A Sapling’s Prayer
Lessons of life and death from tropical reforestation.
I step over the highway hormiga in well-worn hiking boots, hearing the crunch of gravel beneath them. I do not dare disturb the hundreds of worker ants carrying loads on their backs. They work in unison — for a common cause — without complaint, without cease. I pay my respects by preserving the flow of traffic.
My camera slings from my neck, and my palms cradle the lens lightly as I trek uphill from the bungalow. My knees draw toward my chest and continue up the Ecolodge steps to greet my friends and fellow travelers on the porch as we all await departure — a few napping in leather rockers, a few occupying their eyes with the rich forest views beyond the porch. “Are you ready to offset some carbon?” I joke. A few smile, and a few more roll their eyes.
We are prepared for the activity of the day: reforestation — or more specifically, carbon offsetting. To most students’ surprise, $25 of the study abroad program fee paid for four seedlings. It’s the small price to pay for the estimated environmental damage done during our travel. From bus rides to our flight into this preciously reserved land, our carbon footprint comes at a cost.
The carbon we emit into the air accumulates atmospheric levels until we overwhelm space itself, who refuses to accept our excess any longer. Our planetary shell is no longer as permeable — steadily intoxicating Nature by Man’s unconscious hands. The leaves we burn are also our saving grace: carbon sinks, carrying our load and relieving a small fraction of potential damage.
So here we are, scaling this mountain, to do our penance.
Some not-so-friendly ants and other nibbling creatures bite at my ankles, as they lurk through the tall brush. I’m wearing shorts, my legs are nearly bare, and my skin is left vulnerable to any organism or microscopic thorn. The group forms a fireman’s line. Olga, one of the professors on the trip, passes me a premature sapling, wrapped in black plastic. In Spanish, she counts down what we have left, “Cuatro más.” Keeping pace, I hand it off and translate to my friend Maura, “Four more.”
We work in unison — for a common cause — complaining about the bugs, the sweat beading from our pores, but without cease, until the last sapling is carried up the mountain to its final nesting place.
Lucas Ramirez, a local farmer, leads the group and tells us where to plant trees. He swiftly breaks the earth with a shovel and marks where each sapling will go after briefing. We are not on a flat plot of land as expected. We are high on un-cleared land. We step around ditches and cow patties and snake skins. There are no neat rows to guide us, no markers where we must plant these small bundles of life in our hands. We are blind. We can only hope that our saplings will thrive with the older, rooted strangers around them. Such is life, I suppose.
Lucas hollers in Spanish. It is my turn to plant. He has already dug me a small hole. My sapling has a long root at the bottom like a tail, wagging in excitement when finally freed from the black plastic.
I bend down to my knees. With two hands, I lay her down gently to tuck her in, supporting her from all sides with the foreign soil. Dirt fills between my nails and dusts my dampened palms.
Somewhere in the distance echoes a roaring stream. I remember seeing it from the bus window at the base of the hill. “A small watershed,” explains Riley the naturalist, “only made possible by these efforts. It didn’t exist ten years ago. We are helping to restore it.”
I think of all the fish swimming in that stream, and the water organisms which feed them, and the predators (maybe humans) which may one day eat them. Like a fish, I skip back down the hillside from rock to rock and race to a spout to wash the dirt off.
My hands are made pure only to be dirtied once more. My friends are climbing a gigantic tree, and I must join. I stumble up the ladder and scrape my skin against the bark without care. Images of a childhood flash through my mind. There’s a wedge to hold me well above ten feet from the ground, where I choose to sit for a while. Lucas calls this miraculous tree by a few names: “Árbol Guanacaste,” or “The Tree of Costa Rica,” or “The Tree of Life.” I wonder if my sapling will ever grow to be so grand.
Look out at the vast horizon — the breeze glides over the sloping, green terrain like a whispered hallelujah. Clouds kiss mountain peaks with droplets of rain, and I say a silent prayer that they find their way here to sprinkle over this plot, blessing each leave like holy water.
If not at prayer, everyone else who looks beyond cannot help but meditate. I am certain that we all feel somewhat more connected to the Earth. We all have seen the grandeur of life, and its fragility. We all have more seeds to be sown — more hills to hike. I am sure that anyone who sits on a peak in these tropics, with their eyes wide open, acquires a little more respect and gratitude. With each sunset and each rainfall, we all feel a little more at peace.
