More frogs. These photos were taken during a veritable frog orgy in the local swamp about a week ago. For only a couple of days every year, the frogs have gather and mate in a cacophany of squeaks, chirps, ribbits, booms, burps, and warbles. It's fantastic. This is a small subset of the species represented this particular year. There were too many to count. Frogs everywhere.

Here are some climbing photos for your viewing pleasure. Rebecca is a little white spot in the lower branches of the spidery-looking tree in the first photo. The second and third photos were taken in a different tree, hanging on a rope about one hundred feet about the forest floor, slowly spinning in as the rope twisted and untwisted.

It seems that swimming is exactly what nature had in mind for us today, with just one slight modification: now we get to swim through the waterlogged 'air' between the buildings instead of in the river. It's raining ocelots and coatis out there.

The waves go up and then they go down.

Things are getting very interesting. As it turns out, there is no way we are going to be able to finish this project before the end of our class. It's puffed up to be more than either or both us can handle. It seems to me that a fundamental problem of humanity is that we tend to underestimate the time it will take for us to do complex things we’ve never done before. My recent conversation with Aaron brought this bubble of realization to pop in my head.

“Ah, back to my home.” he said dryly just inside the ALAS lab alcove.
“It’s a pretty nice home for this country. Four computers. A refridgerator. What more could you ask for?” I joked.
“Yeah, when we move into that house this really is going to be my home.” He gestured widely. “Cuz face it, man. That place is really just a box. I’m not doing anything there but sleeping.”
I laughed and stepped into the bathroom.

Aaron is talking about the shack we will call a home for the next month after we move out of La Selva in a thinly veiled attempt to escape the drama and the monthly bill. A Tico, with a house in the countryside that he only visits two days a week, has constructed in his back yard: a duplex consisting of four outer walls, three inner ones, a ceiling, and not much else. Showers and toilets are in separate closets on either side of the front porch. Rent is fifty dollars a month and there are four of us. Do the math, and you will calculate a daily rate of about forty cents. Sweet.

But, in spite of our good fortune in finding the budget rental, we still have a problem. The project looms like an emergent canopy tree, dominating the horizon with gargantuan branches, tangles of data dangling like epiphytes from our overgrown expectations of ease. We’ve been trying to get a handle on this one for weeks, but we still haven’t got above the lower branches. It’s beginning to look like the top will stay out of reach for just long enough that we’ll run out of time and have to haul out our ropes and head for home.

Rebecca is going crazy. She’s got some upsetting things happening in her life and her mental exhaustion has been mounting. She’s decided she’d rather be an artist than a scientist. I think maybe she'd like to be a multi-faceted artist who attends wine-tastings of pure, unadulterated science. She’d sip some dark mysterious knowledge from the edge of a glass smoothly and fluidly, make a few choice comments about essences and impressions, and spit out the bitter liquid. One mustn’t consume so much of something so unhealthy, after all.

I don’t know. Maybe not. But I do know that she’s not happy. She’s drunk too much science and it’s making her sick. I think I’m going to buy her some art supplies so she can have some release. We haven’t taken a day off since the beginning of the quarter and we’re both running on empty. I am making time to write this a scant five and half hours before I have to be awake and on my way to breakfast. I’ll be in a tree seven hours from now. We’ll collect samples all morning. After the forest we’ll come back to the lab. Picture it: We’re doggedly pedaling back to the lab clearing on rickety, squeaky bikes. My pedal fell off yesterday and I exchanged for a smaller, less comfortable bike. Rebecca hobbles a clunky cargo bike filled with plastic bags. We’re back in the lab clearing. We’re dropping seven or eight black plastic trash bags onto the floor of the lab building. Then we’re oozing away to lunch like wilted plants. After lunch we’re back in the lab. We’re slicing and dicing and clipping and snipping and bagging and snagging and feeding and weeding typing and oh my god. What, we forgot that number? Crap. Where’d we put that bag?

“Hey Rebecca, can you tell me why there is a different number inside the bag than there is on the outside?”
“Ah, what? Sorry. I’m writing…”

We bust ass for about sixteen hours each day. We work all the time except when we’re eating. We process and process and process until the numbers start to run together and I can’t remember where I put the scissors even though they’re clasped in my hand. I’m sick for the first time in months, presumably from not getting enough sleep. Rebecca has been having a generally very bad time for a couple of weeks.

I’m not sure where this thing started to balloon completely out of proportion, but at some point it became a monster. The excel sheet I’ve constructed plainly shows the outrageous amount of information we’re sifting through. Our advisor Cat has been a great help but with all the ideas we’ve incorporated into our project at her suggestion, we’re now contending with something out of our league, or at the very least, our lifespan as La Selva biologists for the forseeable future.

After three weeks, we’re still working on finishing up our first three trees. Today was an all right day. Rebecca stayed on the ground and I measured a good portion of one tree’s canopy. Yesterday was better. Tomorrow could be interesting. It’s always hard to tell. We never get as much finished as we would like to. Some supplies will arrive tomorrow and make things flow more smoothly. One of these days, the end of the quarter is going to roll around and we’ll have to stop.

Just like that.

In the mean time, I’m going to try and retain my humanity. We’re taking tomorrow off and going swimming.

Exhausted.

We climbed an enormous Carapa tree today and removed about twenty pounds of epiphytes from the lower part of the inner crown. The bags were lowered using thin, twiny banana plantation cord called cocaleca. It tangles too easily to be really useful, but it is cheap.

Rebecca and I are still getting over the fear of falling which plagues beginners in the canopy. Today was better than days past, but things are not running smoothly yet. Jumping off the tree is getting a little easier for me but not really for Rebecca, and moving around in the canopy over one hundred feet above the ground is usually neither straightforward nor simple. We're working on it. We've been climbing solo for a couple of days now, and I'm feeling pretty confident in my knot-tying abilities.

We are also overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work required for this project. Tonight is Andy's birthday party at a restaurant in town, so we will get a break from the endless lab work which consumes most of our evenings. We'll be leaving about six bags of work in the lab, though. Six bags, or about 15 hours of both of us meticulously sifting through moss mats in search of small plants, trimming leaves and running them through the machine which measures their surface area, cutting twigs and dropping them into bags which we number, entering numbers into our Excel sheet, setting up Berlese funnels to collect canopy arthropods, drying samples in the oven, weighing dried samples, and generally running around like startled geckos trying to figure out what, exactly, we're going to do next.

Our data, however, are looking quite lovely. We're really collecting some great information that will be useful and relevant for a long time. Cat is excited for our project and still providing a great deal of support. If we keep up the current pace it seems like we will have something of quality to show Jack at the end of the quarter, and possibly the foundations of a publishable study-one which will be worth the all the dirt and bugs I've eaten and the daily adrenaline rushes which keep me on my toes (or rope, as the case may be).

Right now, I'm going to take a nap.

Major bummer today. Jack wrote to tell us all that we probably ought to have a meeting to discuss our current standing as Evergreen undergrads at La Selva. At the moment, things are deteriorating quickly. Hillary's snakebite adventure and now Charissa's admission into the local hospital for digestive illness (acquired through no fault of her own) set the stage for a nasty undercurrent to surface in the social scene here. It has been made clear that, for as-yet-undisclosed reasons, people here just don't like us one bit. Apparently they think that as a group, we're irresponsible "unsupervised undergraduates" (Not my words. I think Jack relayed them from someone else) who are incapable of taking care of ourselves. In case it is not immediately obvious in spite of its ridiculousness, the implication is that one's ability to take care of oneself depends entirely on whether or not one has a Bachelor's degree. How appropriately snobbish. I wish I knew who'd made the complaints about our conduct so I could personally thank them for jeapordizing the future of this program.

I know that all this will inevitably be water under the bridge–stories to tell at parties and to future friends. But right now, it seems like a pretty crappy deal. We've all been officially threatened with expulsion from the station, specifically because certain people within our group have been breaking some rules, many of which are commonly broken by other researchers, staff, and visitors. People are displeased that "the Evergreen students" take up too much time on the station computers. People are concerned that we wear sandals at night. My sandal census this evening at dinner revealed that most of the sandal-wearers were long-term station residents, presumably those who originated the complaints against us. (I say presumably because all complainers to-date have been proving their maturity by filing complaints directly with the station authorities and giving no warning to any of us.) People are concerned that we are "too nonchalant" for them to understand. I'm a little bit vague on the implications of that one. With any luck, I'll be able to forget about it entirely in the very near future.

So, we had a meeting. Since we're perceived as a group rather than individuals, we've decided to make a conscious effort, as a group, to be more like what the people here want us to be. I'm a little apprehensive about the perceived simplicity of our task. A few among us are a little too proud to make convincing bootlickers.

Many cliches come to mind right now. That ubiquitous quote credited to Napoleon, Marc Antony, the Godfather movies, Shakespeare, and others–"keep your friends close and your enemies closer"–seems appropriate. So does "kill 'em with kindness" and "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..." Clearly, these situations happen often if the prolific diffusion of these mantras is any indication. I just wish it weren't so. Things have been going so well lately. So well, in fact, that in hindsight, I should have seen this coming. I've been having a great time here, off in my own little world, not worrying about what people are thinking of me or whether or not the babysitter thinks I'm behaving myself. And then this big old mosquito comes along and takes a bite out of the ass of reality. C'est la vie.

Ugh. I can tell already. This one's going to itch for a while.

The excitement never ends at La Selva.

Rebecca and I have been climbing all week, and spending pretty much all the rest of our time in the lab processing the samples we've taken out of the tree. We've got quite a collection of data building up in an Excel sheet. I'm excited to see what it will tell us.

Even more exciting, and significantly less cool, the first snakebite of our trip occurred last night. Hillary, on the way back to the river station, stepped on a hog-nosed viper slithering across the path. The viper apparently didn't appreciate her foot, and so it bit her. Her sandals did little to protect against the fangs. Aaron caught the snake in her backpack and they rushed to Puerto Viejo, where they were sent to Heredia in the central valley, and finally to a hospital in San Jose. The doctors gave her antivenin and held her overnight before releasing her with some medication: a surprisingly light sentence for a viper bite. The local doc says she has to stay in bed with the leg above her head until the swelling goes down. The swelling, at the moment, shows absolutely no sign of doing anything of the sort. Her foot looks like a bruised boxing glove. It's swollen and bubbly, with snakebite puncture wounds in the side. Quite honestly, it looks disgusting. Everyone has been on high alert since the incident, and bright people now wear nothing but thick rubber boots at night. When Luis Diego, the director of this station, spoke with Hillary upon her return, he ended the conversation with a very clear question...

"You were very lucky," he intoned. "So, from now on you'll wear appropriate footwear, hmm?"

"Oh yes! Boots! Always boots!" Hillary, swollen foot hovering above the ground, spouted the word like a mantra.

"Good," said Luis Diego. Then he walked away and left her hanging on her crutches.

For reference, here's a photo of a closely related, more dangerous relative of the hog-nosed viper. This eyelash viper has more potent poison and is much harder to see than the hog-nosed. Also, eyelash vipers like to hang out right around face level in the forest understory. The yellow ones like this one especially enjoy lurking in clusters of fruits of the same color. I'm on the lookout everywhere. I can't imagine a viper bite to the face would be very pleasant.

Things are looking up, and so am I.

Today Rebecca and I are going to climb a big emergent canopy tree. We climbed the same tree yesterday but didn't collect everything we need. So we're hauling ourselves up to 100 feet above the forest floor again today in hopes of snagging some plant matter and measuring branches.

Climbing trees is frightening! The worst part of stepping off a branch into the thin air is the shaky, nervous feeling you get even though you know you'll be fine. The rope holds you, of course, and instead of falling you just dangle, but the shock of basically falling off the edge of the tree can really fry your nerves. Yesterday Rebecca had to climb down before we were done because of the fear. Today we're climbing with Cat.

It's been one hell of a week.

Monday, Rebecca failed to arrive. I waited for her and did nothing much else all day long. When dinner rolled around and there was still no Rebecca, I realized we were going to have to wait until Tuesday to get our project off the ground.

Tuesday morning, I returned to my computer after breakfast to find a note from Rebecca: "Sorry I'm late! Went to drop off my bags. See you soon." She arrived, we discussed her vacation (rental car troubles, bad hotels, and then a fabulous retreat on the beach), planned, ate, planned some more, and annoyed our advisor Cat with important questions guaranteed to seem insignificant to her. Our day commenced with a trip to the GIS lab to design and collect a custom map so we could randomly locate two one-hectare plots to sample. After the plots were determined back in the cool air conditioning of Jack's lab, we called it quits and I played some frisbee before dinner. Rebecca did laundry.

Wednesday was a scorcher. After breakfast in the radiant heat of our friendly home star, we hopped on a couple of jalopy bicycles and headed to our furthest plot to scout. Happily, huge trees were encoutered. Several outstanding emergent canopy trees lie within the bounds of our sample area, many along the banks of a bisecting stream. Feeling very positive, we returned for lunch. In the afternoon we excurred again to a different plot, along with Cat and her field assistant Rigo. After two hours of bushwhacking, bullet ant-dodging, and picking leaves and twigs out of our hair, we decided (or rather, Cat decided) that our plot was not suitable. A large hole in the forest caused by the collapse of a giant tree lay directly smack-dab in the middle of our plot, occupying almost half the entire area. Not cool. So we gave up and Rebecca and I left, praying for more intact forests elsewhere. We thought to scout another plot. Fate thought otherwise. Exhausted and frustrated, we arrived to the location of our plot only to find that the trail markers that should serve as our reference points had somehow managed to pack up shop and ditch the trail. We wandered back and forth over the same hundred or so meters of jungle trail until Rebecca and the waning daylight convinced me to make like a trail marker and get lost. Tired, dirty and sullen, we went to dinner.

Thursday we were supposed to see Cat in the morning, but we completely forgot. Instead, we headed back to the phantom plot and changed our strategy. Following a different line of trail markers, we threaded our way through 150 meters of dense primary rainforest to arrive at the corner of our plot. We spent the entire morning using a compass to orienteer around the perimeter of our plot, setting flags as we went. A few mistakes and lapses in scrutiny cost us a couple of precious hours digging through the thorns and palm fronds in search of obscure marker stakes, but we flagged nearly half our plot edges before lunch. Progress had been made. That afternoon we spoke with an optimistic Cat who advised us to keep it up. We then left for our further plot to flag its perimeter as well. Again, Fate decided to throw a wrench into our well-oiled plans, and we ended up searching in vain for a stake that turned out not to be there at all. I mistakenly placed us fifty meters to the side of our actual location, and on our way out we ran into a sixteen foot-tall chain link fence in the jungle. That, I must say, unnerved me more and for longer than nearly any other experience I've had in these forests. Chain link fences just don't seem to belong here. It turned out to be an experimental plot to examine small-mammal exclusion on seedling regeneration rates... Go figure. Exhausted, confused, and a little bit worried about our plot's viability after our encounter with the fence, we trudged back to the river station. I played more frisbee, then dinner.

This morning Rebecca saw Cat. They made a date for noon, just after lunch. I showed up late to breakfast after nearly not getting out of bed. This morning felt much more like Washington state than Costa Rica. A cold front rolled in overnight and blanketed the country in chilly gray fuzz. The leaves at the tops of the canopy trees held their collective breath, shrouded in dew and cloudy fingers. Howler monkeys lazily flopped through the fig trees above the river, idly chewing on new leaves and gutturally hum-burping like a few dozen beehives with the hiccups. Rebecca and I, thinking fondly of our beds, reluctantly dressed up for the murky, dripping depths of the forest, and made our way to our closer plot, which was much easier to access this time, since we had marked the way in.

The morning felt productive. We marked off the remaining edges of the plot and started measuring trees. In order to understand epiphyte biomass, we first have to know how many epiphyte-supporting trees are in the forest. Before the climbing can begin, we've got to measure the diameters of all the trees larger than seventy centimeters, which is no small task. We got two trees measured before we decided it was time to go to lunch. Feeling pretty good, we waltzed in to the mess hall where a quick glance at the clock turned into a synchronized double take. Almost one in the afternoon. We'd missed our meeting with Cat. Feeling a bit like two dogs who've dug up the roses but have yet to be punished, we ate lunch and then booked it for Cat's lab at quarter to two. She was there, thankfully, and not too pissed. Unfortunately, her plans for us were shot, and she informed us clearly and matter-of-factly that we just weren't going to be able to climb any trees next week, because her field assistant Rigo wasn't going to have time to rig them up for us. Our jaws hit the floor in unison. I think she noticed. She asked us where we would be in case Rigo got back early, and we gave her detailed, specific instructions. Rigo was our only hope. Rigging the trees ourselves would take countless precious hours of daylight and more skill than we could hope to scrape together. And we all knew that unless climbing starts next week, our study, like an agouti who wanders too close to a bushmaster, is doomed.

On the way back to the plot we joked about what we would do in the absence of all hope. "Go to the beach and get wasted?" I laughed. Rebecca giggled and said "Let's go!" but we went to our plot instead. We arrived in Mirkwood around two-thirty, and immediately started tallying trees. No less than an hour after later, we heard a sound which changed the mood entirely. "Woop!" It was Rigo, come to rig our trees and breathe life back into our arrested study. "Woop! Woop!" we replied. Tracing one another's sonar hollers, we zeroed in and met up. We showed Rigo our two most promising trees, and he got right to work. Fantastic!

We left Rigo and continued our transections of the plot. Measuring tree diameters in the tropical forest becomes exceptionally difficult when the trees have large buttressing roots taller by several meters than any human. Many of our estimates are probably strongly inaccurate, but what can you do? After three more hours of thorn-dodging, ant-flicking, mud-sliding labor, we had measured thirteen trees. One single tree remained before we could finish our transect. I was rabid to finish before we left, but this tree was clearly going to be a challenge.

Roots like the matted hair of an earthbound giant cascaded down its trunk, concealing shadowy hollows home to god only knows what sorts of freakish, biting creatures. Giant lianas as thick as small trees twisted around its monstrous buttresses. Roots thicker than my body snaked along the forest floor, searching towards the murky stream at its base. Steam rose in columns from the darkening forest floor as Rebecca and I sized up our final challenge. Several close calls with the freakishly large bullet ants (so-called because their stings are purported to be as painful as a gunshot wound) had left both of us spun on adrenaline: a little wacky and ready to get out of the forest. Rebecca had to wade through vats of slick orange mud to get to the base of the tree. From my perch atop a buttress I sent the measuring tape careening right through a hole between a liana and the tree trunk, and nailed her square in the arm. It was too much. The dam broke and all the day's stress started flowing out of her in teardrop form. I felt terrible when I heard the sobs coming through in her words, but she kept on threading the tape around the roots and lianas, telling me that it was ok and not to worry. She handed me the tape, we got our measurement, and I hopped down, winding the tape as Rebecca slipped down the back toward the creek to collect our other tape measure. "Don't worry about it. I'll grab it in a second." I said. "No, it's alright," she replied, "I'll get it." Her tears had stopped. I watched her collect the tape measure and turned around. In no less than ten seconds, I heard her exclaim in the most profoundly frightened voice. “Oh my god!” I turned around, already knowing what I would see. “There is a huge snake right there in the stream!” she said. I followed her pointer finger to the sight of a very large, swimming viper, no less than 2 meters from where she was standing. Fortunately, it was swimming away.

Now the nerves were completely shot. Curses were flying. If the forest had ears its face would've been pink with embarassement. I heard all sorts of things, one of the most memorable of which was “Let’s just get the fuck out of here!” Clearly, it was time to leave. Slowly and noisily, we clomped our way out to the trail, giving plenty of warning to any large venomous snakes. We beelined it to our bikes and cruised off. I played frisbee and Rebecca took a long shower before dinner.

So, we’ve had a productive and unnerving week. We’ve measured and located fourteen large trees in our plot, and we have only a few more to do. Next week we’ll climb, and hopefully get some good numbers to analyze. Preliminary conclusions on this project include: 1. Tree climbing is a lot more work than it seems like it should be, and 2. Tropical biology is frightening.

On a completely unrelated note, here is a movie a friend of mine recorded on top of Chirripó. Your’s truly is photographing a panorama from atop a rock. This file is about 7 MB, so if you don't have a fast connection, you could be waiting a while to download, but it's well worth the wait. Michael, in the blue shirt, is celebrating his 21st, golden birthday (on the 21st) on top of the highest point in all of Central America. Listen to what he says...

Today we were visited by the ghost of forest future. An inconspicuous treefrog in leaf-colored camouflage, transformed into a flamboyant supermodel when dropped into the midst of these gerbera daisies acquired several days ago from a street vendor in Puerto Viejo. He bears the emblem of one of the most sensitive groups of benign forest monsters. Amphibians, rulers of the night time leafscape.

Amphibian diversity here soars. Sporting colors and costumes that would turn any 1980's pop star green with envy, tree frogs populate the tight fabric of understory leaves and branches. Active mostly by night, members of this guild feast primarily on an abundant array of spider and insect entrees. They might have to work a little to pick up the next meal, but the menu selection is to die for.

I can hear them calling to eachother from perches on filmy, web-laden ladders of twigs and leaf blades. Their wails and chirps and low, steady drumbeats echo in my head. They will mate and let their eggs drop into pools of water on the forest floor. Their tadpoles will grow, morphing into perfect new bug-eating supermodels with a round the clock schedule, prowling the forest by night and fascinating biology students by day.

There are creatures here whose direct ancestors hunted in these jungles before the first proto-mammals even learned how to regulate body temperature. These undeniably fascinating monsters are everywhere, and sometimes, when a person is very lucky, they reveal themselves. This one was waiting for me, hanging upside down from a rope rail on a small bridge close to where I am now. She traveled with me back to the lab clearing, where I left her again: hanging upside down from a twig, blending in to the foliage like an alien ninja, bobbing strangely among the green shadows. Millions of years of evolution daintily picked her way through the rustling leaves, quietly searching for prey.

Another day in the lowland tropics, and the sun climbs steadily higher from the east. It's 10 in the morning on Saturday. Where are you?

From my perch inside this air-conditioned office building, I watch the forest through the window. Leaves are photosynthesizing sugars from carbon dioxide. Bugs are eating those leaves. Peccaries rustle in the underbrush searching out grubs by smell alone. Somewhere, a male hummingbird defends its favorite nectar tree from a rival. It chirps and squeaks with a vengeance as it dive bombs the offender. A female nearby looks on with disinterest, then nimbly flits over and probes nectar from a few flowers while the males are distracted. Then she flies on to calmer branches. A toxic butterfly calmly bounces through the air, its bright colors advertising a potential poisonous meal to wary birds. A not-quite-so-toxic butterfly rockets past its more relaxed relative and alights on the underside of a leaf, where it might not attract so much attention.

I climbed a tree yesterday. Rebecca and I finally got ourselves up into the canopy, after several days of mental preparation and failed attempts to effectively rig up a tree. Turns out, we didn't have to rig it at all, since a small rope was already in the tree we were trying to climb. There was just the small matter of hauling our big climbing rope up over the higher branches. Cat, our main advisor for this project, took us out and showed us everything we needed to know to get up quick. It was painful for her to watch our first few attempts at climbing. She eventually had to run back to her office and bring us some better gear. In the end we used ascenders instead of rope knots and scurried quickly up to a great perch in the top of the tree, gaining some excellent views of the surrounding forest.

Even though it's the weekend, today I'm in the lab again, waiting expectantly for Jack's email to tell us whether or not we've finally hit upon something he approves of. Cat seems perfectly happy with our plans, but Jack still has some doubts. Hopefully they'll blow over and we'll be able to get underway on this project. More information will be forthcoming, as it becomes available.