Hi! I’m Laurel! That’s what the “about me” board sitting in the trash can of my dorm floor says. After a busy week of finals, the other RAs and I pulled the posters off the wall and the stickers off our doors and headed home from an empty IU campus. I only had one Cinco de Mayo to relax before I was sitting at the airport at 5:30 am, ready to board my flight. I followed my professor, and a man with a great mustache who turned out to be my TA, from plane to plane to Cafe Malinche, where I met the rest of the study group— the people who would eventually be my little family in Costa Rica.
I’m writing this blog just one week in, with the many introductions to Costa Rica and the rainforest out of the way. During my time here I wanted an adventure, a place to push myself out of my comfort zone, learn a lot, and gain some life experience that I can someday use in my future career. I want to become an Occupational Therapist, and I love connecting things to healthcare, so I hope to use this blog as a way to synthesize my findings in Costa Rica in terms of how applicable they are to the OT field. I also hope to simply write about what I find interesting, what makes me happy, and what sparks some hope.
On the bus to our first destination, La Selva Biological Research Station, I gazed out the window between bouts of exhaustion induced microsleeps. I practiced reading the signs written in Spanish and when those disappeared I tried furiously to understand the plants on the side of the road. Dinner plate sized leaves caught my eye, alongside branches dripping with vines and just a speck of red fruit every so often. The bus rolled up beside three trees with bright red dragon inspired leaves, what I later learned were Bird of Paradise plants— a haven for hummingbirds— and dropped us off at la selva.
The research station was beautiful. Brilliant murals of the rainforest covered the walls, and gigantic three dimensional ants walked across the doors to the reception center. After a quick orientation we hauled our luggage across a hanging bridge— which would become both a daily passageway and a frame for serene sunsets and grand bromeliads— and to the River Station. The station was right on the water, and truly a memorable place. The bathrooms feature friendly katydids or other crawlers, so you are never alone in the shower. The tarantula hiding underneath the stars and the bullet ants found along the sidewalk there sprinkle in a sense of suspense and surprise. Understandably, our crew felt a little unsettled and wary of our new situation, totally within the midst of the tropical rainforest, and the darkness setting in around 6pm did not help the matter. Yet the night wrapped up with the most transcendent, truly soul replenishing meal, and quickly we all made it to bed.
Waking up in the rainforest means hearing the Howler monkeys shouting across the canopy, rather than the familiar sound of dogs barking in a suburb. We later learned that their howls intensify when the rain comes, for locals it works like an alarm. This howling evolved as an adaptive mechanism for the Howler monkeys, a way for them to communicate over long distances. This adaptation was evolutionarily successful because it allowed the monkeys to disburse themselves throughout the canopy, preventing aggression and fights. This concept reverberates nicely when considering our human relationships. Communication is often offered as the key to relieving tension and reducing conflict, in all types of relationships. Not only did this lesson from the Howler monkeys remind me to text my loved ones at home, but it also was a kind reminder of the importance of listening to patients in my future work.
After a walk to breakfast, narrated by the Howler monkeys, we went on our first guided hike through the rainforest. We learned about the main types of forest succession, characterized by levels of disturbance. The primary forest is older, with huge trees and few gaps in the canopy, while the secondary forest is much younger and features more sunlight and undergrowth. These primary forests take hundreds of years to develop, and the secondary forests that follow after their destruction are simply unable to harbor the same biodiversity and abundance of species.
The idea of protecting what you have was further reinforced by the lesson of the sloth and the Cecropia tree. This tree was one of the first in our hike, and is a common species found throughout the forest. Our guide told us that oftentimes a sloth will live in the tree, and even though it lives a mainly sedentary lifestyle, the animal will bury its feces at the base of the tree. This way, the sloth returns essential nutrients to the tree which is its home. This reminded me of the saying that your body is your home, and you only have one. Just as the process of healing or preventing injuries and disease can be long and tiresome, we cannot undermine the importance of protecting what we need to survive. Later we saw a sloth hanging from the top of the bridge at night.
The rest of the hike revealed walking palm trees, strawberry frogs— which personally I believe are more reminiscent of spider man — a bundle of white tent bats huddled under a leaf, and a lesson on seed dispersal demonstrating the common theme that form follows function. Later on, we saw a host of wildlife each day at the station. Spider monkeys and Capuchins swung through the canopy overhead, little green and black frogs dotted the trails, agoutis scurred ahead of us, groups of peccaries crunched leaves behind the trees, and oropendolas sung their gargling tune overhead. The wide variety of creatures the rainforest fosters is such a clear example of the many creative solutions that are available for a single goal. No matter the issue or problem, there are endless possibilities or workarounds you can find no matter where you start from on the evolutionary scale. As humans these adaptations have become more behavioral and technological, but the ability remains.
After that first day, the next couple faded into a simple routine containing delectable meals, time spent exploring the forest or in the classroom, and breaks to cool off in the upstairs library with air conditioning. One day a curious coati passed us by on the bridge before breakfast. On another we rose even earlier than usual to watch the birds and found a durante of colorful toucans in a tree. One night we stayed up late to hike the rainforest in the dark. The spooky sights of spiders and snakes— one of which performatively enjoyed a meal in our presence— were countered by the many adorable tree frogs that joined us in the nighttime rain. In a magical moment at the end of our hike, the guide handed us pieces of decaying wood. Timidly each of us turned off our flashlights, until the blackness of the forest enveloped us and the only connection we had to each other was our voices and the soft glow of wood in our hands. The bioluminescent effect was spectacular, and so was the boa constrictor we found slithering atop the bridge on our way back to camp.
During this time we had to struggle through the uncomfortable process of being a scientist. I cycled through phases of brainstorming, deliberation, and adjustment as I searched for a research project idea that fit my niche and my needs. It was exhausting, especially compounded with the unending heat and humidity, but it helped me fall into my identity as a scientist. Just as I became more attuned to the different species of the forest, I became better and better at understanding the scientific process. I started to visualize the variables existing in the complex ecosystem that is the rainforest, and I started to grasp how these could be, at least somewhat, controlled and examined.
My research ideas have focused on those gorgeous clusters of leaves adorning the limbs of rainforest trees, the bromeliads. More specifically, I’ll be researching these and other epiphytes in relation to the microclimates that exist under individual trees. This may seem tangential to my interests in OT and health, and it is, but I prefer to see a connection. The relationship between the tree’s epiphytes and climate mirrors Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model in psychology, which stresses the influence of the various spheres of your context on your mind. Your microsphere of family and friends plays a role in your personality development or mental health, but the greater macrosphere, or society in which you live and work, does as well. In much the same way, the individual variation throughout the forest in temperature, sunlight, or humidity may be critical for certain plants to survive, but the larger global forces of climate change also drive extinction and loss of valuable species. In the same way, you can target all levels of the ecosystem in which you live to initiate changes and foster growth. Whether you are combating the agricultural use of pesticides or systemic racism to lower cortisol levels of colobine monkeys or people, targeting broader societal issues can have individual impact. Yet many of us do not have direct avenues to tweak these global problems, so in many ways it can be comforting to know that changing your microsphere, or microclimate, may effect the change you wish to see.
One of the most endearing moments of this week so far was the birthday party. Two large dinner tables were smashed together to form one big party, and one big game of golf (the card game). Our professors plated pieces of cake and took pictures of the “La Selva Birthdays,” and we stayed out late in the cafeteria after dinner. I’m already hopeful about what more I will learn and what more I will see for the rest of my trip. But most of all, I am hopeful about the people I have been lucky enough to share my time in Costa Rica with, and hopefully the lasting friendships and memories I will already be taking home.
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