Dawn Chorus
“Suddenly you will awaken from your dream, and there won’t be any doubt about it.” - 12th century Chan master Dahui
Once I’d been to Costa Rica a couple of times, I learned about the cloud forest and yearned to see it in person. I had experienced howler monkeys, motmot birds, and halloween crabs in the coastal region, but I dreamed of seeing still more: butterflies, brightly colored frogs, and most of all - sloths.
The time came. I had an opportunity to bring the boys (my 16 and 19 year olds) with me to Costa Rica a few weeks ago and dove at the chance to take them to the cloud forest for our first weekend in the country before settling in at the beach for the rest of our visit. My local contact and I had a misunderstanding, though, and I accidentally made a reservation to spend a weekend in the rain forest.
The boys and I had a dreamy, adventurous stay at the rain forest eco-lodge, eating what was prepared for us in true farm-to-table fashion. We hiked alone through the fields and jungle on a lightly travelled path, seeing no other people and stumbling across a vibrant “blue jeans” frog. The next day, we hired a guide and took a walk where he spotted a sloth and a toucan and a tiger heron for us. They were hard to make out without the telescope I soon discovered guides carried on all such excursions. I wondered if we would have seen more wildlife more clearly at the higher elevation I had intended.
After two nights at our eco-lodge, I decided we’d leave early to drive up into the cloud forest. We only had enough time for a two hour walk through the nature preserve and a quick visit to the nearby town for lunch in order to make it back to the coast by dark. It was worth the trek, even though we saw fewer animals than we had in the rain forest. Although the views and climate and the forest in the preserve were all unexpected wonders on their own, I felt vaguely unsatisfied. . . until I realized my mistake.
That evening, back at our hotel on the coast, iguanas and coati passed through walkways and gardens as casually as the resident expats. Howler monkeys called out unseen but nearby, and I marvelled at the lengths I had gone to in my search for something “not here.”
We had another week at the beach, and on the last full day, the arribada arrived - the Olive Ridley turtles laying their eggs on the neighboring beach from dark to dawn. The boys and I jumped on the opportunity to see them - people are only allowed on the beach during the arribada with an official guide.
When we stepped onto the beach and saw the first of hundreds, my mind stopped for a moment, unable to make sense of what I was seeing. We were instantly within the arribada, no telescopes required. Briefly, there were no words, no concepts, and then my mind resolved what I was seeing into a turtle.
The next day, we flew home.
How long is the night for a frog, or a bird, or a crab?
If the animals of the oceanside jungle in Costa Rica were burdened with thoughts of future and past, one night might seem endless as they worried and wondered as people do, missing cues, misinterpreting signs that time is passing, attending to the irrelevant, distrusting their own experience of nights consistently coming and going.
Always coming.
Always going.
“Happiness comes and goes; unhappiness comes and goes,” Ursula said to me once. Her words sat on the surface of my psyche like bubbles, real but unknowable, and impossible to pull down to a deeper place where I could digest them.
Words stay on the surface.
No matter how skillful, no matter how helpful, words are forever only symbols and not the thing itself, no matter the thing.
There isn’t anything I can do to speed the arrival of the next dawn chorus or the next arribada, but there is something I can do to deepen my trust that it is all coming right on time and as it must.
I’m already doing it. Pretty sure you are too.
Over here, my next dawn has come. I didn’t know it was coming; I doubted it was, and neither my ignorance nor my doubt had any influence on the result or its timing.
I do believe, though, that effort matters, and that the determination to continue is grace embodied more than anything I can imagine.
Getting into definitions of grace and embodiment we’ll save for another day.
We’ll never run out of words,
but time flies like an arrow, as they say.
The vultures soar outside my big picture window, and I notice my mind wanting to call them hawks. No, vultures. It’s okay.
I don’t need things to be different, better. The dawn chorus rises every morning in Costa Rica but it has risen all along everywhere. I only put together this week what that expression means.
Did you know “dawn chorus” is listed in all the usual online dictionaries? It’s true. I looked it up, so stunned by my missing something that was there all along - not invisible, not hidden, not silent, and not somewhere else.
I heard it with my ears day after day. Then last week I came home. I was driving, and I felt the song coming from inside me, pouring out in all directions.
You too are the dawn chorus: every night we survive. Each morning we sing our song, as surely as the magpie-jay and the motmot and the howler monkey cry out not because they have made the decision, but because they must.
“There is no try,” and there is the work of learning not to try not to try as we continue, compelled toward exploration and refinement and expression of this one precious life.
“Only then will you believe that when quiet it’s the same as when noisy, when noisy it’s the same as when quiet, when speaking it’s the same as when silent, and when silent it’s the same as when speaking. You won’t have to ask anyone else, and naturally you won’t accept the confusing talk of false teachers.” - Dahui
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