Entering Costa Rica from the air is an experience that challenges description. First there are the clouds, massive cathedrals, alive, in an immense, many-layered landscape. No wonder, then, that the ancients decided that heaven, if it was anywhere, it was up here. From aloft, the view is of a snowy plain peopled by giants, the land of Michelin men and Pillsbury Doughboys.
Then the descent, through a floor that is wafer-thin, into rooms upon rooms of mist and vapor, each one thinly roofed and floored and thrust through with cumulus plumes. Through one, a rainbow arcs between vast cumulus-walled canyons. We turn until the sun is exactly right, somewhere above my right shoulder, throwing the shadow of the 757 before and below me and I suddenly see, embossed upon the layered clouds, the plane’s silhouette ringed in a golden circle of sunlight. The impossible image, framed by the sun’s aura, is copied in ever-smaller circles, spilling coins of sunlight upon all the layers of mist.
Lower we spin, buffeted by water-filled turbulence, as the landscape appears, first water, then surf and estuaries, then a crazy quilt of forest and farms and tall, steep-sided mountains. I wonder at the lack of snow, then I realize it is the tropics, and they are green all the way to the top.
Bribri bus stop
Listen to or read the narrative of the latest installment of the classic Ozarks commentary by beloved Ozarks singer and storyteller Marideth Sisco, host of the long-running series, These Ozarks Hills.
my life and times 