What Has Costa Rica Done for Me as a Climate Writer?

Plenty, both creatively and intellectually

Apr 02, 2023

black and white monkey on tree branch during daytime — Photo by Etienne Delorieux on Unsplash

I am nearing the end of a one month stay in Costa Rica—a writing retreat for me and a vacation for my sweetheart. It's been a very nice time. I came with few expectations, and as we enter the last week of our time here, I wonder… what has it done for me?

This time has been essential to my writing for its focus. Time away enables focus. It also enables a cocoon. All your daily concerns can be left behind. Vacationers tend to fill their time with a desperate dash between tours, sightseeing, and the beach. As a creative writer, I avoid all that. The point is the cocoon. No distractions. No bills. Just me, my journal, and my computer, all well-focused on the work I am here to do.

As we approach the end of our thirty-day stay, however, I realize that 30 days may be the limit of such a cocoon. Worldly concerns begin to press in. I got an email with an outrageous medical bill that needs to be addressed. There are indications the furnace may be on the fritz. I was notified that I missed a jury duty call last week. Ah yes… the world. Challenges, issues, distractions. It is all part of life, and it is what makes a creative cocoon like this so worthwhile.

You see, leaving home and being here has simplified life. I love that simplicity. There's writing and there is eating. There is loving and there is sunning. We follow our whims after my writing is done, and we go enjoy the day. It is a remarkable way to live—one which I enjoy immensely here.

Being here has also opened my eyes. It’s been forty years since I spent an extended time in a place overseas. The place has surprised me. It is a world apart from anything I have ever visited. Economically, its lack of commercialization and development are a surprise. The area we are in is relatively poor for the families that have always lived here, and partly it is changing over to ex-pats with money and attitude. Still, the rainforest controls everything. We live here very close to the earth. Nature imposes on everything. No one has windows so there is no air conditioning. The sounds of the forest surround you all day and all night long—again, except where ex-pats have insisted on blasting music while claiming their business is helping the community. Such arrogance. And it only takes one to start the process in a community. I am told that since COVID, there’s been a wave of this development.

Here, I experience a three-way juxtaposition that changes awareness—nature’s relentless imposition, the ongoing development of the area, and the new insistences of climate change. I imagine that not too long ago, nature was the dominant controlling factor over life here. Now, climate change is changing nature itself, and development is beating it back. “The way things have always been” is not sustainable here, just as it isn’t anywhere else. Change is endemic, yet so is nature, and it is both exciting to experience and full of grief.

The excitement is this: I haven’t been to a place as natural to the human experience as this one. Sustained life within a rainforest is a different experience. Nature infiltrates everything in every moment of every day. Rain, sun, heat, animals… and there is no getting away from it. You can't close up your windows because there are no windows—just screens over openings. So all the sounds of the rainforest penetrate my awareness all the time. Sometimes the human-made world imposes with a passing truck or that annoying music I mentioned, but even in those moments, nature is still completely around me. Animals are making sounds. Things are growing and they are dying. Everything is eating something else. The cycle goes on. And I rarely hear a television.

On the other hand, I am a climate writer, and I know this place is changing—especially the nature. You can’t escape it. People here say the same things you hear everywhere: It’s never been like this before. The weather is really strange. What are they talking about? Our first two weeks here saw no rain at all. In a rainforest! That is highly unusual. Wells are running dry. People are trucking in water, including to the place we are staying. If you mention it, people pick up the conversation, but many didn't want to mention it. I think it provoked climate anxiety.

The third leg of the juxtaposition adds to the anxiety: you can simply see the area “developing” which is to say you can see it being destroyed. The first inroads of outsiders build businesses, and soon people come and demand more. The Costa Rican government, for example, is rebuilding the primary road for getting here from the big airport in San Jose. This will make the drive shorter and access to this area easier. More tourists with more demands. They will want and expect air conditioning, and I confess, I understand why. But dammit, as soon as you put in air conditioning and close up the windows, the connection to nature is greatly diminished. The televisions will come on. And the mediated life invades. Soon, it is Starbucks and Holiday Inn, and you might as well stay home.

In other words, Costa Rica has brought me a deeper awareness of the human condition. For really, here we are… always dependent on nature for our sustenance. We can't usually see that from behind our television screens inside closed-up, air-conditioned homes. We forget about it at the neatly lined grocery stores—that everything there is a product of nature. Indeed, here I become humbly aware that the changing climate is about nature's ability (or willingness) to continue sustaining us. In a way, you can see her here, fighting for survival against the human forces, probably wondering what the damned war is all about anyway.

Besides this awareness, the other gift is the cocoon—the gift of time, focus, and concentration. It is the gift of quiet and the gift of simplicity. These teach our inner resources what is more natural as a way to live. They relieve me of the struggle, even if only for while, so that I may listen to the muses of the soul and the angels of the intellect. And in so doing, they provide a way of practicing. For writing, you see, is mostly a practice.

Here I have learned, for example, not to publish every little thing just to keep my volume up, but rather to take the time to finish. I have learned to engage all the inspirations and tweaks that come into my mind, but then to handle them with care, write them up, and insist on finishing before they go out. These are the disciplines of the settled. They are the disciplines of the focused. They are the disciplines of a grounded writing intellect.

But I have also learned, again, to wait. To listen. To see what appears, and to practice hearing it. Poems come like pitches in baseball. It is the practiced batter who is ready to hit it out of the park. You must be prepared, one poet said, to receive the guest when he arrives, for the guest arrives on his own timeline. That means writing practice and a creative cocoon that gives one the needed time for such practice. Indeed, what a gift!

In other words, besides the time to write, the creative space, and the joy of being with my sweetheart, this place has brought me back to the roots of writing. It has grounded me back onto the earth where I can remember in an old soul kind of way what is the essence of our being. We need to remember that, for that essence is the source of all life, and we are always connected to it. Our lives are better and richer for the breadth of that connection. I am grateful to renew mine.

Anthony Signorelli