirations in every color of the tasty rainbow.

Life spun around me. In small and big circles, and in wide and narrow intertwining hoops and loops, I watched the cycle of life and death weave itself together in an interdependent and endless knot.

I watched and I learned this; That life does not come from nothingness, nor does it pass away into nothingness. All life comes from another seed of life that was born in a phase of death. And Life does not pass TO death. It passes THROUGH death – on the path to a new form of life.

So why, I wonder, did it take me 25 years to finally re-realize what I already knew when I was 7?

And why did I spend so many of my “conscious and learning years” gravely grimacing at even the mere mention of the word, “reincarnation”? Since when did these ideas of life before life, and life after life, become inconceivable? And when did I start to deny my living experience and the millions of breathing, buzzing, and blooming examples of this cycle of life that permeate my physical existence? Who taught me that Death was the period mark at the end of my life line? And who said that Death was something to be sad about?

One day, when I was of an age I could still count on my fingers, I remember finding in the forest behind my house a fallen bird’s nest. In it were four tiny baby birds, all of which had also fallen from life. And I remember being fascinated with this passing. With no grown ups to tell me not to look or not to touch, I took my time at this place, touching and holding these small lifeless bodies with an honest interest in this subject for which the adults had only evading and squeamish solutions. And as I held death in the palm of my hand, I did not feel sadness. Nor did I feel mournful. Neither was I afraid. And when I look back at that experience, I begin to wonder if humans are deceivingly taught and teaching an unnecessary aversion to death. And I consider if in fact our natural reaction to Death, which we need only look to the 5-year olds to see, is really only of curiosity, peace and an inherent understanding that death is nothing but a natural part of the cycle of life.

And now I come back to that perhaps-not-so-very-foreign word, “reincarnation” which means nothing more than, “the reappearance of something in a new form.” Ironic, I think, that this simple idea challenges Western thinking almost as much as word that the world is round once challenged Europe.

Just as the world goes round, so does life. But understanding that Life exists before and after this life hardly means that all our sailing ships of thought are now going to fall off some indefinable cliff; Quite the opposite actually. The existence of realms of Life before and after THIS life means only that there are obvious and VAST waters yet completely un-chartered. And THIS, I admit, is a daunting idea.

To accept responsibility for not only one life, but for all lives. To reduce our current personal existence to its infinitely small place among a countless many. To recognize that all our material merits of today mean nothing in a timeless understanding of tomorrow and yesterday. And as if wondering what the purpose of THIS life weren’t enough, what if we really had to ponder what the purpose of all life, cumulatively, over millennia of existences, and particularly of humanity, was to be?

What if we really had to look up from our worldly diversions and face the destiny that the stars spread out in the Braille of our blindness across the sky each night?

Yes. Entirely new maps for living would have to be chartered. Definitely, a daunting task. Luckily, it seems Life has already planted her lessons in the gardens around and within us. And each seed of life carries all the secrets and mysteries of its, our, and all potential being. So that it doesn’t require books, or gurus, or Gods to worship to come to that wisdom. All that is needed is to remember our 5-year old fascination, curiosity and inherent understanding of the cycle of life.

****

(Did you know that in Hindi, the word for “tomorrow” is the same as the word for “yesterday”? And that there is a form of “I” regularly used that refers to the subject with perfect equality to all other beings, as viewed from an other outside observer?)

(sol’s travel photos) (about sol) (some sol stories) (LeapNow.org)

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The School of Life

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“Ah! Such fascinating work you have! Whatever did you study in school?”

With a laugh and shrug I deliver one of the punch lines of my life; “Business.”

Today my hundred thousand dollar investment in my private school education delivers little more to me than a terrible little white envelope in the mail each month reminding me that I will owe them a check for the rest of my life.

And when exactly did my education lose my respect, I wonder?

Because I do remember a girl that took pure delight in finding the point of equilibrium on the supply-demand charts of economics courses. I remember a girl that spend three summers doing internships creating company surveys and reveled in the cleanliness of statistical analysis. I remember a girl that could work the numbers on an accounting balance sheet with the swiftness and enchantment of aligning one of those little sliding number puzzles. What happened to that girl?

My favorite course was Economics. My teacher was brilliant.

I remember one day when he declared to the class, “today I am going to show you the actual dollar value of a human life.” He then proceeded to use statistics of how “high-risk” jobs (street construction work) pay higher salaries in direct relation to the value of risk of death. From there he found a dollar unit value of life. And two hours later, with a whirlwind of white chalk power wafting in the air, thirty 20-year olds dropped their jaws in awe and declared in unison, “why yes, it makes perfect sense, a human life is worth exactly that little point on that graph!”

Another day he declared to the class, “today I’m going to show you that the best thing we could do to save the whales, is to give them to the poachers themselves.” And once again, in a flurry of swift statistics and sloping curves, he produced the ingenious answer, “privatization of the whaling industry!”

His rationale made pure and perfect sense.

Little did he know that his teachings would one day suffer from one of the very laws he taught me; The Law of Diminishing Returns, which I fondly remember as, “the more burritos you eat, the less you want to eat a burrito.”

Whales and Life are one thing on a chart, but they are another on a silver platter. And I declined my business school education on one life-changing day when they were delivered to me together in a formula that my Economics professor had never taught me…

I was frolicking in the last low and golden lights of another beautiful day on the beach of Tamarindo, Costa Rica when two men on horses galloped down the beach with unusually hurried speed. They abruptly stopped at my camp, where I was working with a sea turtle conservation effort.

The alarm in their faces was crudely accentuated by the red streaks of blood on their arms and shirts.

“…we tried to push it back in…but it won’t go! It’s smashing up against the rocks and it’s bleeding everywhere….I’m not sure what it is…it looks like a baby whale or something…”

The local managers of our camp, without a single moments hesitation, grabbed their gear and ran with race-worthy speed down the beach. My own steps fell behind their feet, but I found their natural pace quickly outdistanced mine.

The tide was coming in and, with parts of the beach inaccessible, I summited a small cliff to get to the final strip of rocky beach where the animal reportedly lay. At the top of the cliff, I delayed my dash for one minute to turn around and witness a single glimpse of the most beautiful sunset light I have ever seen grace a land. The red dirt of the clay cliff flared the bush, sky and water into an array of technicolor that blinded me to the reality of life.

The world swam around me and finally stalled long enough for me to briefly wonder, “Is this real?” Distant shouting turned me back to the path and sent me scrambling down the cliff to where my co-workers stood huddled waist high in the crashing waves of the incoming tide around a black thrashing mass.

I slowed my step considerably as I approached the shiny, coal-colored creature that it took three men to restrain.

“What is it?!”

“Is it alive?!”

“A porpoise.”

“Barely.”

I stepped deeper into the water and reached out to the creature. I placed one hand near its pale and desperate eye.

Tears welled up behind my own and threatened to break with the tide.

And suddenly I remembered something that I had read online in the news that very morning…

A large pod whales had beached themselves “for no apparent reason (although there was a recent experiment with seismic airguns in the local area of water)” on the coast of Tasmania, Australia that day. Despite all local efforts, the whales could not be moved back into the sea and the whales all lay awaiting imminent death.

My heart turned back to the porpoise. My hand rested gently upon her resigned life. Life was slipping from her like the water gliding down her oiled skin. And as I reached out to her and touched that moment inbetween life and death, my heart lept across the world and felt also the pulse of her great sisters of the sea, as their despair grew to match their enormous size and their pulse diminished to match their will to live.

Life stalled again. My heart with it. And I felt the pulse of all life weaken.

My despair clenched my throat around my own breath of life and something inside of me screamed and fell down on its knees. The tide of my inner cry crashed violently against the rocks of my being.

“THIS is life! THIS is life!”

Life is not a number, or tool, or factor of an equation, or possession to be owned, or statistic to be manipulated, or point of equilibrium on a chart! It’s not clean, or mechanical or predictable! It’s here! THIS pulse is life! And it beats in pace with all living creatures, just as it resonates with my own. And when it fades, mine does also!

And suddenly the bowels of the porpoise broke. And the water we stood in turned black with waste and blood. The man restraining the tail of the creature let go of the fight that had faded with the heart.

And it was somewhere there in the soiled water of death, and in the silence of life lost, that I let go of my education, and stood in understanding.

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defining Utila

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Defining Utila

Oh Utila.

The first time thy name graced my ears was whilst bartending in Antigua, Guatemala…

*****

A riley group of international backpackers on their third round of Cuba Libres were getting into animated conversation at the bar…

Mate #1: “…oh yeah…I completely got narked. I couldn’t add 4 + 6 on the wet board!”

Mate #2: “…and did you do that thing with the eggs? How cool was that?!”

Mate #3: “I didn’t see any egg thing. Why didn’t my instructor show us that?”

Mate #1: “Well that’s because YOU are only Open Water Certified, and WE are “Advanced.” They only do the egg trick in the Advanced Course.”

Mate #3 then proceeds in making the following ordered hand motions:

1. first spreading his arms wide

2. then sticking one finger into the enclosed circle of an “okay” sign

3. and finally making the motions of dealing out a deck of cards.

All three bust out in hysterics and high fives.

This is where I serve them their 4th round of Cubas and interject:

“What did that mean?” (referring to the hand motions).

Mate #3 laughs, repeats the hand motions, and says, “It’s the underwater signal for; “Big Fucking Deal.”

*****

Defined: Utila

Utila is part of the Caribbean Bay Islands, 50km (31mi) off the North coast of Honduras and world renowned as one of the cheapest places in the world to learn how to dive.

Utila, in a dozen more animated backpacker-bar-conversations, was described to me as: “a backpackers paradise”; “a gringo-trail legend”; and even “a divers wet dream.”

*****

“Well we will see about that!”, I said to myself as I hopped over the bar one Friday, told my boss I’d be back in a week, and grabbed my rucksack.

I didn’t return for three months.

*****

I left Antigua at 4 a.m. on Saturday and arrived the next day on the daily morning ferry into Utila at 10 a.m.

Arriving at the port the first day, most newcomers haven’t any idea of their “fresh meat” status. Divemasters and instructors from every dive shop line up the docks scouting out perspective students for a course in diving….or in bed.

But I had been warned. Somehow, on my ferry ride to the island, I found myself sitting at a table of divemasters who were living on Utila but returning from a weekend “breather” in La Ceiba.

They eyed me up and down carefully…

“Ah. You’re new. One week? Yeah right. You’ll be here for months. So let me offer you some advice. There are three lies that sum up life on this island which you will encounter regularly:

1. “I’m not drinking tonight”

2. “I love you.”

3. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“For many, in that order. You’ve been warned.”

*****

My story begins here. But not only are there hidden “lies” and “rules” to life on the island Utila, but also a list of lingo that it takes two months of trodding the island barefoot to comprehend. Therefore, throughout the story, I pause to define such terms that might be in need of explanation. And thus we proceed…

*****

Upon disembarkment, I broke off from the herd and explored the island a bit.

“Hum. No real beach to speak of. Not even many palm trees. *ouch* The locals all speak English. The water is full of trash. Is that a refrigerator door jutting out from the sand? The bathrooms on the docks all drop directly into the water. *ouch!* *ouch!* And WHAT is biting me?!”

*****

Defined: Sandfly

Minuscule insects that visit the bay islands in waves of blood-thirsty destruction. Visits are unpredictable and always untimely. Known for their passionate addiction to sweet backpackers-blood. DEET resistant, but famously rumored to “drown” in coconut oil. May leave as many as 50 bites per square inch of skin.

*****

“Not a chance I’ll stay on this island for more than three days,” I said as I slammed my mental fist down.

I “wandered” down the only road on the island to the dive shop “Underwater Vision” and signed up for a three-day Open Water certification course for an a brilliant $130 dollars (INCLUDING my room for three nights).

The next day I began my PADI Open Water Course in scuba diving.

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Before &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp After

*****

Defined: Scuba Diving

Skin diving with scuba apparatus where one *who is comfortable* is very likely to fall head-over-heals in love with the underwater world. Love for sea turtles and Spotted Eagle Rays, Queen Angel fish and Green Moray Eels. Love for sea fans and jellyfish, for the iridescent squid and octopus, and for lobster and shrimp hidden under coral and in sponges. Love for firework shows of bioluminescence, for schools of squealing dolphins racing the boat and for the chance that one might actually meet acquaintance with the legendary Whale Shark one day. The kind of love that could make a person call his or her ticket agent to postpone a date of departure a few days, weeks…or months.

*****

My love for daily diving, sunsets and stars in combination with my sudden distaste for shoes festered together into a new passion for this so-called “island life.” But my “week plan”, and my boss’s emails inquiring as to my return date to bar-work, still dug their fingernails into my agenda.

And then something happened. Something VERY small happened, with monumental consequences.

I caught Amoebas.

*****

Defined: Amoebas

Naked freshwater, marine or parasitic protozoa that form temporary pseudopods for feeding and locomotion.

Parasites..*grimaces*..that live in your stomach… *cringes*… and mass reproduce… *shudders*… and force you to lay in your bed in gut wrenching pain until your roommate, tired of your constant moaning, drags your in-denial-ass to the doctor *which in Utila, inspires a terror of its own* to get antibiotics. The drugs essentially nuke the little bastards, as well as everything else in your digestive and immunity systems. Not pretty. But if you´re young, you´ll survive.

*****

And how specifically did this terrible infection conspire to re-route my entire travel itinerary into staying on this island for 2.5 months?

A week of “down time” with mild sickness allowed Utila just enough flirting time for me to successfully and completely “fall” for island and diving life.

And what exactly did I fall for? Barefootedness. Constant sunshine. Coconut bread. Walls of beautiful ocean. Baleadas (local “cuisine”). Bars on docks. Frothy coconut drinks. Skinny dips. Fresh fish BB-Qs every night. No cars. No phones. No TV. No air conditioning. AND passionate and interesting people from every corner of the world who all shared a love for the former, as well as a love of lacking the latter.

But most importantly: Diving. Days dedicated to diving and constant discussion about diving with people passionate about diving.

&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp&nbsp

And thus, I found myself enrolled in a two month course to become a PADI certified Divemaster.

*****

Defined: Divemaster

Rigorous training course in which one becomes a certified and professional scuba diver. Course normally includes about 6-8 weeks of daily diving in coordination with physical tests and intensive study of the Physics, Physiology, Mechanics, Equipment, Instruction and Safety of underwater diving. At successful completion of the course, trainee receives a pretty little card and the very “cool” title of “Divemaster” — which legally allows a person to work professionally in the dive industry. Certification makes world travel suspiciously easy, usually completely neglects all former years of formal education and has caused more than one “spat” between diver and his/her parents who have higher aspirations for their child that becoming a “dive-bum.”

*****

Life became gloriously simple.

Two dives in the morning. Lunch with fellow divemasters discussing what we saw on our morning dives and laughing over silly student stories. Two dives in the afternoon. Dinner (often times guiltily eating what we saw during our afternoon dives) with fellow divemasters discussing what we saw on our afternoon dives and laughing over silly student stories. In the evening, drinks on the docks watching sunsets, discussing what we saw on our afternoon dives and laughing over…

You get the point.

Diving, food, diving, fish, diving, drinking, diving, BB-Qs, diving, swimming, diving, snorkeling, diving, stargazing, diving, sunsets, diving.

It doesn’t take long to wade deep into the wave of island life in Utila. Before you know it, your skin is the shade of the coconuts burning in your campfire, your feet are tough enough to walk on glass, and your tolerance for CocoLoco’s pina coladas is in the double digits.

*****

Defined: CocoLocos

CocoLocos is the most famous bar-on-a-dock in Utila. It hosts regular theme nights including, but not limited to; Toga Night, Cross-dressing Night and Body Paint Night. A large square hole is centered in the dock (just down flow from the drop-into-the-ocean toilet). An average of five persons per night will undoubtedly pass through this hole before the night ends (promptly at 1:00 a.m., when ALL the electricity on the island abruptly turns off).

*****

Directly related to the fact that there is severely limited access to television, radio, phones and, in general, ANY form of communication with the outside world (even slower-than-frozen-molasses internet costs a budget-crushing $15 US per hour) — most temporary habitants of the island are happily forced to find other productive uses of their non-diving time.

One such activity includes laying your body at the end of the sand airplane landing strip and then screaming mad profanities whilst the plane comes in for landing within an green-moray-eel’s-length from your head.

Another fashion of island entertainment comes in the form of monthly full moon parties, and of course, the infamous bi-annual “SunJam.”

*****

Defined: SunJam

Ingredients for “SunJam”

1 Deserted Island a boat ride away from Utila

125 Palm Trees

2 Fresh Fish Fry Tables

30 Kegs

1 Generator

2 Palm Leaf Thatched Huts

1 Space Cake Stand

500 International Travelers

200 Hammocks

7 Imported DJs

1 Whopping Sound System

2 Dozen Tiki Torches

1 Sunrise

1 Sunset

Instructions for making SunJam:

Place deserted island in a body of turquoise blue water and sprinkle the edges with soft, white sand and surround with the world’s second largest coral reef. One boat at a time, slowing churn in the 500 browned travelers. Turn on the party around 12:00 in the afternoon, add the space cake and let simmer for six hours. Then slowly turn the music up and congregate the people into the sand dance floor. The DJs will naturally bring the crowd to a full boil. Maintain this temperature for twelve hours, or until the sun has risen. When the screaming and whistling turns to “ohhhing” and “ahhhhing”, it’s time to lay the people out in hammocks under palm trees to cool. Let rest for 24 hours. Savor the sweet memories and repeat twice a year.

*****

Other forms of island entertainment include: “Bunkering Down for Hurricanes”, “Nitrogen Narcosis”, “Watching or Participation in Snorkel Tests” and “Pursuit of the Mythical Whale Shark” — all of which are defined below.

*****

Defined: Hurricane

Severe, tropical cyclones occasionally crash the Utila party. Hurricane Chantal did so during my own stay on the island. The emergency plan for hurricanes usually consists of bunkering down with the beer and waiting. My dive shop was the ONLY on the island to send our boat out on the last day of the storm. Our mild fear turned into laughing hysterics when, like a picture page from a Dr. Suess book, we saw a full sized COUCH float by us…in the middle of the ocean.

Defined: Nitrogen Narcosis

The intoxicating effect nitrogen produces when you breath it underwater (of which the exact cause still eludes physiologists). Symptoms include: stuporous and/or inappropriate behavior, impaired attention, slow thinking, euphoria and elation, poor judgment and short term memory loss. Divers are likely to first notice narcosis around 80 feet and are always anxious to feel it on their first deep dive. “Did you get narked?!” is a question that you will over hear at 90% of “Advanced Course” dinner table circles. The effect is equal to about one CocoLoco pina colada.

Defined: Snorkel Test

Initiation rite of passage for becoming a certified Divemaster. Consists of a snorkel, large crowd on a bar on the beach, and the nastiest, most despicable concoction of spirits your best and most un-trustworthy mates can dream up (who, of course, are determined to “up” the nastiness scale at least 10 notches from their OWN *unmemorable – only because they blacked out* snorkel test). Escape from this date with liver death is impossible; One must simply succumb to the stool in the center of the circle and accepted his/her soon-to-be-faced fate. Frightenly similar to a scene from “Animal House” or some equally terrible American, 80′s, frat-house-flick.

Defined: Whale Shark

The largest fish in the world, the Whale Shark is a plankton-eating Rhincodon typus shark, sizing up to 50 ft (15 m) in length. Holds legendary, and almost mythical status on Utila. Boat captains (despite “sighting bonuses”) go madd *-er than they already are* at constant requests to follow flocks of birds that “supposedly” fly over roaming whale sharks who are stirring up plankton that the birds like to feed on. Everyone knows “someone” who saw one.

*****

And so it was in this manner that 2.5 months of dive and island life waved in and out of my life like that couch in the ocean; A comical, colorful, fiction-like and purely delightful episode of my life that I sometimes wonder if really happened at all.

The magic of Utila is in it’s unique island and diver culture. And some may say that Utila is only a petty backpackers’ party, but for me, Utila was, and continues to be, simply a gathering place for people passionate about life. We were called from all parts of the world, to share the same daydream, under the same palm tree, in the same aqua waters, for the same magical moment. And although not a single player in my Utilian adventures remains on the island today, it brings me many silent smiles knowing that THIS morning, someone was surely lying at the end of the airstrip waiting for the plane to land. And that THIS afternoon, someone certainly told the story of a near-death escape from a barracuda over lunch. And, TONIGHT, without a doubt, someone will jump through the hole in CocoLoco’s dock.

So the legend lives on.

And my feet may be soft again, but my memories will forever walk on glass.

*puts regulator in mouth*

*deflates her BCD*

*gives the underwater ‘OK’ sign*

*head disappears underwater*

*****

See the Entire Utila PhotoGallery

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sol vs. the volcano — a history

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Sol vs. The Volcano — A History

In Portland, Oregon, when given a piece of white construction paper and finger paints, children will blob and smudge paintings of snow-capped mountains topped with whipped-cream clouds and sprinkled with pine trees. In San Diego, California, kids will draw sandy beaches lined with palm trees and spotted with sharks and surfers. In Guatemala, the children draw Volcanos.

Normally they draw them in pairs or triplets with square-page-corner suns looming over rolling hills or blue lakes. Today, the children have added something special to their volcanoes. Can you guess what it is? Let me give you a hint: it’s red, it’s fiery, and it has something to do with that game your mother used to yell at you for when she found you jumping from the couch to the dining room table in order to avoid touching the floor. Yup. Hot lava. Hot lava is what is spewing from Volcan Fuego at this very moment as I write from an internet cafe in Antigua, Guatemala. Hot lava, and pictures thereof, is what is finally making the front page of the local papers after two weeks of constant eruption activity. And hot lava, is what has inspired all the young Guatemalan artists to open, and apply liberally, the contents of the bottle of red paint.

The hot stuff, and that which produces it, has also fired a little inspiration in me. It has inspired a sort of reflection on The Volcano’s influence, or its *explosive* pressure, on my own life. And thus I present to you: Sol v.s. The Volcano — A History.

May, 1980: Sol vs. St. Hellens

Now it just so happens, that my earliest memory of life and/or consciousness took place on May 18th, 1980. Of course, my consciousness was not so keen enough to actually remember that date. The date I got online. My consciousness was only mature enough to grasp and remember the image of ashes falling from the sky as I was being held up on the top of a car. May 18th, 1980 is the date Mount St. Hellens erupted.

In the years between that fir-tree-fateful day and my first trip to Central America, The Volcano influenced my life only in the forms of ice cream cones, chemistry class filter flasks, and Madonna’s chest. But WHEN The Volcano decided to make a move in my life, it did so in true volcanic nature… violently.

October 2000: Sol vs. Volcan Madera

Volcan Madera is located on the Ometepe Island, in Lake Nicaragua. Myself and seven other travelers hitched and hiked our way up to an old banana plantation called Magdalena that had a hammock-deck open for backpackers wanting to hike the volcano towering over it. We arrived late in the night and passed out early in preparation for the eight hour hike the next morning. Early a.m., we gobbled up the only meal the plantation owners had to offer — beans, rice, eggs and bananas. The owner told us that we needed a guide to find our way and a rope to climb the last half hour down into the crater-lake. “Guide? Sheeah. Who needs a guide!” He offered us HIS rope.

Four of us were impatient waiting for two in our group to finish breakfast. They waved us on and told us they’d catch up with us in a few minutes. Now a five-hour hike up doesn’t sound like much, but please keep in mind, it was about the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

About four exhausting hours into the trip, whilst we were sitting down for a rest at a break in the path, an Italian guy caught up with us. Two paths layed out in front of us and he opted for the one the rest of us had just decided against. But he was adamant, and I told the others to rest while I climbed it with him a bit. We had been climbing up the jungle floor for about ten minutes when I decided, mostly out of the fact that I didn’t WANT to climb mud any more, that the other path would be a better option. I yelled this up to him. The last I heard were his continued echos of, “No! I’m sure this is it….just a little farther!”. I turned around, found the others, and we took the other path. And hour later we were splish-splashing ourselves a very fine time in the lake within the crater of The Volcano and eating bruised-to-baby-food bananas and cracked eggs…. and feeling that very special type of proud you can only feel after successfully hiking a volcano.

In typical Central American rain season fashion, it POURED on us on our way DOWN The Volcano — turning our descent into the world’s largest non-yellow slip-and-slide. When we finally returned to camp, we were painted head to toe in mud and short one shoe. We kicked back in our hammocks anxiously awaiting the arrival of our friends (from their own adventures) so that we could clink beers and revel in how cool we were, together. We waited and waited…and it grew dark.

The pair that had told us they were going to follow us “in five minutes” came down first. They were covered in mud and scrapes. The girl was on the verge of hysterics. She read the questions in our eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.” she stated. Her partner stumbled up on the deck after her and replied, “See…we made it!”. She shot him a lava-hot glare that any volcano would have been jealous of, and stomped off to the showers. Apparently, she had followed him and his claims of “I know where we are!” around for a good eight hours before they ran out of water and fell down a stream created from the downpour. Eventually, but still hours later, she shoved him out of the way, and they managed to find and follow a river down The Volcano.

The second pair of travelers had left in the morning in search of some hidden waterfall at the foot of neighboring Volcan Conception. They never found the waterfall, but they DID find a dead body…in the ditch of a street. Traumatized, they headed back to the plantation, but got lost on their way back up in the dark and had walked into ants nests. No. They didn’t want to hear about our trip up The Volcano.

The next morning, the planation owner asked us if we had seen an Italian man when we were up on the Volcano. Apparently, he hadn´t come down yet. We crossed worried eyes at each other and told him our experience. He shrugged nonchalantly and told us that just the day before, a girl had sprained her foot on the way up and had spent the night on The Volcano. He stopped the next couple starting up on their hike up and told them to keep an eye out for a lost Italian — Nicaragua’s version of a formal search party. I saw the Italian come down a few hours later. I didn’t ask him if he wanted to talk about it.

4 lost hikers, 2 lost overnight, 1 dead body, 2 ant attacks, 1 sprained ankle, and 1 lost shoe — all offered as sacrafices on the altar of Volcan Madera in one weekend. Enough to appease the Gods?

October 2001: Sol vs. Volcan Pacaya

Volcan Pacaya is a 7,383-foot volcano that lies about 27 miles south of Guatemala City. For five bucks, a person can join one of the dozens of tour groups that climb the volcano daily. The hike takes about three hours to ascend in the tour group, but about 1.5 if you’re not “resting” every 15 minutes at the command of your guide while waiting for the stragglers in the back of the group. Pacaya is highly active, and if the prospect of a close encounter with the lava kind doesn’t inch up the adrenaline, the rumor that all the armed guards placed along the trail are ex-convicts usually does. No worries though, because your 50-year old guide DOES have a really big stick.

I hiked Pacaya in October, during the winter season of Guatemala. During the trip up, our guide repeatedly pointed out — into the walls of thick white fog surrounding us — the beautiful views of volcanos and cities that we could NOT see. (Advice: The best time to hike Pacaya is NOT in the rain or winter seasons. It is also suggested to hike Pacaya when it is NOT exploding. Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at what official warnings the tour agencies will NOT tell you about if they see a flash of cash.)

The last hour of the hike was up black volcanic sand.

*one step up…..slide two steps back*

*one step up…..slide two steps back*

It was in this manner that we lost ten percent of the hikers to exhaustion.

There were about 15 hikers in front of me on the narrow path when hard gusts of sulfuric gas began picking fights with each of us indiviually, trying to steal our oxygen. Three wide-eyed and crying girls came crawling frantically down the path yelping to everyone to turn around. Having been recently trained to spot the signs of panic in a divemaster course, I grabbed the first one, stared her squarely in the eyes, and instructed her to breath, be calm, and climb down. Admittedly, it WAS difficult to breath, but I had brought a handkerchief to cover my mouth and wasn’t about to turn around five minutes from the summit. (Stupid? Probably. For the record, I knew that.)

At the top, I found one of the guides posing pretty with successful hikers. Oddly enough, none of the ten or so cameras that made it up, worked — something to do with too much white balance because of the walls of fog and smoke. So we all just moved back and forth in a dance that involved inching closer and closer to the cliff of the crater *one, two, three* and jumping back and crouching low to cough and gasp for air *one, two, three* before we turned around and made our way back down *dip*.

The descent of The Volcano held its own surprise delights. First, the “one step up, slide two steps down” dance that exhausted us on the way up, made for a thrilling black-snow-ski-slope ride back down. Those daring to make a run for it, flew down the summit in echoing cries of laughter. It was while we sat on a cliff emptying sandfalls from our shoes that the walls of white fog decided to part like stage curtains and unveil to us — in gasps of awe and clicks of cameras — those INCREDIBLE views that we had missed the entire way up. It was a surprise party worth being unaware of.

February 2002: Sol vs. Volcan Fuego

More than 500 volcanoes are known to have erupted on the earth’s surface since historic times. One happens to be erupting within view of the window beside me. Last night, we drove to the foot of Volcan Fuego to get a closer seat at the show. After the initial shrieks of excitement (in response to the the river-of-red) subdued, we heard — in the silence — the undulating purr and roar of The Volcano. One word for that sound: Humbling.

The constant erupting action of Volcan Fuego over the last two weeks even inspired me to drop “Volcano” into Encyclopedia.com. It was there that I learned that Volcan Mauna Loa is taller that Mt. Everest (but its base is on the ocean floor) and that evidence of extraterrestrial volcanic activity has been found on Venus, Triton (a satellite of Neptune), and Lo (a satellite of Jupiter). Some travelers say that it’s the influence of the four volcanoes looming over Antigua that exert mysterious forces upon weekend passer-byers into changing their departure dates and getting lost here for months — a kind of Bermuda-Volcano Triangle if you will. Of course,despite my research, the mystery, magic and beauty of The Volcano remain indefinable in my own mental encyclopedia.

So, Volcan Hellens inspired consciousness within me. Volcan Madera inspired fear. Volcan Pacaya inspired beauty and awe. Volcan Fuego inspired magic and mystery. But it is in the cumulation of all of these experiences, that The Volcano has inspired one thing above all these others. And that is…respect.

(I’m traveling this weekend to Quetaltenago, to soak in the hot springs of Aguas Calientes Georgina for three days — Compliments of The Volcano.)

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a message from god in hell

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A Message From God in Hell

*head spins*

Where to EVEN start?

So after Cuba, I hopped bus and made my way to Tulum, Mexico. I “planned” (why do I even bother?) to arrive in the morning, do a quickly cave dive (cause it´s $$$) and high-tail my late ass back to Guate.

*record scratches*

Yeah right. So reason number ONE that I ended up staying FIVE days in Tulum can be found in the following picture:

Can you see it? White sand, beach front huts, hammocks, palm trees, crystal-clear-bathtub-warm water? *Ummmmm…*

Reason number TWO that I called in “well” to work and took 4 more days vacation? Any traveler will attest to this fact of on-the-road-life: Every once in while, when seen fit, the travel gods align the moon, earth, sun and travel itineraries of random glob trotting backpackers to bring them together under the same palm tree and *shizam!* — you have a group that bonds easily and separates with difficulty. The group broke out in hysterics each morning as I emerged from my hut and announced, “I´m REALLY gonna leave tomorrow…Seriously.” As one of the groupies described the aftermath, “I had that memory lump in my throat for days after I left.” Yup. Me too. *swallows*. (But I know you´re all having a wicked time ringin´in the New Year together. So cheers one for me guys!)

Now reason number three takes the cake…and the cookies, and the punch, and even that bowl of chocolate covered M&Ms.

Reason number THREE, of course, is the diving in the Cenotes.

Now, I sigh heavily at the idea of even TRYING to describe what was probably the most wicked and wonderful visuals of my dear eye-sight life. I heard about diving the Cenotes from some dive instructor friends of mine who I partied and dived those three months away with in the Bay Islands of Honduras. Now these guys are crazy in the first place, so when they went so far as to rank the experience above BOTH drugs AND sex and when one even went so far as to describe it as the “best 30 minutes of my life” I knew I was in for an adventure.

And I´m not the only one! Emerging from my first dive, I came out of the water last with wide eyes and a shit-eating grin to beat them all. I could just barely hold back my shouts of bewilderment. I tried to find my words….”That was…”, “Oh my God!”, “Did you see….” “INCREDIBLE!”. Suddenly a shout came from the platform, “AH! I see we have a future cave diver in our presence!” I turned to face a full set and camera crew. One of the divers from the set began quizzing me on my diving history and took FULL enjoyment in my bedazzlement with the new world I had just be de-virginized to. I was last out of the water and while the rest of my group climbed up for their surface interval, I nudged the guy next to me and asked, “If I´m REALLY quite and stay in the corner, may I please watch you film?” He smiled, said “of course!” and pointed me to a corner of the platform. Then he introduced himself. He´s Wes Skiles, one of the IMAX movie producers. The enormous camera *he pointed to it* just came back from Antarctica (and lookin like it´s worth a million bucks), and they are filming some follow-up on the recently released IMAX film “Journey Into Amazing Caves“. How lucky am I?!

SO…it´s really too difficult to put into the words what diving these Cenotes is like, which is why I am so grateful to Hidden Worlds for letting me borrow their own pictures of the first two dives I did with them: Dos Ojos and The Bat Cave (pictures 1 and 2):

&nbsp &nbsp

The pictures will have to speak for themselves, because the dive that REALLY blew me away, was sweet Angelita. (And please excuse my mid-story change of tenses….)

Angelita is a sink hole in the jungle. We tromp through to meet her in FULL gear; booties, flippers, flashlights and all. I´m first to wide step off a 15 foot ledge into her pool, and you can bet “Come on girl…what would you do if you weren´t afraid…” was turning laps in my head. Once in the water though, the heat and the mosquitos no longer nip at me and I fall back into the familiar cool as the water seeps through my wet suit. *ahhhh* NOW I feel GOOD. Let´s do it!

We descend.

I watch my depth gauge….10 ft….30 ft…..60 ft….

One of the guys has trouble equalizing his ears. The divemaster glances at me. I give him the okay sign and wave to the other diver to follow me down to the hydrogen sulfide layer where we´ll wait for them.

The hydrogen WHAT?

…60ft…80 ft….90 ft….100 ft….

The hydrogen sulfide layer… a layer of what literally is decomposition about three meters thick of which BELOW is salt water, and ABOVE is fresh water. The layers don´t mix. *Think oil and water.* Now…this is where I LOSE it.

The sulfide layer looks like earth — it´s dusty red with a thin white film swirling in, out and around it. Massive trees reach out in all directions. I immediately drop (despite what my divemaster told me) into the layer and watch my body disappear. I see the guy that I should be watching over wave a “no, no” finger at me. I laugh. I level myself out and FLY though the layer, watching it separate before my eyes. As if wearing mask-bifocals, it´s blurry on the bottom half and crystal clear on the top. I summersault and kick up the layer and giggle madly as I watch it swirl into the clear water and resettle. Now my “buddy” is watching me intensely and laughing also. Then I see it….something…something white, floating perfectly and wonderfully still. I approach it slowly, and as I do so, I think…it´s a message. It´s a message from God. I don´t know if there IS a God…but IF there is one, and if he were EVER to leave me a message – THIS is where he´d leave it. (Of course, divers begin to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis around 100 ft — so given I AM a bit high.) The message turns out to be an O-ring holder — a small while piece of plastic in the form of an “S” — that apparently has a weight that allows for it to remain suspended perfectly between the two layers. I laugh, grab it, shove it into my wet suit, and make another flying sprint through this underwater Heaven that could only be described as looking exactly like the wastelands of “Hell”. My divemaster finally catches up and he gives up the symbol to descend through the layer.

I go last and watch the other divers sink into the ground …flippers …waist ….neck …and head. *poof* They´re gone. I´m alone. And then I drop. I can´t see ANYTHING. I´m descending, but I don´t have access to my senses. I “smell” and “taste” the rusty scent of the decomposition, but my lack of sight and sound, and my weightlessness are overwhelming.

….110 ft….

I stop my decent in the middle of the layer and allow myself to freak out. I wonder what it would be like if I continued to descend and never came out of this foggy feeling. And then I get excited about what I´ll see underneath…and I drop.

…120 ft

I emerge from the layer and it´s dark.

….130ft….140ft.

The divemaster signals for us to to turn on our flash lights. I forget that I´m in water and I imagine that I´m flying….weightlessly cruising and exploring this forest from hell. In, out, under and over. I am an aquanaut. Through the trees. Touching walls. Watching my bubbles ascend. Looking down into the REAL depths, which are rumored to house Mayan artifacts around 200 ft.

And that´s it. Yes…eventually my divemaster grabbed my arm and gave me serious eyes and the “go up” symbol. And I did…reluctantly. I´m exhausted by the time I return back to my cabana…as I am now exhausted with reliving the experience.

….150ft….160ft…200ft…the visuals and memories have found their place in the depths of my mind.

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