San José, Costa Rica

We live in a beautiful and yet fragile world. As I start to spread my wings and explore Costa Rica, examining everything around me, I am aware of this more than ever before.

I sat and listened today and rainforests sprouted and came alive in my imagination. The woman at the Rainforest Alliance Network sat down and turned on her projector and like that I was captured. Images appeared, of water spewing outwards from gray cliffs towards the smudge of green below. Of animals caught for an instant in that moment of celluloid magic as the camera clicks and the picture is taken. Dusty workers, silent chainsaws perched on their knees as they turn, watching the camera distrustfully as the forest disappears around them, one tree at a time. As we were lectured I found myself immersed in figures:

• An area needs 100 inches of precipitation to be considered a rainforest and is generally evergreen.
• Only six percent of the world is made up out of tropical forests
• 50% of the world’s species live in rainforests and only 80% of those have been discovered.
• 70% percent of species in Costa Rica are insects.
• 43 species of ants have been discovered on one tree in Costa Rica.
• The world’s rainforests have decreased from six billion acres to two point five billion, and most of that in the past fifty years.

As I listen I become fidgety and look towards the windows, as if to escape to the forests like some character in a cheesy movie.