Coexisting
A closer look at Finca la Bella
The first thing I notice is the cow, soft and maternal, grazing around a power line. There are flowers there, the grass is verdant, but this power line, this sudden reminder that humans have been here, is everything the opposite. Across the street there lies someone’s home among the ferns and greenery. The tin roof has rusted red, but it supports a cable dish. And then the corner store a little further down this dusty gravel road, an oasis of convenience in the wilderness that is Monte Verde. We stop there to ogle at the novelty of snacks packaged in a different language, and then move on, leaving the unnatural building in its patch of concrete.
There is a moment a few seconds later when all the humanity of this small town becomes overwhelming. From almost perfect quiet we move to chaotic noise. A car drives past, followed by a man and his two horses, both leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. The disturbance causes the ever-present stray dogs to start barking, and everyone in our small caravan of sunburned faces scrambles to retrieve their camera.
This continues, our uphill walk and the oscillation between morning peace and human interjections, until we reach Finca la Bella. The last few steps lead to the front door of a small house, its porch tiled in typical Costa Rican fashion and its front door open to the fresh air. A man is fixing his dirt bike there, his forearms smeared with grease, while someone inside works in the kitchen. Across from this domestic scene we can see the beauty of Mother Nature laid bare across the valley floor. The green of treetops rolls steeply down the hill, ending in the foggy distance and at the place where the sand meets the ocean. It is breathtaking, and I’m reminded of the reason I strayed so far from home this summer.
Elisa Vega stands across from this, apart from our group of wide-eyed Americans, with a slight smile on her lips. This view is her front yard, one she wakes up to every morning and loses to the darkness every evening. She is familiar with it, and this shows in the way she humors us and our juvenile fascination with the mountains and the wide sky.
“Una vista increíble, verdad?”
This Elisa says to me quietly, as I’m standing away from the group, a little too stunned by the beauty to disturb it with my camera just yet. My Spanish words won’t come, so I just nod dumbly, and she smiles.
We stand there for a while longer, she standing serenely and I somewhat less gracefully, still stunned by the view. I see her gather her breath in my peripheral vision, and hear the result of it as she asks us all to come over. We are here to tour her farm today, and as such, we are visitors in her home. She could explain to us the rules of the house or the proper conduct when trampling through another’s space, but instead she tells us about herself and Finca la Bella.
She recites the facts easily, though her speech doesn’t sound rehearsed. She tells about the name of the farm, given for a previous owner. The area, 50 hectares in total, is divided into 24 parcels, each of which is maintained by a different family. Finca la Bella is like a large family, each part independent but connected to the rest, a family Elisa, as a mother, wife, and businesswoman, is a vital part of. The families work together to improve the infrastructure of their small community, assembling three times a year to make decisions. Independently, they plant naranjas dulces, coffee, and various plants for both selling and consumption in their homes.
They have restored this area, treating wounds caused by years of clear-cutting for pastures. The rolling green of pastures is unhealthy for this land that demands more wilderness, and Finca la Bella has allowed for that to return. Elisa and the community have planted over 18,000 trees in an effort to restore the land. This caring, almost maternal touch is apparent in Elisa too in the way she talks of this land — affectionately, as of something she loves deeply. It appears again when she tells us why she guides tours like the one we are about to embark on. She does it for her children, to be able to work from home and be with them. She plants food for her family, she works for her family, and we are meeting her today because she cares for her family.
We leave the view and end our short conversation as we begin the tour. Elisa leads us, her bright red polo shirt distinctive but not out of place in this lush landscape. We visit the coffee first. Elisa shows us the plants, and the beans, picked and neatly sorted into bowls. I notice her arms as she is explaining the right time to harvest the plants. They are tanned and lithely muscular — working arms. She is not delicate, and how could she be with land and children and her husband to take care of?
When Elisa stands up to lead us to the plantain trees, she is followed by her dog. The smaller of the two in her family, it technically belongs to Elisa’s daughter, but you can tell by the way he follows close to Elisa’s heels that he loves her as a mother and master. We continue through her property, stopping to look at sugar, carrots, cebollas moradas, and the kittens her daughter attempts to protect from our searching cameras.
I’m hot and a little tired by the time we reach the end of the tour, but revived when I see that we have returned the amazing view we started from. Again the valley unfolds under the brilliant sky, and again Elisa smiles softly as we stop to take pictures. Once the gratuitous photo-shoots end, she shows us how to use the trapiche, a traditional machine used to extract juice from sugar cane.
The machine is enormous, and requires four people to operate. Elisa tells us that it is not actually in use anymore, as her husband bought a more efficient electric machine to do the work. This one is usually operated with workhorses, but today we do the work instead. The machine turns, and juice spills out into a pitcher. The work done, we enjoy the juice in mismatched mugs.
Elisa shares some sweets made from the sugar cane juice. One is just sweet, the other (her favorite, as she later tells us) mixed with lemon. Her daughter, who has followed us shyly for the entirety of our tour, sneaks seconds while her mom talks to a student. This girl, Laura, is wearing all pink and has alternated between staring curiously at our group and being preoccupied with her animal friends. Now she is wandering closer to our group which is climbing on a tree I suspect is one of her favorites.
Some twenty feet away, Elisa is talking fondly of Laura. Speaking more openly now, and in Spanish of course, she tells about Laura’s affection for animals. Their family owns two dogs, but Laura won’t hesitate to play with the cats and other animals that live outside. Laura has told her mom that because her dad will not allow animals in the house, she hopes she grows up quickly so she can have her own house with lots of animals.
This anecdote, the way Elisa carefully guides us (and her daughter and various animals), the fact that she shares her food and even her recipe for tamales, makes me comfortable, makes our group feel like a part of the family. We are closer to the environment here too. Elisa has showed us where her food comes from, and how she coexists with the natural world around her.
This is something we need to do better. As it stands, we are negligent stewards of the earth, and we could learn a lot from the careful, maternal way Elisa treats her family and her land.
On the walk back I see the mark of human “improvements” more clearly. The smell of burning wood smothering the freshness of the forest, the barbed wire that arbitrarily separates patches of land, the bird nest lodged in a cable dish. We are a part of this environment, despite any imaginary lines we may have drawn between it and us.
