Costa Rica #1

The jungle is wild. I know that's cliche - like saying the desert is sandy - but you don't fully understand what it means until you've seen it in person. The very nature of the Costa Rican rain forest seems to fight against the clean lines and convenient shapes of our outdoor spaces in the states. Often machetes and weedwackers are used in place of mowers - leaving the ground chopped unevenly - and the flora and fauna is all so twisted and spindly that it seems to overtake the boundaries even of the most well maintained lawns. Roads twist back and forth through the mountains, their nauseating shape dictated not by well trained engineers but by the land itself. Water comes gushing down in torrents to erode in hours what it may have taken days to carefully plant or smooth or build.

It is a wild place, even where it has been civilized. It is beautiful - amazingly so - but I admit that it bothers the sensibilities of this American who is used to flat lawns and state parks with well laid gravel trails and roads cut straight through mountains. I have come to find that not all hedges are squared.