Teacher on Two Wheels

Above: Me and my sis, on the beach close to Mal Pais, Costa Rica

Sunday 3/23/08 Mal Pais, Costa Rica

The car in front of us became obscured by the dense cloud of dust that plumed out behind it, much like an octopus fades into the blooming cloak of its own ink. Dust coated the leaves of every roadside tree and bush, drowning out their greens with a dismal tan, a faded sepia.

The forest just outside the small coastal community of Mal Pais looked baked, arid, and lifeless under its vast blanket of dust. Animals with time-forged hides, skins colored to camouflage them amidst the forest’s typical sea of green, stood out like under-dressed guests at a ball. Photosynthesis slowed to a debilitating trickle as leaves hung shielded from the sun’s energizing light. Under the high midday sun, all cooked and roasted in a thick, earthy demi-glaze by the roadside.

Above: Banana trees suffocating under the dust

“I can’t get over this dust,” I said to no one in particular. The car bounced over the washboarded road.

“Yeah, the dust is very bad now because of all of the cars,” David, my sister’s husband and the man behind the wheel, said. “There was no dust here before the cars came. It’s new.”

Like explorers who unknowingly bring diseases to which the indigenous people they meet have no immunity, the cars brought clouds of dust that now cover houses, leave local residents coughing or otherwise perpetually bandanna-masked, and foreshadow the impending wave of development that is about to wash over the area.

Mal Pais wasn’t always this way. As recently as 30 years ago, virgin forests home only to their native animal inhabitants stretched along much of the coastline in this area of Costa Rica. For decades, it’s location, the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, far from the mass of humanity that throbs away in and around Costa Rica’s central valley, helped preserve and protect it from development. Few people managed to eke out a living in its jungles, in the absence of running water, electricity, roads, medical care, and arteries for commerce. Its name, Bad Country, was long well-deserved.

Above: My landlord for the day. He allowed me to lounge on his turf. Gracias.

Surfers, however, love places like the Mal Pais of long ago. They anchor most into the spirituality frothing in the ocean’s surf and swooshing by in glassy sunset swells when no one else is around. An empty line-up all to oneself, a quiet session of good surf, cuts a surfer down to size and is, through the joy that a surfer experiences in reaction to the energy stored in the ocean’s waves, a manifestation of the interrelatedness of all things. For surfers, empty waves are the best kinds. The most sacred. The most temple-like.

And so it is of no surprise then that surfers made their way to Mal Pais. Its remote location, clear waters, consistent waves, and idyllic beaches trimmed in palm trees made the perfect setting for the ultimate surf pilgrimage.

Above: A beach next to Cabo Blanco National Park. Mal Pais, Costa Rica

But with surfers came the lodging to accommodate them. With lodging came small cafes, stores, and the homes to house the workers of those establishments. Money from other countries slowly found its way to Mal Pais via the wallets and surf bags of travelers. Dirt paths widened into narrow roads. Bars opened. Fifteen years ago, people swapped their generators for power lines and reliable electricity. Within the span a few short decades, Mal Pais underwent a tourism-induced metamorphosis. It was this metamorphosis that brought the dust.

“When I was here five years ago, I remember this road being about half as wide,” I said as we drove around a slow-moving car piloted by a cautious driver. In college, I visited Mal Pais with two friends on a frenzied 10-day trip through Costa Rica. Change was in the air back then, but what seemed like a faint breeze during our visit was now a discernible fog. Or maybe it was just the dust.

“I remember we stayed in this tiny little surf camp right off the water,” I continued. “The owner of the place came here about 20 or 25 years ago, before there were any roads. He arrived by boat, and later, after he bought a chunk of land, he shipped in a big ol’ earthmover, one of the huge yellow ones, by boat. He told me how they just plowed a way through the jungle to make space for the surf camp. In the beginning, when there was no electricity, they lived off of the fish they could catch each day and the veggies they could grow. Everything else had to be shipped in.”

*****

My sister and her husband live in a small lemon yellow house 5 kms from Mal Pais. The house is surrounded by rolling hills peppered with big trees. The nights are quiet and star-filled; the rural darkness here is far from foreboding.

Above: Night sky above my sister’s house. Click on this pic and then click ‘All Sizes’ above it to get a better view of the awesomeness in the clouds.

The days are hot and breezy. Cows and horses from the surrounding fields like to chew on the patch of grass out behind the house. At $200 a month and a mere 15 minutes from the ocean, the house is of the sort that is capable of making any visitor jealous of those who live in it.

Above: My sister’s house

For a week, I surfed, read, watched movies, ate meals that were far more elaborate than anything I’d ever prepare for myself, and chatted with my sis, her husband, and her husband’s brother (he visited for about four days or so.)

Above: My baby for the week. A 9 ft. Yater gun. I used to stand in the surf shop and dream about riding one of these things. The Ferrari of longboards. Yeah!

One night, over dinner, we started talking about religion. My feelings about religion are very different than those of my sister, her husband, and her husband’s brother. We talked and talked, tried to articulate ideas that were familiar to our minds yet foreign to our tongues, and tried to understand one another.

Among the things we talked about:

–If one religious explanation of God is the ‘correct’ one, how is it that so many people of different faiths truly believe that they are on the one, true correct path? Are billions of people around the world ‘wrong’ in their religious beliefs?

–The way the belief in eternity affects one’s perception of time in the present. Is a non-believer of eternity more likely to cherish her time on Earth in the present because she knows her time on Earth is all she has? Is a believer in eternity bound to focus more on his distant future and less on the present simply because he believes his future will be infinitely longer than his mortal life?

–The multi-faceted nature of the God described in the Christian Bible.

–Whether or not the belief in a one-true-faith type of faith (ie. A faith that claims other faiths cannot possibly be ‘correct’, ‘accurate’, ‘true’, etc.) carries with it a type of rigid cultural intolerance.

–What happens to humans when they die.

It was a fascinating conversation and one that spanned several hours. Over the course of it, without intending to, we slipped into moments of frenzied talk in which we attempted to convince one another to adopt our respective stances on religion. Such attempts were met with the slightest rolling of eyes, empty nods of agreement, or defensive, reactionary questioning.

When at last we tired of spilling sentences for deaf ears to ignore, the conversation ended. A sort of conversational draw. Unfortunately, I think we all walked away from the table that night with the exact same opinions about religion that we had before we talked. Yes, we understood each other a bit more, but with that understanding came frustration and confusion. This irked me. It seemed like our beliefs were too inflexible to make room for any ideas that challenged them. Feeling threatened by the ideas that rattled us, we let them slide right over us without even trying to host them.

A few days have passed since our conversation. Thinking back on it, I realize how futile it was to try to change someone’s personal views on faith using the tool of conversation. No words I can ever say will change a person’s thoughts regarding his faith because the nature of faith prohibits such a change.

If someone truly has faith, no words can shake it. To accept a faith is to commit to it. Period. If a person hears something that undermines his faith, the perceived infallible nature of faith allows him to dismiss those ideas as simply wrong. This component of certain types of faith, its inability to withstand any type of criticism that undermines it because of its inherent true-no-matter-what nature, makes conversations like the one we had over dinner, conversations in which we hope to change how other people think and feel about their faith, near-pointless.

I see now that it’s important (and will always be important) for people with differing opinions on faith to communicate their ideas with one another, but attempting to change another person’s stance on faith with mere words is like trying to topple a stone wall with a feather. No words will shift a faith that is beyond the reach of the words that challenge it.

Has anyone else out there arrived at the same conclusion after a similar conversation?

Anyone think I’m totally wrong on this?

Leave a comment if you like.

Above: A proper sunset. Mal Pais, Costa Rica