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.