Five Thousand Steps: A Rainy Season in Costa Rica
Along the dirt road to the path that runs to the beach I heard the morning songs of exotic birds I had never heard before. It was as if they were greeting me to begin the new day. I whistled back. Thanks to the bird app I downloaded I was able to record the sounds of a Brown-crested Flycatcher and identify him by his call. I looked up and to my surprise spotted two Howler monkeys in the tree overhead. They just sat watching me, the new gringo in town.
It was barely after 5:30am and the sun was already coming up over the trees behind me. With the beach completely empty and the mountain in the distance, waves were gently rolling in. This was the purest form of meditation. Silence, nature, the incoming tide, mountains in the distance. I walked a total of four and half miles along the beach to the large, clifflike mountain which can be seen from miles away in the distance. I passed only one or two early morning walkers along the way. I stopped and did some exercises with a log that had washed up onto shore, a perfect curl bar provided by nature.
As I crossed over the rocky area, I found an old tree trunk to sit on and spent my morning meditation watching the ocean waves crash over the rocks. I passed a couple walking along my route back. The man was carrying a bamboo stick he had picked up along the shore; exactly what I have had my eye out for to do the bamboo stick exercises I learned in Asia. I told him I admired it and so he kindly gave it to me.
The slow walk back seemed endless, much longer than the walk over. I remember this from before. My Northern European skin is very slowly adjusting its shade from pale white to homemade vanilla. I notice that even the dark, local Tico surfers are slathered in sunscreen.
Along the walk I caught smiles and “good mornings” from several people. When I arrived back to marker 29 it was only 8:30am. It had already been a full morning.
Back at my tiny casa the perfect cup of 1820 Costa Rica coffee followed. After a shower, I sat down to write at 10am.
My friends, whose rentals I will be overseeing for the next three months, happened by and we reconnected again after 9 years. Their kindness was the same as it was all those years ago.
Time to stop. It is now 11am.
Every other week during 2023 I will be posting an excerpt from my upcoming book, Five Thousand Steps: A Rainy Season in Costa Rica. It is a travelogue of sorts, my journals and observations from my initial three months in Costa Rica along the Guanacaste Coast. I hope you enjoy following the journey.
Please send a request by email if you would like to pre-order your copy of the book which will be self-published and released in 2023. Please also consider supporting the release of the book by become a paid subscriber or a donor.
Field Notes
Walking Meditation
By bridging sitting meditation with walking you bring the awareness found in sitting into the practice of daily life. Therefore daily life becomes an extension of meditation
Think of each day of life like a journey. To begin you wake up in the morning and sit in meditation. This is like preparing to leave home. Home in this sense is your True Self, your True Home. You go into the world and carry out your activities then return in the evening to your True Home.
In the beginning of your practice, you will feel each day as if you are leaving home, your True Self, and going out into the world on a journey. You have different experiences, some good, some bad. Then you return at the end of the day to your True Home.
As your practice deepens and becomes a way of life you realize you can never leave your True Home and are in your True Home throughout your day and all of its experiences.
This whole world is your home.
Morning by the River, 2023
From the Archives
Enjoy The Japanese Art of Forest Bathing from the archives.
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountaintop in Boquete, Panama or Ciudad Colón.
On these pages, I share my observations of kindness and beauty from my adventures in the world and invite you to listen quietly for the call within you to explore the places that beckon your soul.
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