Somewheresville

However much you like to explore, to enjoy the freedom and independence of unscripted travel, it is difficult to do when you suddenly find you don’t have an anchor. For a parent to lose a child or for a child to lose a parent is to have the sensation of being cast adrift, which is the underbelly of freedom, and quite a different kettle of fish altogether. You no longer go to the edge and come back. You go to the edge and you can’t get back. And because you can’t get back, you want to. While you think this might be the ideal time to embark on adventures, what you actually want to do is close your doors and pad your space with everything that’s familiar, and to sleep for a very long time.
That notwithstanding, the search for somewheresville goes on, and so, after a gap, I have picked up where I left off, on a beach in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, helping my old friend Fitzcarraldo of the Jungle put together words and pictures to show anyone who hasn’t been here the otherwise indescribably lovely private reserve and wilderness lodge that he created up the hill from nothing back in the day. This kind of work (otherwise known as ‘marketing’) is not completely altruistic. Having time alone here, operating in my preferred temperature range of 22-28 degrees, cushioned by jungle and a cloud of sound – the wren in the roof, toucans, howler monkeys, macaws, the sea*, thunder and rain, is restorative; a kind of balm. I’m also optimistic that the hours I’m putting into swaying in a hammock are going to produce a clear sense of direction and a set of financially viable future plans.
* I have said disparaging things about the sea. I take them back.