Lauren Kessler

It’s impossible to say which of the magic moments was most magical.

It might have been that first, hard-earned view of the valley, lush and green with sugar cane fields, the mountainsides planted in coffee, hectares of compact, shiny-leafed bushes dotted with perfumy white blossoms. 

Or maybe it was the hike down to the wild Pacuare River, where the brave among us swung on Tarzan ropes across a perfect swimming hole.

It could have been that monumental, dig-deep-and-give-it-everything-you-didn’t-know-you-had trek up to the volcano, the views above the clouds as if we were airborne, the huge, gouged bowl of the crater with its steaming fumaroles.  We were drenched in sweat, bone-weary, ecstatic.

Or it might have been the hike through La Marta Sanctuaria, dense, impenetrable jungle on either side of a narrow trail littered with monkey food, a pale blue mariposa with black-etched wings, a boa constrictor coiled asleep in the sun, lunch eaten sitting on rocks in the middle of the river.

No.  Here is the moment:  We were hiking past tiny villages with modest homes painted turquoise, kiwi green and coral, the kids playing outside, the requisite church.  Carolina, one of our wonderful Tica guides was walking ahead.  She stopped and bent down to pick up what looked like a rock by the side of the road.  It was a brown and gnarled,  a little smaller than baseball, not anything you’d notice, not anything you’d think to pick up.  “Come look,” she called to us.  She smashed the rock on the road.  It cracked, and she opened it like a book.  The inside was white, glistening, almost crystalline flesh. She dug at it with her fingers and offered us some. It had the crunch of jicama and the sweetness of cocoanut and was possibly the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.  Or at least it seemed so that day, on a country road in the mountains above the Turrialba valley, on the last hike of our seven-day stay.

            La Pura Vida – the pure life – they call it in Cost Rica.  Some visitors view this common phrase (used as a greeting, a farewell and an affirmation) as an expression of a laid-back lifestyle, a kind of 60s California surfer-hippie mentality.  But to Costa Ricans La Pura Vida has a much deeper meaning.  It expresses a philosophy of strong community where people have resilient and happy spirits, and life is enjoyed leisurely and to its fullest.  To witness that, to be part of that – to literally taste that – for a week was a privilege. 

I came to Costa Rica in early February as part of Mountain Trek’s first foray into that country, its first non-Canadian-based program.  I had been to British Columbia twice before, once for snow-shoeing in January and then again in August for alpine hiking.  I loved the intense activity, the camaraderie among guests, the lively, healthy spirit of the staff.  I returned – and will continue to return – for that infusion of energy and vitality that are the core of what the program means to me.  In Costa Rica, the energy and vitality came from the country itself.  There I saw a vision of a sane life that could be – in fact, was being -- lived in the 21st century:  La Pura Vida.

For me, the big lesson of Mountain Trek has not been about calories per day, eaten or expended.  It has not been about lifting weights or downing protein shakes, about pro-biotics or cold-pressed virgin olive oil.  All these things are important, but the big lesson is something else.  It is that issues with food and weight and exercise are not discrete problems.  They are symptoms of a life lived out of balance, a hectic and harried life, a life too full of things and too empty of meaning.

My life, it sometimes seems to me, is ruled by gadgets: cellphone, laptop, thumbdrive, g-card, iPod, the keychain transponder that operates my hybrid car, the miniaturized electronic control board with more power than a Cold War UNIVAC that operates my wall oven.  I think these gadgets and products can insulate us from real life, making possible a kind of circular pseudo existence in which we spend most of our waking hours working to make money so that we can afford to buy (maintain, upgrade) the gadgets that will allow us to work the long hours we need to make the money to afford more gadgets.  In the midst of that life, I think we – or let me just say I – can lose touch with living.

At Mountain Trek, and especially, emphatically, in Costa Rica, I saw a glimpse of life in balance.  In Costa Rica, where there is universal health care, where the literacy rate is higher than the U.S. and where there is a Constitutional amendment banning a standing army, people smile at each other in traffic.  On the street, they ask how you are doing (Todo bien?), and they really want to know the answer.  They look you in the eyes, smiling, and wait for the answer. 

When you say “thank you” in Costa Rica, the response is not, as I was taught in high school Spanish class, De nada (“It was nothing”), but rather Con Gusto (“With pleasure”).  Whatever you were thanking them for, they did it with gusto, with pleasure, delight and zest.  Now they are thanking you -- with pleasure, delight and zest -- for thanking them.   

There’s much to learn here.  I will be back next year.

Copyright Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler is the author of five works of narrative nonfiction, including Pacific Northwest Book Award winner and Los Angeles Times bestseller Dancing with Rose, Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl, Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Full Court Press and Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig. Stubborn Twig was chosen as the book for all Oregon to read in honor of the state's 2009 sesquicentennial.

Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, salon and The Nation. She is founder and editor of Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction, and directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her writer husband, Tom Hager, her three brilliant and faultless children and a cat that thinks it's a dog.