What doesn't kill you makes a good story

It's 4:15 am and after an hour on the trail it's still pitch black.  I pick my way along the narrow path, coffee trees on either side of me.  The beam from my flashlight tenuously lights the next few steps, and I trudge on, one foot in front of another me while one line from Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" runs in my head on repeat: "one step closer. one step closer. One step closer."

Suddenly, my foot slips in the loose earth. I start sliding off the trail, down the hill, the other foot following.  Before I can catch myself I've dropped off the trail, my body gaining speed as I fall down the steep slope. I try to brake with my feet, hoping I don't slide half way down this mountain, or worse, that there's a dangerous drop off before I can stop.  It's all over in a couple of seconds. I've managed to stop, lying in the dirt with my head just below the edge of the trail.  My cry as I went over the edge alerted everyone to my fall and they come over to check on me. "Can you help me?", I ask our guide, and he gives me a hand as I try to hoist myself up. It's harder than I expected, like trying to jump out of a swimming pool, except, my body doesn't have the weightlessness of water, and what would be the pool edge keeps collapsing under my hands.

I finally scramble back up, stop to catch my breath, and we keep going.  If we want to make it to the top in time for the sunrise, there's not much time for breaks. We walk a couple hundred more yards, the path becoming less distinguishable and more prone to crumbling beneath our feet as we go.  Finally, our guide stops us and tells us we have to go back and try the other path.  Disheartened at needing to retrace our steps, I carefully make my way past what momentarily felt like a near-death experience.

This section isn't so bad, and we stop to catch our breath and get a drink with a clear view of our destination ahead of us.  It still looks impossibly far away, but our guid assures us that it's only about 40 minutes.  We start back up hill, and not too much later 2 men pass us walking downhill.  "How close are we?", I ask.  "About 5 minutes" they respond.  "Thanks for lying!" I say cheerfully, knowing how often people have exaggerated while on hikes before just to keep up morale.  We think we still have 20-30 minutes left.  But then, wonder of wonders, we reach a steep wooden staircase, and a last uphill climb. Our guide stands smiling at the top. "You made it!"

We step out on the peak, collapse on the bench for a minute, then move out to the viewing platform.  Below us, the towns around the lake lie shining in the darkness.  Off to the east the sky is just slightly tinged with pink.  We drink in the beauty as the sky turns deeper pink and shades of orange.  The town below wakes up- someone starts setting off firecrackers right around 5 and the church bells start ringing at 5:30. "It's the early morning mass" our guide explains.

The sun well above the horizon, the cold at the top finally forces us back down.  We return to town a longer, gentler way, winding our way through fields of corn, and later coffee, towered over by mango trees.  The lake is gloriously beautiful every time we catch a glimpse of it, deep green volcanoes framed by the brilliant blue of the sky.  I don't think I'll ever tire of the beauty of this place I call home.

We finally arrive back at our hostel, ready to devour the free breakfast that came with the room. We bask in the comfort of sitting still and I wince at muscles I forgot I had reminding me of their existence as we get up to go.  A quick boat ride across the lake, and I'm back home again, right around 11.

7 years and counting

Sometime in the past six months, I seem to have lost my voice.  My blog's been lying neglected, and I've been asking myself, "what happened to the stories?"

But every year on this date, the day I left for Costa Rica seven years ago and started this international adventure, I like to blog and look back on the past year and forward to the next, so I'm pushing out of my blogging silence.

I think the reason I've been so quiet is that there have been 2 very big things in my life this past year, and neither of them are the best blog topics.  Learning to love more deeply, to communicate even about the hard things, and to bridge the physical distance between Cristian and I has been one of the main focuses of my year.  And I have loved the process, and feel so much more solid in our relationship than I did a year ago. But I'm a fairly private person- those moments aren't things to share with the world, so no stories there.

The other big thing in my life has been my job.  And again, this is something I love.  I feel so much more at home now at work, doing things I enjoy for something I believe in deeply.  I'm weeks, hopefully, from finishing my first major project at work (completely revising our curriculum) and I've had so many little successes along the way: starting monthly professional development sessions, introducing guided reading into our workshops, working with staff to understand and use more inferential questions.  But yet, somehow, those things don't inspire me to blog.  It's a lot of hard mental work, staring at a computer screen, long discussions with coworkers and observations in the field, before I go back and make some more adaptations.  No clear beginning, middle, and end.  Nothing dramatic to post about.  I don't find the stories in what I do.

I want to find the stories again, though.  If only for myself.  I like to look back on older blog posts, remember times in my life that were joyful and painful and frustrating and exhilarating.  And for the past 7 months, I have nothing but a blank, all the missed opportunities to look for the stories in my life that shape me into who I am.

So, in the next year, I'm hoping I'll find my voice again, see the stories that make up my day.  I think I have some big changes coming my way again.  Maybe not in the next year, but I think the decisions and plans will be in place by the time a year rolls around again. And I don't want this time here to go unrecorded.  I want to remember my triumphs and struggles, and the little every day things that make life in Pana so unique.  Here's to a year full of stories!