This week, the moon has loomed high and white, fully illuminating the jungle, the homes, and the ocean blanketing out beneath her. There’s a calmness in the evenings here that is absent during the frenzied heat of the Nicaraguan day. It may not have been a peaceful month for me or many others…
They say the good die young. Does this mean the bad will live a long, hearty life? How bad must one be to live forever? And what about the ugly? I was thinking about this while patiently waiting at the dentist for a check-up. Ten minutes earlier, an elderly Nicaraguan lady…
Yesterday, my neighbor spotted a sloth in her tree. Bicycling down the dusty dirt road through the intense Nicaraguan heat, I met her in her front yard. Standing under the shallow forest of tall, leafy trees, we gazed up into the sunshiney canopy and were in awe. High, high above us hugging…
She appeared one morning a few weeks before Christmas. Bulbous, but near-missable and centered in mid-air at eye height. Her web, perhaps not the biggest I’ve encountered on my travels through jungly, remote spaces, but the biggest web I’ve seen here in Nicaragua. In truth, the biggest web I’ve ever discovered in an abode…
This morning was hijacked by a waking nest of sea turtles, sleepily finding their way up through packed, damp sand, blinking lidded eyes into the morning sun, the sway of the nearby ocean calling their ancient newborn souls to the waves. That was their morning. My morning was much different, but I’ll…
I held the wooden statue in my hands, the smooth contours and simple lines etched deeply to carve an enigmatic expression on its face: a straight line for a mouth and eyes wide and round. Arms, sage-like, perched on bent knees, its back arched slightly forward so that the statue seemed to lean in…
This week I hit a little dog with my truck. I braked, but I couldn’t avoid the heart-sickening thump and the ensuing yelp, as I swerved into the oncoming traffic lane. To be clear, the oncoming lane did not pose a threat to me. Rather, it was an invitation to avoid tragedy.…