Costa Rica and the Problem of Beauty
My friend treks bravely into Corcovado rain forest, which is filled with marvels and monsters.
JANUARY 14, 2025. In Desert Solitaire, grouchy nature mystic Edward Abbey commands us to see rocks, clouds and trees as themselves, not metaphors. Abbey is moralistic about it, as though metaphorizing nature is exploitive, extractive.
Give me a break, no one sees things straight. To perceive is to compare, liken, link, rank, analogize. As each fresh stimulus squeezes into your brain’s memory banks, it pings other things, acquiring what passes for meaning. This trait isn’t bad, something to be squelched, it’s essential.
And that brings me to Costa Rica, where I just spent six brain-pinging days. A friend and I stayed in Luna Lodge, embedded in rain forest on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. A few odds and ends to convey the experience:
A Mysterious Noise
The rain forest emits weird noises. One of the weirdest resembles a hoarse exhalation, a raspy roar. What could that be?
A jaguar, one of Costa Rica’s big cats? But the noise seems vaguely mechanical, like a giant espresso machine. It must come from a nearby mining or agricultural operation. So I assure my skeptical companion. Mystery solved.
Then, on a birding excursion, we pull up to a charming compound—a house and other structures on a grassy lawn—whose residents sell “ice cream” (frozen coconut milk in plastic bags).
The weird roar is extremely loud here. Andreas, our garrulous, erudite, 21-year-old guide, points to shadowy figures crouched in trees on the compound’s far border. Howler monkeys, Andreas says, are making those noises, enabled by their odd hyoid bones. Mystery really solved!
I wouldn’t mind if howlers dropped by occasionally, but permanent houseguests? No thanks.
The Ant Acacia
Hiking through Corcovado Park, we stop in a clearing within which stands a single skinny tree adorned with lovely, evil-looking black thorns. I reach out my hand to stroke a thorn, and the normally chill Andreas snaps, Don’t touch that!
This ant acacia tree, Andreas says, has a co-dependent relationship with vicious stinging ants. The acacia provides the ants with food, and the ants protect the acacia from anything that might bother it: other plants, bugs, birds, mammals. Like me. Ants live inside the thorns. If I had kept stroking that thorn, ants would have swarmed out and bitten me. Very unpleasant, Andreas assures me.
A Log with Nostrils
We rest by a stream that tumbles from the forest into the Pacific. A woman in my group wonders if she could wriggle down the stream to the surf crashing on the shore. Not a good idea, Andreas says. He sets up his scope and tripod to show us why.
With my naked eyes, I see a dark strip on the beach, a log or lump of seaweed. Through the scope I spy nostrils, eyes, corrugated tail. A crocodile, Andreas says, maybe 10 feet long. Later we watch the beast slide lazily into the surf. Crocodiles in the Pacific? Hmm.
I imagine myself jogging along this palm-fringed beach, daydreaming about a utopia in which humans live in harmony with each other and with nature, and as I hop over a log it rears up and clamps its jaws on my leg. Not funny.
Ficus Trees
The rain forest teems with Ficus trees, which are impossible not to metaphorize. A big Ficus is an emblem of life’s loopiness, with roots and shoots darting off in all directions and curling back upon themselves willy nilly.
Defying Abbey’s dictum, I decide the Ficus teaches us to give up looking for a central storyline, narrative, explanation. Forget the quest for love, truth, justice, happiness, life is just a snarl of digressions.
Scarlet Macaws
You can see lots of stuff without leaving Luna Lodge, like toucans. Their ungainly beaks make toucans look goofy, but they hop from branch to branch with fluid, slow-motion grace.
Two scarlet macaws hang out in a tree just beyond the deck of the lodge. Macaws bond for life, Andreas says. These two always seem to be squabbling, but that’s just how they chitchat, with raucous, dinosaur-ish shrieks.
They remind me of Zach, a yellow-collared macaw--half the size of these scarlets--with whom I lived when I was married. Zach shrieked too, and he was a biter, but he could be quite affectionate. When I came home from work, Zach liked to nestle inside my shirt and grind his beak contentedly.
I loved Zach, who died years ago. He was raised in captivity, not captured, but I should never have bought him. Parrots should live with their own kind, in the wilderness, fighting, fucking, eating fruit and nuts, flying around and squawking happily. No one should keep parrots as pets. Edward Abbey would surely agree.
The Problem of Beauty.
Every time a blue morpho dances drunkenly by, I grin, thinking of godless physicist Steven Weinberg’s admission that “sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary." How can anyone gazing upon the blue morpho not suspect there is a God? This is the problem of beauty.
But if God gets credit for what’s right, the beauty, love, etc., God must take the blame for what’s wrong. Monsters lurking in the thorns and surf. Monsters flying to Costa Rica in fossil-fueled jets to gawk at morphos. Every paradise comes with perils.
Further Reading:
The Ocean Is Getting on My Nerves
Nicaragua, Quantum Mechanics and Other “Solutions” to Habituation
Freeman Dyson’s Disturbing Scientific Theology