Pipas Frías

   

At the end of February, I went on a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. I mean … did I? Or are these pictures of someone who looks like me surfing just part of the online shuffle of images and voices that make up our surreal shut-in lives today?

Travel feelings and experiences always evaporate quickly once we are back home, but in this shelter-from-home existence, everything before mid-March seems especially foggy. The best day of the whole trip was the day after I got home. I felt sure that all the self-love and goddess goodness I cultivated all week in the sweating jungle and slicing white sun beaches of Costa Rica had truly saturated my soul and were here to stay.

I felt beatific.

Like a Buddha bathed in soft sunlight

Like a meandering monkey

Like a bumbling baby falling off a surfboard into the ocean’s omni arms

Like soft purple, pink, orange layers of sherbet skies as night slips down over day

I felt colored in.

I felt like an eternal echo across the land. Inside my belly felt like a warm candlelit bath in a mountain log cabin on a snowy night.

I took my kids to breakfast at Le Peep where there was a twenty minute wait during which my grumpy son insisted on staying in the car. I though floated several inches off the ground in a state of exaltation.  

Each moment was a treasure bubble of buttery bliss. My senses were pin pricks of sparkle as I picked up on each waiting diner’s nuanced mood. It was so crowded in the waiting area that my daughter and I had to practically merge into one being to fit. It was heaven being so close to her.

As we made our way to the table, twisting and turning through the tightly packed restaurant, I felt as tall as a Redwood and wondered if I left a trail of glow in my wake. I hoped others would drink it up and implode with love like me.

When we ordered breakfast, I looked into the waiter’s eyes and smiled for a long time. I felt that little him and little me ran naked together over sunny sands in ancient times.

As we waited for our food, I told my kids tales of my Costa Rica trip for twenty solid minutes. Their eye-rolling and drifting attention was clearly a mask they thought they were obligated to wear as teenagers listening to their mother. I knew my words were holding them in rapture. I knew my story was winding its way around the fibers of their souls and altering their thinking ever more.

After Le Peep, I dropped my daughter off at the YMCA to meet her friends. My son went off in the car to do whatever it is he does. I was home alone unpacking my sandy swimsuits and sweat stiffened yoga bras. On NPR, they were talking about a coronavirus in China. I remembered the customs officer in Liberia, Costa Rica taking my passport and asking if I had traveled to China recently.

It must have been the next day that the exalted feeling began to ever so slowly dissipate like morning mist as the sun blooms up over the land. I didn’t notice it slip away until it was long gone. I was back to To Do lists, reacting rather than considering, eating in front of a screen, inhaling bits and bites of processed food that don’t “count,” and catching myself not making eye contact, not smiling, not paying attention to the moment I’m in. And worse, I was back to waking up at 3AM and worrying.

What if, what if, what if…

I should, I should, I should…

Ugh. How could I get back to that state of bliss? What could I do to manifest that exalted self-love at home every day?

I needed to do some investigation. First I listed what I did in Costa Rica.

·      Drank no alcohol

·      Had no refined sugar, dairy, red meat, or pork

·      Ate a lot of fruit, vegetables, and fresh fish

·      Drank/ate many fresh cold coconuts—pipas frías

·      Did a lot of movement—yoga, walking, swimming, biking, surfing

·      Took care of only me

·      Meditated

·      Did not work

·      Did no email

·      Had many discussions and conversations

·      Smiled and laughed a lot

·      Took lots of photos of myself

·      Looked at myself in the mirror; took photos of myself in the mirror

·      Let my belly out of hiding—wore yoga bras and bikinis

·      Wore jewelry—a new ring and many bracelets

    

I carefully studied the list. A common theme emerged: self-care. It was clear that I did a great job taking care of myself in Costa Rica. I nourished myself with good food and drink, movement and joy, time and self-reflection, sun and fresh air. I looked at myself. I decorated myself.

                  

I crossed out the things on the list that I was not doing at home. I ended up crossing out almost everything.

I chose three things from the list to try revive at home. I would see if they brought me more happiness and self-satisfaction. At first glance they seemed small and silly, but I think they may actually be the missing links. I’ve been working on weaving these three into my life.

1.   Smile more.

2.   Wear bracelets.

3.   Eat everything like it’s a pipa fría.

1. Smile more.

I have to admit that it pains me to say this one because it conjures a memory of when I was a teenager just starting to do things on my own, walking downtown, feeling grown up and important, and some man walks by and says, “Smile, honey!” Eeew. Stop looking at me asshole! How dare you command me to do something, even including a condescending “honey,” and break the spell of my new adulthood! It also conjures all those stupid comments when I started getting fat like, “She has such a pretty face when she smiles.” Meaning fat angry me was not pretty. 

But that was many years of therapy ago. I like fat angry me now. And fat happy me. But I did realize in looking at my Costa Rica pictures that smiling makes a difference. When I see a photo of me smiling, an energy arises and blossoms that captures and holds my attention. It’s a pleasing experience—smiling and looking at me smiling.

A couple weeks ago I interviewed a National Geographic Explorer on Zoom. I was excited and a bit nervous. After the interview, I watched the recording in order to take notes. I saw in the video that my face, neck, and chest were ablaze in crimson. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve been like an octopus for years—my skin involuntarily fills with color and reveals my emotions as they heighten. But seeing it now made me wonder if there was something wrong with me. I Googled it.

Flushed skin is not likely to be caused by an underlying disease but usually by things like social anxiety, exercise, spicy food, alcohol consumption, nervousness, or warm temperatures. Phew. Google also told me that one way to manage the problem is to smile. Sure enough, I went back through the Zoom recording and noticed that when I laughed or smiled, my color was less red. Some other tips for managing extreme blushing are to hydrate, take some deep breaths, and cool off.

One night I decided to make popcorn, drink wine, and watch a show. I found a hilarious Netflix series called Chewing Gum. I watched and drank and ate until 1AM. And then a familiar dark feeling descended on me like a storm cloud. I felt guilty. And sad and lonely. And bad about myself. I went into my bathroom fully intent on crying it out while repeating terrible things to myself, “There’s something wrong with you that you are alone, things will never change, you can’t control yourself, your head is like a ham hock, your neck is like a thick melting candle.”

I stood looking at my reflection in the mirror, tears welling up. But then a thought came to me. I guess it was divine energy or something. It said: “Plug in the new lights.” I had put up a string of warm yellow sultry bulbs around my mirror. So I turned off the white overhead light and plugged in the new lights. The room turned soft and forgiving. I stared into my eyes for a long time. I looked at every detail of my face. I took off my clothes and stood there in my black underwear staring at myself. I lifted my arms. Did a muscle pose. Did some other poses. And then I smiled.

I looked completely different with a smile. I tried different poses with different smiles. I smiled and then stopped smiling and looked at the difference. With the smile, I was beautiful. My eyes were sparkly blue, not dull gray. My jaw was strong and angular, not like a ham hock. My hair was tousled, not thin and dingy. My skin was glowing, not red and blotchy. But the smile was not about appearances. It was about love. I was looking at me loving myself.

Looking at myself smiling, at love for myself radiating out of my own face, felt oddly familiar, like something I once did easily and often. I was looking at the true me who somehow got lost along the way of trying to be what society told me to be—thin, controlled, pretty, like everyone else. The true me is none of those things. She is big, sometimes out of control, beautiful, and unique.

All of that from a smile.

2. Wear bracelets.

Over the recent years, how I dress and decorate myself has fizzled and petered to a slow drag at best. If I’m going out of the house sure I will be seen, I dress with about a 30% intention of looking good and 70% on comfort. If I don’t have to go anywhere, it’s 100% comfort, and if possible, no clothes at all.

Clothes usually just remind me that my body is big and hates being constrained with tight waist bands, underwear wedgies, tights with drooping crotches, bra straps that bite my shoulders, and socks that imprint my ankle skin with deep rings. At home, I pick the most comfortable blah clothes in my closet—black loose wide leggings and a thin t-shirt or oversized sweatshirt.

For years I tried to find my special style of clothing. I tried to like shopping. I tried to learn what would be flattering on my body. My sweet best friend measured me three times for custom-made clothes. I tried to care. But it usually boiled down to buying clothes in the same way I buy toilet paper, coffee, and soap. Just essentials that must be purchased when they run out. Nothing special that deserved attention.

From travels and gifts, I do have a collection of cool rings and earrings that hold memories and meaning for me. But when it comes to putting them on day-to-day, the message in my head is always—save those for special occasions, not just going to Home Depot or a soccer game.

So during the retreat’s first yoga class, I was struck by all the bracelets and rings my friend wore. Bejeweled in yoga class?

As I downward dogged, I noticed other yogis wearing beaded bracelets. I snuck peeks during mountain pose and caught glimmers of rings as people stretched their arms up. After savasana and a final namaste, I watched as people began to gather their things. I saw necklaces and a general flow of rich, luscious color and pattern floating around the yogis. Tattoos, toe rings, hair ties. The world suddenly seemed so colorful, so wonderfully hippie. I don’t know what they put in that first yoga class, but I had a trippy feeling that I just joined a caravan of royal desert divas who were going to take me on a metamorphic journey.

The next day my friend and I walked the beach and met Aldo, a bracelet vendor. My first instinct was that we shouldn’t buy souvenirs from the first guy we see. But my friend is one of those people who lingers curiously in each new encounter until it inevitably unfolds into something bigger and memorable. So she started talking to Aldo and within seconds, at our feet he laid a beautiful cloth and heaped it with necklaces and several poles strung end to end with bracelets. As they spoke in Spanish, Aldo held my friend’s hand and the words flowed comfortably and naturally between them. I sensed they both knew their roles in this exchange and enjoyed the selling, negotiating, and buying but also the genuine connection being made. There was no rush, no pressure. When my friend proposed a lower price than Aldo, they smiled, and the sense of ease and delight remained.

My second instinct was to buy something for my kids. But as I watched my friend carefully select, reject, reselect a necklace for herself, I realized it was time for me to put myself first, to buy something for me. My body journey has been all about learning to love myself the way I am. For so many years, I tried to change my body. I thought my body size was the problem. The change I visualized and desperately chased was a smaller body, a lower number on the scale. But I had come to realize that losing weight was a meaningless change if I didn’t change how I felt about myself … if I didn’t learn to love and value myself. I was ready to shift my mindset to one in which every day was a day to adorn myself. I am worth wearing bracelets.

 I chose and immediately put on two moonstone bracelets and two recycled plastic bracelets. Later that day I added a cat’s eye agate bracelet and two volcanic rock bracelets. Some of these bracelets had strings that dangled a few inches with a bead on the end of each. I wore them in the pool, to eat, and to yoga class. They clinked and tinkled, making tiny wind chime sounds on my wrist.

3. Eat everything like it’s a pipa fría.

Leaving Chicago for Costa Rica started with stepping out of the car at O’Hare Airport and dashing through my last moments of single-digit temperature. Two plane rides, four Dramamine, and a three-hour bus ride later, I was at the last step of the long journey. Which was actually the bottom step of a long, steep set of outdoor stairs that led up to the reception desk of the Bodhi Tree Yoga Resort. 

In stewing heat, I took a few steps at a time, pausing and feigning amazement at the surroundings (AKA catching my breath). At the top, sweat trickling down my spine. Red-faced and breathy, I was handed a coconut with a paper straw in it. I thought nothing in the world could compare or ever again quench me like that cold coconut water did. 

I was wrong. Because the next day and then every day after that for six days in Nosara, Costa Rica, I had at least two cold coconuts a day and each one surpassed the last one. Pipa Fría stands with $1 chilled coconuts were on the roads in and around town and on the paths leading to the beach. It was always hot and humid, I was always sweating and thirsty, and the pipas frías always saved my life at just the right moment.

As I drank the secret inner contents of a pipa fría, I held up the smooth, heavy sphere that felt like bamboo and I contemplated the water inside. No one had ever seen it. And no one ever would. It went from the dark interior of the coconut to the dark interior of my belly. It replenished my body, which had sweated out all of its liquid in the blanketing, ever-pressing humidity. The coconut water settled as cool peace in my heart that was moments ago racing from moving in the 98 degree heat.

When I drank the next pipa fría, I pondered how the coconut water never saw the light of day that it was made from. Maybe only a dim glimpse of sunlight as it slipped through the paper straw and into my body—so really straight from the sun and oxygen that fed the coconut tree into me.

 

I soon learned that drinking the pipas frías was only half the magical journey. I watched  coconuts being sucked dry by thirsty tourists who paid their $1, drank, and then tossed the empty husk into the waist-deep piles of unopened coconuts. So when my friend asked, “Queremos comer la carne, las abren?” and the vendor held the coconut in one hand and whacked it three solid thwacks like a master chef and it split in two, opening to the sun that gave it life in the first place, my heart was splayed.

The white inside was snow. A pearl. The bottom of a baby’s foot. The underbelly of an elusive fish. The tip of a white hare’s ear. We were the first to lay eyes on the inside of this magical orb. And the last. My friend dug the spoon shaped from the husk into the coconut bowl, shimmied out its meat, and slurped it down.

 Each time we ate a pipa fría, it was differently delicious—sometimes like sweet scallops, sometimes harder like cashews, sometimes slick and soft like Jello. As we ate, my friend spoke to the vendors. I listened to the bamboo trees crackling as they shifted in the breeze. I looked into the vendor’s log where he made a tick mark for each coconut he sold.

I am certain that if I ate every meal with the same awe and wonder, or at least present state of mind, I would feel good all the time. It’s not what you eat, it’s how you eat it.

I have found that it is nearly impossible to overeat or feel shame or guilt about my eating when I am eating mindfully.

But I have to be honest. This is my biggest challenge. The call to eat is like a wild beast always nearby, sometimes whining like it’s wounded and sometimes raging at me. Always trying to get my attention. After two days in Costa Rica, the beast was tamed. Food felt neutral. The awe and wonder was something I brought to the experience of eating, not something calling and overpowering me with hypnotic force. I ate what I wanted when I wanted. I stopped when I was full. I didn’t eat when I didn’t feel like it. I no longer heard the howl of the beast trying to get me to think about food. It had slunk away.

But that damn beast was waiting for me back home. The mindless eating ruts in my brain are deep. I set a place at the dining table to remind myself to eat and only eat when I am eating. I tried eating meditations. I wrote odes to each meal for a week. I wrote a blog about it. But somehow, I cannot get into the habit of eating mindfully. Right now a puzzle has taken over my meal place setting. In fact my dining table has become my office during this pandemic. I will keep trying. I have now sealed the wonder of eating pipas frías in writing and images. May it protect me from the call of the beast.

Now let’s seal this with science. In his book Hardwiring Happiness, Dr. Rick Hanson says that the human brain has evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences (which kept us safe in prehistoric times when we were sometimes prey) but slowly from good experiences, leaving us more susceptible to negative feelings like pessimism, insecurity, worry, and shame.

Our experiences travel on paths in our brains. Since we are more vulnerable to the power of negative experiences, those paths are well worn and become deep ruts. So when a new experience enters the brain and has the choice of a deep, well-worn track or something like a wall of tall prairie grass with no clear entry point, it’s going to take “the easy road.”

But Dr. Hanson says that we can change those paths in our brains using positive experiences. It takes three simple steps (repeated over and over). Consider a negative experience such as staring at yourself in the mirror and judging your ham hock neck or thinking you don’t matter enough to wear bracelets every day or eating like a robot in front of a screen until your belly hurts.

Step 1: Be with it.

Observe the experience without judgement.

Step 2: Let go.

Drop the negative. For example, it’s a neck; it’s a bracelet; it’s a meal.

Step 3: Let in.

Add the positive. For example, I smile and see my beauty; I put on bracelets to remind myself of how I matter; I eat mindfully and feel nourished and satisfied enough to stop when I’m full.

This is not just some mind trick. Our brains are actually re-sculpted each time we let in the positive. Synapses become more or less active, more or less blood feeds different parts of the brain, and genes with neurons turn on and off. We can succumb to the power of the negative and let those ruts get deeper so that new experiences entering the brain click into the ruts automatically or we can re-pave the paths with a daily practice of dwelling on positive experiences. “Dwelling” is maybe too intense of a description because according Dr. Hanson, it’s as simple as thinking about, breathing into, or taking in good experiences. For example, he says if he’s feeling stressed, he will step into his garden and breathe deeply. He might pick up a stone from his garden and put it in his pocket to remind him of the good experience later.

This is not just trivial happy times. Positive emotions strengthen our immune systems, protect our hearts, and foster longer, healthier lives.

So if you see me smiling, wearing my talisman bracelets, or eating with a dreamy look of pipa fría love, you know I’m treading happiness paths deep into my brain.

Grounded, Galápagos Style

Los Gemelos Crater, Galápagos
photo by Josephine Teoudoussia

The flimsy, decaying wood railing makes me mad. It gives not even a tiny illusion of safety. It doesn’t go around the whole crater. It barely makes half the length of the lookout area. It’s like a kid playing with her set of farm toys—the plastic horse, cow, chicken, and several pieces of fence that can click together to make a barn yard—but her set only has one fence piece, so she has to cram it down to make it stand among the worn carpet strands.

One step backwards while posing for a photo and you’d fall over the railing and into the abyss. I stand on the path a good ten feet from the edge, unable to take a step closer. Yet I really want to see. My mind is drawn like a magnet, overwhelmed with a need to understand what I am looking at, to be able to categorize this image as something knowable. But my body will not move.

Without moving, I can see that from the rim of the crater all around, the sides are extreme slashes straight down, as if an angry giant thrust a 1500-foot-wide cookie cutter into the flat earth. My daughter and niece (whose constant laughter and fearless plunge into every experience on this trip has me remembering my younger years of risk-taking and giddy abandonment to the present moment) stand with their backs to the railing taking selfies. Backs to the vast sinkhole. Backs to nothing but a few inches of ground and then empty air. Air and dropping, falling, letting go of Earth.

I feel a familiar, terrifying shift in the earth below my feet. All the past months of meditation and getting grounded vanish. I have the urge to throw myself to the ground and hold on for dear life, to stop the land under me from breaking off and drifting away. 

“I do not like this place,” I say to no one in particular as I will my feet to take a step. My toes ache in my shoes, curled in a mighty bird claw grip. I wave my daughter over, hold her sleeve, and take a few solid shuffles toward the edge.

photo by Josephine Teoudoussia

Though I wish to be on my knees or belly and maybe even tethered to a tree, I stay upright and inch forward. As I get closer, I see that the bottomless pit must actually have a bottom for it is full of lush greenery. But I can’t figure out the perspective. I purposefully look up and out to the horizon, searching for an anchor before looking down again into the optical illusion pit. Am I looking down hundreds of feet onto the tops of behemoth trees? Am I looking at some bushes in an oversized pool? Or am I looking at a bowl of broccoli?

photo by Josephine Teoudoussia

   

Los Gemelos on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos are twin pit craters formed when the ground above an underground void collapsed. The underground void was created when subterranean volcanic magma chambers emptied out, causing the chamber roofs to collapse. There’s a pit crater in Hawaii called the Devil’s Throat. There are pit craters on Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Moon. “A newly formed pit crater has steep overhanging sides and is shaped inside like an inverted cone, growing wider closer to the bottom. Over time the overhangs fall into the pit and the crater fills with talus from the collapsing sides and roof. A middle-aged pit crater is cylindrical, but its rim will continue to collapse …”*

Here is proof: The ground collapses.

Our four days in the Galápagos are divided into two land days and two ocean days. After the land day with the visit to the twin sinkholes that left me undone, I am ready for an ocean day. I wake up and pull back the curtain to fast-moving clouds, mist, and fog. The view across the valley and out to ocean has been swallowed whole. Moisture presses in close. A sense of unease spreads as my eyes search for the horizon line, the ground, the road—anything straight and solid.

We take a bus through a cloud. I never see beyond the dripping wet windows. We board an inflatable motorboat, sit teetering on the hard balloon sides, hands gripping the wet nylon ropes. We smash up and down on waves, outracing the fog at last. Saltwater and the first glints of sunlight slash our eyes, leaving us semi-blind and once again disoriented. The boat stops, we all stand, and everything tilts right and then left in slow motion. Our legs wobble, we reach for each other, we conjure thigh muscles to balance, and then work off our life vests.

The captain’s arm reaches across a three-foot gap between the yacht and me on the motorboat. I hold my breath, plant a foot on the slippery end of the boat, grab the arm, muster any ancient grace the universe has to offer, and before I can think about how badly this can go, I step from one unstable surface to another. Throughout the day, I do this seven more times as we get off and on to snorkel, hike to a volcano top, and swim with penguins, manta rays, sharks, and turtles.

On the last snorkel in the late afternoon, after hours at sea, hours away from land, I realize I am still clutching for stable ground. My body is still rigid, on alert, and fighting the buoyancy and perpetual motion of the ocean.

Yet being under water wearing a wetsuit, flippers, mask, and snorkel gives me the freedom to explore and see what I couldn’t see looking down into the crater—an underworld. It’s enchanting—everything dappled and twinkling, undulating and waving, plunging and swarming. I am encircled by wonderous fish that are long and pointy like Dachshunds, flat and thin like pancakes, jagged and fist-size like rocks, striped, luminescent, and covered in dots. One fish has a line of illuminated white dots perfectly spaced on each side that evoke an airstrip landing in a pitch-black night. I am compelled to follow it.

For a few sweet moments, I let go. The white dotted fish slips gracefully through sunbeams and bubbles. I will follow this fish anywhere. My body unclenches just a little. It’s quiet and peaceful.

Quiet? Oh shit. Where is my group? I flex my flippers to come to a sudden halt and bend my torso to reverse. I’ve flipped around and started paddling too quickly, creating a tornado of bubbles that I can’t see through. I’ve lost my orientation and for a split second I’m not sure which direction the surface is. I want to take a deep breath but I’m under water and my body has not registered the idea of breathing through a snorkel. I’m on the verge of panic when the white dotted fish passes by, this time with three white-dotted-fish friends. I pop my head out of the water and see that I am only about ten feet from other splashing people.

Back on the yacht, my body is pleasantly exhausted from the sun, sea, and hours of movement that were peppered with moments of fear. I’ve struggled out of my wetsuit for the last time, taken a shower that involved trying to stay upright while getting slammed back and forth in a slippery stall as the yacht made its way over tumultuous waves.

We have two hours back to Santa Cruz Island. I stretch out on one of the deck lounge chairs and cover myself with a whisper soft blanket. I stare up into the endless pure blue sky. I am hypnotized by a black dot that slowly grows bigger as it comes straight down like a spaceship. Just as it gets close enough to decipher as a frigate bird, I see two more dots descending in transparent shafts. Soon there are twelve frigates hovering above the deck. The boat is racing south and when I look forward to the bow, I feel the speed. But when I look up, I see the frigates are not only effortlessly floating like balloons on invisible strings, but they are all facing east. It is discombobulating.

I keep my gaze fixed on the sky full of floating frigates. My eyelids are half-mast, growing heavy as the rocking boat and muffling winds lull me. My body wants to let go but my brain is fighting to stay alert and figure out the message of the frigate birds. They embody movement and stillness at the same time. They seem unattached and free yet invisibly tethered and controlled. That’s it. They are grounded aloft. It’s an oxymoron full of possibility. I wonder … could I replace my disorientation with being grounded aloft?

The older I get, the more I fight feelings of disorientation, unstable ground, imbalance, disconnect, floating, teetering, falling, … But when I was young, I sought these feeling out—being thrown into a pool, skiing, climbing trees, roller coasters, jumpy houses, swings, water slides, trampolines, spinning, dancing, riding a bike downhill, getting drunk, getting high, …

From the time I learned to walk until my teen years, like most kids, I was curious about the thrilling sensation of flight, spinning, being high up, upside down, off the ground. But I also had complete trust. Trust that the equipment would not break, that someone would catch me, that I would be fine even if I fell. And then later as a teenager, I understood more about the dangers of taking risks, and that trust is often flimsy at best. But that just made it all the more compelling, because like most teens, I thought I was invincible.

My twenties were lived in a kaleidoscope twisted with gusto. The free-falling teen years splintered into a fragmented life in Chicago of art school, being a bell hop in an old hotel on the Gold Coast, and trailing graffiti artists and rappers. That life spun into college in Montana, befriending and living with two Native American men, dating a cowboy, cleaning cabins in Glacier National Park, and being a sous chef in a hip alley restaurant. That life exploded into teaching English in Cameroon and in return being taught life.

When I came home from Cameroon, a strange feeling would overcome me—like I was in an elevator coming down to the ground floor, my body settling into the landing, and then out of nowhere, an aftershock, a slight surge back up that throws off equilibrium. It was the first time I felt disorientation that I did not like. I fought it. This unstable feeling was not fun like it was when I was younger. It felt unsafe and out of control.

Could it be that maturity squelches trust in the universe? The more we learn about our surroundings, the more we fear? The more our surroundings get under our skin, the more our trust in ourselves is undone? Until what used to be fun and free like jumping off a high dive becomes reckless and terrifying and then eventually just walking down a crowded street brings such anxiety in the form of disorientation that we are paralyzed into believing the only answer is getting grounded?

I spent my thirties and forties trying to mature—get a stable job, start a family, get a house—stop all that crazy spinning in the kaleidoscope and get serious. Get grounded.

As I drifted at sea under the frigates, I realized that the Galápagos Islands were the exact opposite of groundedness and stability. Their creation was one of violent volcanic eruptions, ocean currents churning with massive power, fierce colliding winds, and creatures that came only by floating or flying.

Miracles of change, motion, and movement abound here.

The land is in a perpetual state of evolution. The sixteen islands represent every stage of change, from the youngest in the west which are dry and blackened like a fire just doused to the middle-aged islands in crater shapes covered in green to the oldest in the east, eroded down to just a half crescent rim or simply flattened as they disappear. The Galápagos Islands are drifting across the surface of Earth at the rate of about three centimeters a year. Over their three-million-year existence, they have drifted almost 60 miles.

Under the Islands, a gigantic column of molten lava descends 1800 miles down, connecting to the center of earth, an umbilical cord lit hot yellow and floating in a dark endless womb full of life-giving fluid. Volcanoes burst from that lava column and create ground that does not rest stable but rather grows to peaks through repeated explosions and then sinks under its own weight of ash and lava and then shrinks and eventually disappears. All of this happens over a few million years but the change over those years is constant.

The life-giving fluid that makes up the ocean around the Galápagos is the result of faraway elements brought through three cold water currents converging on the Islands. Rain washes nutrients from forest soils, down streams, into rivers, and into the ocean from New Guinea 8000 miles away, Peru, and the Panama Basin.

The Galápagos Islands may be tethered to Earth’s core deep below the ocean, but above water, the Islands are perpetually battered by two competing winds—the southeast trade winds from South America and the northeast from the Caribbean and Central America.

Since the Galápagos Islands are volcanoes erupted from a 60-mile-wide hot spot far from the mainland, they have no indigenous plants or animals. The first living things came floating on those powerful ocean currents or flying on those strong winds.

From South and Central America, six hundred miles away, rafts of vegetation carried the first iguanas, spiders spun fine threads of web that attached to the wind and carried them like miniscule hot air balloons, and seeds tucked in flying birds and floating debris made the journey.

The most prolific seed was a relative of the dandelion called scalesia. Scalesia seeds that landed on infertile dry lava rock used a “conjuring trick”** to germinate. With a bit of rainwater, it can grow without soil. Parts of the plant die and shed. The dead parts decompose and become soil that provides nutrients for the living part to thrive on. Scalesia covers the middle-aged islands like Santa Cruz. It evolved from ground covering to tall trees—forests that cover miles and miles.

Creatures like iguanas, penguins, tortoises, and birds transform their bodies to adapt to changes in the land and weather. With no significant predators, animals here can spend all their time mating, eating, and raising young and as a result they evolve at hyper speeds—in an “evolutionary blink of an eye.”**

Blue footed boobies dive down into the ocean at bullet speed from 25 meters high. At speeds of 65 miles per hour or more, hitting the water at such force could kill many birds, but boobies have special air sacs that cushion the impact.

photo by Josephine Teoudoussia

Frigate birds never touch the ocean. Its saltwater would kill them. Instead they fly behind a blue-footed booby who has just caught a fish, attack the booby’s back end, shaking the fish out of its mouth, and with incredible flying stealth, the frigate bird darts under the booby and snags the falling fish midair.

The Galápagos Islands play in my mind’s eye as a time lapse video: explosions from earth’s core, ocean currents and titanic winds snatch up plants and creatures from hundreds of miles away into their powerful pull, and weather slams, slaps, shapes the land. Pause the video and you see a medley of birds, a stew of sea creatures, hot spots, sink holes, lava tunnels, pit craters, spitting iguanas from mainland rainforests that now swim, penguins from Antarctica that float like ducks, sea lions from California, birds with blue feet, birds with red balloon chests, and scalesia creeping high and low.

The Galápagos pandemonium sent me over the edge at first. It triggered feelings of disorientation that I had been fighting for years. I tried stabilizing myself by pressing my bare feet to the ground, by setting my sight to the horizon, by hugging trees anchored to Earth. But then I saw the fragility of the ground by the crater pits, how easily the horizon vanishes in fog, mist, ocean waves, and how a sturdy tree that is deeply rooted into the earth is just one of a billion tiny things rooted to planet Earth. But being rooted means nothing in a pursuit to be grounded because planet Earth is spinning, rotating on its axis at tremendous speed. To make one complete rotation in 24 hours, a point near the equator of Earth, where I was in the Galápagos, must move at close to 1000 miles per hour. We are all in motion all the time. The best we can hope for is being grounded aloft.

So while the boat speeds south through all these moving elements, I face east and still myself like the frigate birds. I let go and let it all rush around me. I let the tilting of Earth, the rocking and lapping of the ocean, and the whipping and whispering of the wind take me. I somersault, float, and finally sink into the motion like a baby who trusts the world will keep her safe and never let her fall off.

*Okubo, Chris, and Stephen Martel. "Pit crater formation on Kilauea volcano, Hawaii." Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 86.1-4 (1998):1-18. Print.; Geological Field Guide: Kilauea Volcano. revised edition. Claremont, CA: Hawai'i Natural History Association, 2002. 97. Print

** David Attenborough in Steven Hsu’s natural history documentary, Galápagos