Florida and back.

Golfito sports a sheltered bay, a few marinas and a tiny airport (where i spotted Toucans and monkeys in the trees).

Hiring the marina owner to keep an eye on Akimbo at a mooring here, on the spur of the moment, i headed in Bud and Rhoda’s direction, to Florida for a precious visit – and preview to anchoring off or tying to their dock in a few months. What luck to count my parents among my dear friends. Thank you. As long as i was at it, i managed to reconnect with two high school classmates and an old hometown friend from my college days. More rich luck to have these friendships to renew.

In Golfito, cabs aren’t private. When you catch one, you are actually just catching an empty seat in it. The driver will stop to pick up and drop off other people while enroute. Makes sense to me, more of a car pool, he makes more money, and it’s a better use of gas. Almost a mini bus service, but about ten times more expensive and still it was only $1.50 to the airport. Once in the air (a single prop plane hop to San Jose International), it was fun to fly over some of the anchorages i’ve been in. A whole new perspective. I had no idea what landscapes spread out from the shores where i was – a lot of farming, some huge estuaries and wetlands, rain-forested mountains.

When i get back to Akimbo, it will take time to re-focus on deck, to find a pace and the habits of safety. Our environs shape us after a while. Having been away, i’ve lost some of that shape. It will return readily. Until it does, i’ll have to compensate. Grocery shop today, run the Costa Rican bureaucracy obstacle course tomorrow to get my exit papers, sail around the peninsula and drop anchor in Panama the next day, hopefully make it to Panama City by the tenth. I’ve looked farther ahead, into the Caribbean, but this is enuf for now, i don’t want to get too far from the present – let me know if you want an approximate itinerary.













In the meantime, from the floor of the Miami International Airport, where my computer can reach a socket, i listen to music. This creates a soundtrack, and soundtracks are potent. As is coming from my family’s love. I watch people go by. A lot of them. Each of us so transient. Our skins a seeming contradiction to a feeling that we are too big to fit into a body. I don’t know these people, but i do from what we have in common. Which is not only this space, but birth, life, death…grief and praise, sorrow and joy, hope and despair… I’m in the namaste’ of this moment. The sacred in me sees the sacred in them. We may not recognize each other, but i guarantee we recognize love. Which is more important anyway? Love or each of us? Love will be here after we are gone. But it’s a symbiotic relationship: it needs a medium to manifest it, and life is that medium and at the moment we are alive, we are its manifestation. Do you know the answer to the riddle “are we spiritual beings in a physical experience or physical beings in a spiritual experience?” I make eye contact, and find recognition. A smile. Are they starting to feel me witnessing them? Me wanting to ask what their stories are. I think so. I am meeting their eyes more and they mine. The distance between us, at this moment, feels thin. The stars feel close. How much further can i push this? I want to find this head/heart space more often. I feel connected to them and almost out of my body.

And finally, i will leave you with the view from "my office" in Golfito.