Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
The truth is that it is not raining much this year in Guanacaste. Depending on your area, perspective or source of data, we may be 80% below last year. Recent national forecasts say we'll get something substantial in September and October. Maybe corn farmers will have better luck with their late-season planting.
The truth is, we don't know if this is just a dry year after two wet years, or the beginning of a new pattern. Climate change models show Guanacaste becoming 30% drier but even that misses the point. They have long predicted that rainfall would come in more intense ‘events'. When that happens, more water ends up running off to the ocean, less goes into the ground. Thirty percent less rain may well translate into fifty percent drier. Nobody knows for sure.
When something can go wrong, it will.
Murphy's Law
Now I know how investors feel. You watch it going down, down, down. A feeling of complete impotency. You're suddenly at the mercy of forces beyond your control. It all happens so fast. Later comes the comprehension, the "what if we had only..." Then you pick up the pieces and move on. Fortunately no one was hurt.
For me, it was not the stock market that went into free fall today. It was the 500 lb. concrete culvert pipe that we were gently lowering into a newly dug well. The end of the dry season is the traditional time to dig-or deepen-wells in Guanacaste. The ground water is at its lowest point in the year. Rain doesn't mess up the edges of the hole. The ropes don't get all wet and slippery. You're not flailing around in the mud. And the bonus for the guy in the hole is the refreshing coolness of artesian groundwater springs after a week of sweating through layers of increasingly rocky subsoil. When he hit water, "Papi" came up caked in mud, but elated.
Two riders were approaching, and the wind begins to howl.....
The howling winds of February visited many parts of Guanacaste with a level of damage that made you sit up and take note. One neighbor lost a temporary house. Branches and whole trees were down everywhere and green mangoes literally carpeted the yards and streets. In the next town an elderly gent had his morning routine interrupted when the outhouse blew away from around the throne.
For me it has been a windfall of sorts. One the one hand it provides a convenient excuse to harvest all the bananas that were almost ready anyway. On the other, wherever a tree came down or a big branch snapped, there's a new space on the ground, or a bit more light that will get through the canopy. It's just a question of figuring out what to plant.
Posted by: Tom Peifer in guanacaste on
Feb 19, 2009
You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. Saint Bernard
At the age of 104, Clemente Campos is less of a threat to the womenfolk of Guanacaste than in the good old days. His son Gregorio recounts how, with the harvest stored away, his dad would mount up and ride off for months at a time, visiting friends in towns near and far, enjoying the fiestas and doing his best to romance whomever was available.
Learning to think like a watershed
Admit it. Rumors can be a great source of local information.
The earth turns to gold in the hands of the wise-Rumi, Persian mystic
My intent was to write a piece on the changing seasons. After all, it is a great time to see how your land survived the 10 feet of rain, decide whether you really want to water all those plants all summer long and begin to plan for the next possible deluge.
