#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Last walk, after dawn, Playa Guiones
Sleep, wake, sleep, wake––restless rest of a last wake-up in the enchanting place. The alarm I set to see my friend off, and I am up. Coffee, quickly, before she is out the door to her flight ahead of us, an opposite coast. I sit by the pool. The butterflies are not awake this early, but the sun is coming up. There is a surprising and delightful breeze. Frank sleeps. I am ready for my final walk to Playa Guiones. Through the gate, down the dirt road, over the path, more dirt road, no one is passing me yet on motorcycles. And then, the surfers on the waves, the current pleating the sand, and the sun behind the trees, casting shade. Here and there, a shell washed and left by the tide receding. I walk the hard sand toward Playa Palada, the rocky shore. Dogs are walking their people, shorebirds are breakfasting in the tide pools. I have time for some leisure; but, I feel the pull of return. Plane to catch, loved ones at home. My last swim in the frothy surf, I say thank you thank you thank you. This I want, I decide, as I am splashing and diving my head under, to take home with me, this last swim, so that tomorrow, when I am walking to the river with Charlie and Suzi and there is snow on the ground and frozen edges of the river and wetlands and brook, and I am bundled up and booted, I will feel so happy to have been here––now––and felt this warm and comforted and heated and invigorated by sun and surf. Frank is up, we’re packed, and almost out the door. Remembering our arrival, and every simple, satisfying moment here as we pull the doors shut. Our friends come by, a quick hug and goodbye. Doors locked, and we’re off. The narrow dirt road we start off on is busy now––Frank skillfully passes every kind of conveyance to gain some distance: passes the buses and trucks and motorcycles and walkers and horses––cows! Cows being driven to pasture, we pass them too! How the road winds, and how the gaping holes bump us around. How shocked about the roads we were on our way here, and how well Frank has learned to manage on them! Now, it’s sunny and summery and there are trees in bright bloom under the dust, and then the road, eventually, eventually, is a paved road, still narrow, still potholed, still unspeakably curving and crowded. But we are enjoying this day. I feel, for a moment, a breath of New England summer, a flash of a non-tropical summer from childhood, perhaps, because there is green again in the fields we pass. We have the windows wide open, it’s warm, but not hot, and my hair blows wildly, and we pass the hills and more hills off in the distance under the blue. Then, the road finally gets much better. Still crowded and windy, but better paved. We are relaxed. Our plane has been delayed an hour. It’s years since we arrived. So much time has passed! How hard it was to get here. Not hard to get here, physically. Hard to get here in my belief that we would. January spent wondering how this trip would actually take place, amidst Covid and fires and a family of needs, and my own fears and insecurities. Somehow, we got here. And the minutes and hours and days and weeks passed, and it really happened, all of it. I think of all this on the way. And then we are at the hot and very crowded airport in our masks getting through security. Everyone is so friendly. We have no hassles.
Now, it’s actually Sunday, not Saturday. We are home safe and sound in the snow and the dark, and Suzi and Charlie at the door; the rest of the house long asleep, and daylight won’t come soon enough.
Leaving the streets of Nosara
