Hot, humid climates have a weird way of depleting all ambition and desire from a person´s blood. I stayed six days at the beach in San Juan Del Sur and each day felt a little more lethargic and a little less inclined to explore. I met and became friends with five other travelers while there, surfed, played disc golf, hiked and did yoga – and on the sixth day every person in our little social group got fed up and left. Two in search of surf and Caribbean culture on the eastern shores of Costa Rica, two in search of surf and Pura Vida on the Pacific shores of Costa Rica.

For me and my new friend Eric, it was the search for an authentic Nicaragua. San Juan Del Sur could exist in any country, anywhere. If a person were to only look to who the inhabitants are, it would be impossible to tell where it is. Like the alien bar in Star Wars when all of the weird, muppet like aliens are playing musical instruments and boozing it up. Middle aged drunk Irishmen sit at a restaurant bar at 8am while I eat my fruit bowl. Australian kids stumble out of hostels at 11am wearing ridiculously large white sunglasses. Tanned, toned, health-crazed surfers from every continent walk barefoot down the street carrying dinged up boards. Chubby, pasty skinned senior citizens from Canada shop along the boardwalk. And the Nicas cook for them, clean up after them, take them on tours, sell them souvenirs and beers all the while looking detached, aloof, and slightly hostile.

After a pep talk from back home, I felt revitalized to take on a new adventure so decided to come north to the colonial city of Leon. Leon is described as the center of Nicaraguan culture, like the heart of the Nica people. In addition it is in the proximity of six active volcanoes, and near to a beach.

The trip was hot, sticky, and more than a little annoying (crowded chicken bus, loud mexi-polka music, people constantly yelling and selling), but after 5 hours we made it, checked in to an amazingly beautiful hostel (complete with free internet,swimming pool, pool table, hammocks around gardened courtyards, and good free coffee all day), and got into the groove of Leon.

Today we explored the city via foot, saw the most extensive collection of contemporary art in Central America, and explored a chaotic central market that sold everything from bras to Miley Cyrus backpacks, to exotic fruits and spices, bloody cuts of meat, and children´s toys. Tomorrow we hike a volcano, set up tents in the crater, sleep overnight as though our beds were in the stars, and watch the sun rise from the edge of a crack in the earth´s surface, high over the Pacific Ocean.

I don´t know that any travel experience anywhere can be completely “authentic”. We´ll always be outsiders, our accents, clothes, hair color, and wide-eyed curiosity will always give a traveler away as being foreign so our experiences will always be limited and tailored to that which has been relegated our place as a visitor. But I feel like I am seeing more of who Nicaragua is and I´m trying to get to know her, and I´m glad.

I took a taxi for $2 across about 1/4 of Managua today, in order to reach the bus station that has buses that travel south. Managua is nuts, it has almost 2 million people and none of the streets are named. I´ll say that again, no street names, just people who know where they are and where they are going and if you don´t, you´re out of luck.

My taxi driver, Carlos, was great and helpful and we chatted the whole way there. However he didn´t have change for my $5 and I might single handedly throw the entire taxi economy in Managua off if I tipped 130%. Due to Carlos´ warning that the place is dangerous, I was wary when I got to the bus station/produce market/scam artist hang out. Immediately two dudes in bus company shirts ran up and tried to take my bag, which I thanked them for and kindly insisted on carrying myself. Then they offered to go get change for Carlos, got him paid and assured me that I´d get the change from them once they got inside. It was $3, I wasn´t too worried either way.

Once in the parking lot they told me to get on an empty bus (the driver was on it), which kind of freaked me out. The driver assured me it was going the direction I wanted. At one point I sat there thinking, “I´m really not sure if I´m on the right bus, but since I don´t exactly have a destination, I can´t actually get lost. Wherever I end up, there I´ll be.”

The guy who promised me my change kept popping in and out, and I kept on being demanding “donde esta mi cambio!?” Finally the driver got thinking that I was getting scammed, and went and got a cop. The cop came on the bus, the guy paid me and everyone was happy. I felt like a dope that such a fuss was being made over $3 but I guess it´s the principle of the matter.

More people filed on and then it dawned on me that this was, in fact, a chicken bus. Once I started looking around, what actually was going on around me was so surreal, it felt like a dream;

* The guy who tried to scam me was telling me how dangerous Guatemala was (“Whew! Guatemala es muy peligroso!”)

* An older man held a wooden box containing cartons of cigarettes for sale. On top of three levels of Marlboro’s, Colonials, Elephants and Noros were little bags of peanuts. On top of those was a land-line telephone, much like ones you would see in any office building (v-tech?). The older man picked up the receiver and earnestly started dialing numbers. I assumed he was nuts and watched him with interest. I almost fell out of my seat when someone picked up on the other end, and he had a full on conversation on speaker phone. I still have no idea how that worked.

*A man with a human sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pinata got on (Michelangelo? Donatello?) and squeezed down the aisle. He finally found a home for the Martial Art wielding amphibian behind the driver, it´s paper mache´body wrapped around the back of the driver´s head.

* Michael Jackson´s “Billy Jean” plays loudly over everyone´s conversations (….who claims that I am the one, but the kid is not my son…)

* A man is laughing and chatting with the driver while dry shaving with a yellow disposable Bic razor.

* An old woman, small and shriveled, dressed in a frilly, pretty teal-green dress balances a large wooden tray of foods in baggies on her head while the driver takes corners like Mr. Toad´s Wild Ride. On the third tier something liquid and crimson sit perched in perfect balance, like jello filled water balloons.

* A kid with a perfectly styled, curly hair do, has an upside down and backwards visor on. For a shirt he is wearing a football jersey that bears the words “T-Rex” across the back. I have no idea if this is the name of a football player, if the kid is a burgeoning paleontologist, or if he is into glam rock.

* Now the radio is playing George Michael…”teacher, there are things, that I don´t want to learn and there ain´t no joy, for an uptown boy whose teacher has told him goodbye….”

I chat with the man across from me, Raff, who was born and raised in Nicaragua and is coming home to visit his family. He´s been living in Queens, New York for the past 20 years. Outside fat ponies graze in dry fields, and small weather beaten men drive little herds of cattle, their horns sharp and skin saggy. Two little girls ride along side the road on an adult sized bike, laughing.

The bus is entirely packed with people, but it´s not unpleasant. People are selling food, talking amongst themselves, happy to be there. Everyone smells like they showered that morning, the only unusual smell was fresh onions. Someone must have been transporting a large bag. I liked it though, it reminded me of cooking a turkey dinner, when I start the dressing early in the day and am chopping and cooking onions in the morning. Totally pleasant.

Everytime we stopped people ran up to the windows to sell things “naranja´s! churros! mannn-goes!” I´d love to trail around behind those folks sometime and live a day in the life of their day. Must be so interesting.

We finally reached our destination, Rivas, where I would catch a cab into San Juan Del Sur. Raff helped me find a cabbie, after he unloaded his things. Which included a human sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pinata. I guess Raff (short for Rafael) liked to travel with his namesake.

Seems lately I get so caught up in the details that I can’t see the big picture.  What’s here and now and present and affecting takes so much of my attention that I forget to appreciate the whole scope of things – or I choose not to.  Like only hearing individual notes and missing the overall composition or only seeing the brush strokes and missing the subject of the painting.

Seeing the forest instead of the trees would be so easy if only the details weren’t so heartbreakingly beautiful.  How can I move on and appreciate the wider scope when the individual parts are so impossibly captivating?

I had a dream last night so vivid and unusual, I thought I’d share to get any thoughts. 

I was standing in a large park or preserve with my workmates from this past harvest.  It was early in the morning, grey, overcast and misty; much like today.  The air felt sharp and the foliage was in dying flames of autumn colors.   The park was in the middle of nowhere and we had taken a bus to get there.  In fact, I recognized the park, it was the Reserva Natural Ibera that we went to in Northern Argentina.  The season felt exactly like the season is now, in fact, exactly like it was at the park when we were there just over two years ago.

We stood on the edge of a large lake on a wooden deck, softly green-yellow grasses and mossy vegetation softening the lines around the peripheral.  The pond lapped at the sides of the deck, and my workmates huddled back near the grassy shore as I stood alone on the edge near the water.  Out of the grey sky a lone swan flew down toward the lake, his neck stretched out long, his body slender and aerodynamic; looking like an elongated spoon. 
 
The most unusual things about the swan were these; he was a deep, red-purply-black color, the color of Pinot noir.  In fact he looked almost dripping he was so shiny and saturated with the color.  Also, in his beak he held a small piece of paper. 

When he approached the deck he swooped down low and I was curious about the paper in his mouth, so I looked him in the eye and said, “drop it”.  The swan dropped the paper and it slowly drifted and fell until it reached the deck.  I walked over and picked the paper up and watched the swan fly away.  Once he was out of sight I looked at what I held in my hands and saw that it was a dollar bill which had been dyed the same color as the swan; Pinot noir purple.  I turned the dollar over and on the back, written in the big, scrawly handwriting of a 13 year old girl were the words “for creative inspiration”.

Then I woke up.

What a lovely harvest this has been, what a marvelous, magnetic connection has been created between me and the planet, a kind of invisible extension of the senses. Eyes keenly deducing color changes and variation in the fruit, carefully watching for the tiniest start of mold.  Ears listening for the breeze to change, for the patter of rain drops on the roof.  The taste of sulfur when I’m cleaning a fermenter and the indescribable taste when one walks into the winery in the morning, telling your brain that the yeasts are doing their job.  Muscles sore, shins and elbows bruised from work, fingers and nerves numb from exhaustion and overuse – knowing that your energy worked alongside the energy of the yeasts, and bacteria, and your fellow workmates – the crew.

But far and away the sense that has been teased, coxed, tantalized, enticed and flirted with the most is smell.  I feel like I just finished up two solid months of an orchestra for my nose.  God the smells.

During pump-overs I liked to put on headphones, close my eyes – shut out the rest of the world and breathe deep.  Fermenting Chardonnay with explosions of peaches, ginger, gardenia, sun soaked hay.  Pinot noir that smells so floral, so spicy, so brambly and intoxicating, my heart lurches and I don’t want to breathe out because I’m afraid of losing touch with the fleeting glory for one second.

Digging out a 9 ton fermenter one day; one of my most memorable days during this harvest, my muscles flexing in happy joy at getting to work so hard, beads of sweat at my brow, the scent, the glorious smell of Pinot noir all around me, in my pores, my eyelashes, my atoms.  A co-worker leaned over the side of the tank and asked if I was wearing perfume and I was so happy that he noticed how lovely the scent was too.  So happy to have that confirmation that it wasn’t just in my head, it truly was something special. It wasn’t any perfume any person could make, it was the perfect smell of flawless fruit and a clean, happy ferment.

Barreling is another delicious, enticing, beautiful moment of tranquil, meditative loveliness where I get a head rush because I keep breathing so deep, trying to capture that smell and not let it go.  Along with the fruit contributions the barrels make me think of gingersnap cookies and vanilla cake rising slowly in the oven.  A dark, dry oak forest in late summer when the leaves are starting to fall and crackle.  Toasty gorgeous brioche and sappy, green branches.

I don’t want it to end; I’m like a junkie – refusing to put down roots, buy a house, get one steady job, or pursue a boyfriend – all so I can chase the scents.  A full on addict; even now my eyes tearing up at the thought of being away from it until next harvest.  Is it addiction, or would a better word be love? Because really, when my eyes are closed and my ears are full of music and my sense of smell is overwhelmed by perfection, pure, unadulterated, heavenly glory, it is the most serene, unclouded, perfect beauty that I know.

“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer; they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
- Ken Kesey

(Or as I like to say, the fun isn’t in the knowing <as if such a thing is even possible in any case> the fun is in the trying to find out).

I sway back and forth, dancing with the motion of the earth as it spins unforgotten until the shape-shifting waters tremble. Ebb and flow, drift and twist – the briny freshness burning my eyes as I rub them with wrinkled fingers through button shut eyelids. Dancing with the raw force; now it’s soft and caressing, gently encouraging my limbs. And now it pulls and insists with or without my consent. My body is taut but compliant as I give my ground with as much grace as I can muster. And it pushes me like a skilled tango master, it’s fingers forcing my waist and hips this way and that. I emerge from the icy-but-refreshing (as only my Pacific Northwest Native mind would think) waters and feel the force of gravity hit me as though a harness has been thrown over my shoulders. I sway now with the perceived stillness as my body reacquaints itself with the predictable spin of the globe.

The sand is golden honey tan, slate pewter-grey and baby-cheek pink, and I rest with my head cradled in the warm lap of the beach. The robin’s egg sky above is broken only occasionally by a wisp of cloud or the geometric black and white wings of a gull. Every now and then the breeze kicks up and a chill runs the length of my body, lightening-fast eruption out of my skull, my hair on end as the energy of the cold escapes. For a thousand years I lay there; or maybe it is only a few minutes. My thoughts in and out of the present, called to the forefront only when my senses are confronted. I’m day dreaming grandiose plans; intricate and detailed, and impossibly optimistic – you’d think I was still six or something. And the raucous caw of the birds sings an afternoon lullaby into my wavering consciousness.

tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

(The world of dew, a world of dew it is indeed, and yet)

                                                                                                               – Kobayashi Issa

….well, and gnarly goats too.