Last year I had a very disconcerting episode. Spring of 2022 we’d gone to stay at our favorite hotel in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, the Arenal Falls Lodge. It used to be the Green Lagoon Heath and Wellness Retreat, sitting near the hiking trails up to the Cerro Chatto, a dead volcano cone filled with vivid green waters. It’s a lovely place, with acres of gardens, holding all manner of small cabins and larger villas. There’s nothing around the place, just many lush acres of wilderness. Literally a Garden of Eden.
One of my favorite activities there is to simply sit on the hotel pool deck, looking out over the town of La Fortuna to the distant mountains. I like to sit there, read, have a refreshing adult beverage and once the lights dim and the town beds down for the night I like to watch the large variety bats coming out to hunt insects in the night. I’ve seen colorful toucans from the pool deck, and an array of hummingbirds in dizzying colors so bright and brilliant.
When we stay there we don’t always stay in the rooms in the hotel lodge. Many times we end up in a villa, or the occasional cabin. Sometimes those places are a far trek from the restaurant or the front desk. Since my stroke that means we drive down for breakfast instead of following the trails up and down.
Our spring visit wasn’t merely to visit old friends in Arenal, or to feed the coatimundis or sit in the volcano hot springs. That trip we were on a mission – to sell our 19 year old Honda CR-V to a young man. During a trip a few weeks before the transmission had finally laid down and given up the ghost. Getting the transmission replaced meant having our old friend towed down off the volcano and all the way to San Jose for that transmission change. Having it done at the dealership would have been costly, and there aren’t mechanics here that specialize in transmissions. Reluctantly we let our old friend go to an optimistic young mechanic who was going to rebuild it himself. We were buying a new car instead.
My dear husband, Jim, had gone down to the hotel lobby to talk to his old friend Danny, and after a while I was ready to go back to our cabina to sit on the balcony and read. Since I was trying to regain strength after that stroke, I knew if I stayed on the main road our little cabin was just off the main road as it split. A quick walk. But when I told the guys I was heading back one of the other guys told me it would be quicker to cut through the gardens and wend around the villas.
I decided this sounded better, and I took off on the footpath through the garden. Where I ended up wandering about for over an hour. Crazy up and down paths, not a soul to be seen anywhere. I remember emerging out of a forest path towards a large glass private pavilion one might use to host a wedding or reception. It clung to the mountainside, giving a full view of an uninhabited valley. I saw deer, the small wild deer that live in the forests. I saw so many different animals and plants as I trooped along lost.
Finally I got to our cabina. That short ten minute walk has stretched to over an hour because I missed that right turn towards Albuquerque or somewhere else. I remember hauling my sweaty exhausted carcass over the door jab and straight to the shower, not caring for once that the showers here are clear glass and anyone prancing by in the grass would see you.
Later as I sat on the screened in porch listening to the sounds of the jungle-like forest it struck me that my journey out of a high demand religious organization, the two terrible years I endured, had some things in common with my hour being lost at the resort. It was scary, and very unexpected. I’d thought I was one place heading in a certain direction, but ended up lost, no idea where exactly I was. The palpable relief I felt when finally viewing a familiar sight, scrambling in to what was safe. Along the way I got to see some truly amazing things unexpectedly. But there was a great deal of fear, fear I would fall because my cane might not be enough, fear of the unknown.
That’s one good thing, whither you are trekking across the resort, or trying to navigate what life looks like on the other side of your old church, when you’re out of that wildness it’s such a peaceful and happy relief. I never want to go back to my old faith life. In my life here in Costa Rica there is a richness and fullness to my life than I could have never imagined back then. Life has taken me to strange places, which has been just the thing I needed. Even if I get lost on a several hundred acre resort.