Bill Ulmer’s Passport Problems and His Miraculous Journey

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I was in the San Jose, Costa Rica airport last week accompanying a friend who took someone to catch a flight. Being in that building gave me the heebie-jeebies, which I don’t get very often. Thinking about Bill Ulmer standing in that line, going through that security check point, knowing the truth about Barbara Struncova, having gotten away with whatever he did, having lied to everyone in the presence of whom he opened his mouth, and running away. It gives me the bad kind of shivers.

On Wednesday, July 6, Bill is scheduled to receive his sentence for Identity Theft and Possession of an Identity Document with Intent to Defraud. The stolen/fraudulent identity document in question is a passport belonging to his brother Wayne Ulmer, Jr.

Today, let’s talk about passports. Bill had trouble with his—trouble, as in he didn’t have one. It’s lucky he liked to grumble about it while having a few drinks with his and Barbara’s friends. If he hadn’t, no one would have known to contact the US authorities when Barbara Struncova disappeared, her credit card charged several thousand dollars at the surf shop where Bill worked, and he turned up at his parents’ house in North Carolina the next day. In that order. Without having mentioned to anyone that he was leaving.

PASSPORT PROBLEMS

So what happened to Bill Ulmer’s passport? I gather that he’s done some creative story-telling to folks who ask. These are the main points of the story I’ve been able to pull it together: Bill arrived in Costa Rica with his own passport in the spring of 2008, intending to start a tour company. At some time near the end of the year, he was deported back to the USA. My understanding is that he was deported for “working” illegally. I’ve got to hand it to him—that is one crappy stroke of bad luck. Lots of foreigners work illegally in Costa Rica because there is no way to earn a dollar legally unless you are Costa Rican, have a resident visa, or obtain some type of practically-unheard-of work permit. It is my understanding that the authorities observed Bill receiving money from tourists for a surf trip, mistook it for a drug deal, stepped in, and discovered he was breaking a different law. I don’t know if that’s how it happened, but I do know that if the Costa Rican immigration officials catch you working illegally, you get deported. Period.

(O THE IRONIES of being deported for working illegally, only to walk away Scott free from a trail of blood that the authorities saw with their own eyes…)

Being deported does not mean you lose your passport. The country that deported you might not want you back right away, but you’re still allowed to go other places. But Bill wasn’t. Why? Because there are amounts of child support that a person can owe which disqualify him from being eligible to leave the country. And Bill owed that much. I don’t know exactly how much he owed at that time, but it was well over the magic number. That’s all I’m going to say about child support because I don’t want to discuss Bill’s children/family. None of this is their fault, and yet they can never disconnect from it.

The next thing we know is that Bill Ulmer re-entered Costa Rica in March 2009 as Wayne Ulmer. Whether Bill stole Wayne’s passport, or Bill “stole” Wayne’s passport, I cannot know. I’ve heard that during the 3 months between the time he was deported and the time he returned, Bill lived with Wayne. I have two sisters, both of whom own passports, both of whom I’ve lived with at one time or another. If I wanted to steal either of their passports, I wouldn’t have the foggiest notion of where to look. Maybe Bill spent three months stealthily searching? Maybe he convinced Wayne to show or lend it to him? I don’t know. If the story happened any other way, we have two felons instead of one.

Wayne immediately noticed that his passport was stolen. Or he immediately “noticed” that it was “stolen.” And what do you do if your passport is stolen? You report it to the authorities. If you give your passport to someone and plan to say it was stolen, what do you do? You report it to the authorities! You have to, or you could be charged with a felony as well. Wayne also phoned some friends, which is how we can be sure that he discovered it missing right away. My understanding is that Wayne reported Bill to the authorities for having stolen his passport right away. I can’t say anything for sure, but that is a story that came to me. The more I think on it, the less sense it makes.

Bill, then, could never go back to the United States. I remember that. I remember him never, ever wanting to go back, rolling his eyes and grumbling about how he had some trouble there. He needed fly under the radar in Costa Rica, not get in trouble with the cops, not get caught by immigration, not get stopped for speeding, stay out of bar fights.

THE QUESTION

What I want to know, what I cannot fathom, and what leaves even my imagination standing speechless is this question: HOW IN THE DEVIL DO YOU FLY FROM COSTA RICA TO THE USA ON A PASSPORT THAT HAS BEEN REPORTED AS STOLEN AND NOT GET NAILED BY TSA?

How?

That is nothing short of a miracle.

Was the passport really reported stolen? Or was it only reported after Bill came back?

Am I missing something? They practically make you walk through security checkpoints in your underwear, and Bill got both OUT of Costa Rica and INTO the USA on a passport that was reported as STOLEN? My God, my head is exploding. I hope there is a piece of this puzzle that is still missing, because BOY does it ever not fit together well.

CLOSELY WATCHING

On Wednesday, the judge will rule on how much more time Bill needs to spend in jail for traveling with Wayne’s passport. There are no charges regarding the disappearance of Barbara Struncova, but the judge is well aware of the close connection to a missing person case in Costa Rica. I am sure she is right over our shoulders, closely watching.

B and B hand over his mouth

Bill Ulmer Sentencing, July 6

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Next Wednesday, July 6, 2016, Bill Ulmer is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge for the felonies involving the use of a passport that did not belong to him.  The sentencing is set for 3:30 PM, Eastern Time.  I’m preparing to share some thoughts about Bill’s passport situation next week—this is just a newsflash.

It’s also a “thank you” to the person who was brave enough to anonymously reach out and share this sentencing information.  I was already aware of it, but I am so thankful for every voice that reaches out to me, anonymous or not.  I just want you to know that you are heard.  And your secret is safe, because I don’t know who you are.  And I, too, am praying that he will not be released on time served.

More thoughts next week about traveling with a stolen passport…

What I Know in the Ocean / The Good Kind of Zero

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There are some things that I think about/feel/know when I’m in the ocean that don’t come to me in the same way any other time.  It’s not about surfing.  I step into the water and stand there with it swirling around my knees, or I lie on my back and float.  And things come to me.

Lo Que Es La Orilla del Mar:

It’s the end of the world and the beginning of what is after/before.   Es donde la vida eterna se toca con la vida mortal.  It is the place where now meets forever.  Right here.  Right where my feet are.  This is the place.  It’s the end.

It’s also the beginning.  It is the amniotic fluid that carries our planet which is constantly being born.

Skin:

I like to float on my back and look up at the sky.  I think about how only a thin layer of skin separates the salt water I am made of from the salt water that holds me up.  It’s those few millimeters that keep me from blending in with Everything.  On land, I am an individual.  In the ocean, I am molecules of salt water among the others.  It’s not a bad feeling.  I tried to write a poem about it but there wasn’t anything else to say.

The Feeling of Zero:

I step into the ocean and what comes to me is the feeling of zero.  Not in a bad way; in a good way.  You might call it “peace” or “balance” or something, but for me that’s those aren’t the right words.  I feel zero.  My Mennonite upbringing would probably say I am feeling “forgiveness”—but there’s no sense of relief associated with it, and no guilt.  It’s quieter.  Like zero is what I owe and zero is what is owed to me.  Like I’ve done, or am doing, what I have to do, and nothing more is required of me than to be what I am.  Zero doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, or the way I like it.  It means that the world was here before me, and it will be here after me, and THAT is what is alright.  I don’t need to do or become or accomplish anything in order to make things different than what they are.  Like I do not owe a debt to the Universe and It does not owe me a paycheck.  Zero.  A good zero.

And one more thing.

I walk in to the ocean, past the breakers when the tide is low.  I lie on my back and float, looking up at the clouds.  I think, “This is where I will go when I die.”  Right there.  In the ocean, past the breakers.  It’s not a major item of concern for me what happens to my body after I die—my main concern is that it happens a really long time from now.  But who are we kidding?  I don’t have children or grandchildren who will want to visit my grave.  Got knows I haven’t got a red cent to leave behind, so I don’t imagine anyone will feel possessed to bury me.

I used to think about that in the States.   “Please, when I die, take me and pour me into warm salt water.  Don’t leave me here.  If I can’t live where I belong, at least take my ashes there.”

So I float in the ocean, miro el cielo, and I wonder if this is not in some ways like lying in my grave for a while on a sunny afternoon.  Just floating.  Checking out the scenery.  Watching some hunting birds glide by now and again.   Sometimes you can see the moon. Feeling the good kind of zero.

Does that seem morbid?  I hope not.  If it does, I did a bad job of describing it.  It’s very peaceful.  Then I have to trudge back onto the sand, pedal my bike up the hill, and decide what to make for dinner.

Bill Ulmer: One Year Behind Bars and Still Waiting For a Sentence

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A year ago today I was at work in the clinic in Washington State trying to focus on the tasks in front of me, but I was having a hard time. Bill was leaving for Hawaii that day with his new wife on a belated honeymoon. A lot of us were worried about her. Certain circumstances surrounding the trip made me very nervous—and I’m not the only one. A lot of people were having trouble getting their work done at their desks a year ago today, and a lot of prayers for safety were being said for the new Mrs. Ulmer.

Then something crazy blipped through my Facebook messenger: Bill has been detained at the airport.

What?

Yes. The cops detained him at the airport. He isn’t allowed to fly.

What?!

It took the whole day for details to fill in and confusion to untie itself. All day long, my hands shook. My phone went crazy with messages. At 4:45 PM, as I gathered my things to leave work, my phone rang and the person who called me said words to me that I had not ever been able to dream of hearing. “Bill was arrested. He’s being held in custody. The feds mentioned Barbara’s name in open court.”

I made it past the time clock, out the door and into the car before I burst into tears. Happy tears, because Barbara deserves at least that acknowledgement. Happy tears, because I am not a crazy liar like Bill told everyone who read the story on my website. Happy tears, because I know he laughed when he thought he got away what he did. Happy tears, because Mrs. Ulmer is safe and I will not be looking for her body or listening to lies about false tragedies.

I kept saying, “Oh my God, he killed her,” over and over. Not like that was news to me. Not that murder is among the charges—it isn’t. But it became real to me in a new way when I heard that Bill Ulmer was behind bars and that federal officials know perfectly well that there is every reason to believe he could tell us what happened to Barbara Struncova.

A year has passed. Bill pleaded guilty to the counts of Misuse of Passport and Aggravated Identity Theft. I’ve listened to lots of voices speculate on how long his sentence will be, and I’ve heard numbers ranging from one year to fifteen. I personally have no idea what to expect.

The thing I did not expect—that no one expected—is that one year after being taken into custody, Bill is still awaiting sentencing. If there is any further investigation going on, I am unaware of it. I hear that this is the court system being pokey or backed-up. Hmmm. The longer Bill waits for his sentence, the more obvious is the possibility that by the time he receives it, he may have served a significant portion of its time. I guess I don’t much care why it’s taking so long or how much longer it takes. I only care that he is not done being punished yet.

Barbara, by now, is a fish or a small tree with greening leaves or a bird or all of these things. She is hermit crabs and raindrops and cicadas. We all turn into new creatures, someday.

And Bill, I am sorry you are reading this in a jail cell. I am sorry you didn’t just break up and walk away. I am sorry you aren’t surfing and that Barbara isn’t in Czech Republic with a handsome husband, chasing her toddlers around a park.  But what’s done is done.  And you can’t fool everybody indefinitely no matter how good of a liar you are.

(P.S.  Your friend James Henrickson got two life sentences for his shenanigans, so don’t feel sorry for yourself.)

Shout-Out to My First Surf Instructor

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This is a shout-out to my first surf instructor, Court Snider.

At the beginning of 2001, I moved to Tamarindo beach. Everything before that is a long story involving marriage and divorce and coming here a lot for work, but in 2001 all of that was in the past. I decided that I wanted to learn to surf. I’ve always loved water so I had to at least try. Unfortunately, I’ve never been terribly athletic—but lucky for me, surfing is not a team sport so nobody has to pick you. Anybody can play, if you suck you don’t ruin it for anyone else, and as long as you’re having fun, you’re winning. What’s not to love?

You cannot just guess how to surf (unless you’re very young or very athletic—which I wasn’t); somebody has to teach you. Court was in his early 50s then, or at least that’s how I remember it, an American expat with that slow calm that people get after a lifetime of surfing. He borrowed a big foam board from the surf shop where he wife worked and one terribly windy day in February when the there was no swell at all, only flat frothy chop, he took me out in front of the Capitan Suizo Hotel. If I remember right, he didn’t push me into waves—from day one he made me paddle.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped, either. Court kept grumbling about the “conditions” which meant nothing at all to me—my problem was staying on the board. And I’m not talking about standing up. I’m talking about staying on it lying down. Then you’re supposed to look at what’s coming up behind you while you paddle forward, and the wind is blowing water in your face and you can’t see anything. And then all of the sudden the wave picks up the back of the board and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. I scraped my eyebrow open on the sand on the bottom.

It gets better if you don’t quit.

Anybody who has figured out how to ride a surfboard, even if they screw up a lot, is not a quitter.

Court told me two things I’ll always remember. One, he told me years later as we sat on our boards watching the horizon. It didn’t mean much to me at the time. In fact, to be honest, I thought it seemed a little lame. But I’m closer, now, to his age then. I’ve been surfing longer. I’ve been more places and done more things. Maybe that’s the difference. “Life only makes sense when I’m surfing,” is what he said.

I think about that every single time I’m on a board.  “Life only makes sense when I’m surfing.” Or: my life only makes sense to me when I’m surfing. I have to say, I find it true. When I’m surfing, it’s very clear how everything has converged to bring me right here (right there, in the line-up with the tide coming in). And how everything has converged to bring the sets of waves across thousands of miles of ocean to the shore where one girl has traveled thousands of miles and given up everything to meet them. If we were sitting on surf boards together right now gazing into the horizon and I said that to you, it would make all the sense in the world. Guaranteed.

The other thing I got from Court, not about surfing although it has its applications: “Everything works if you let it.” Not applicable to things like deceased machinery and abusive relationships, but within the realm of the reasonable—everything works if you let it. In one way or another. Maybe in the way you had in mind, maybe not. If It doesn’t work, maybe you aren’t letting it.  Maybe.

Thank you, Court. For taking me out in the water and showing me how to stay calm. You were right about everything.

River of Tears

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a love poem for a brackish body of water

IMG_0090 IMG_0099

O lovely river of tears,
your crocodiles have grown
long and fat on your
plenty of small fish.
Your mangroves have leafed
green through the parched
summers of dread.
How like you are to
my blood; how you
taste of it.
How you called to me
in my dreams when
I was nowhere near
and I woke
crying for you.

Wondering In Costa Rica: How Close Am I To Barbara Struncova?

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Now that I’m back in Tamarindo Costa Rica, every day I bump into someone I haven’t seen for years. Part of me still half-expects to bump into Bill Ulmer and Barbara Struncova—they were here when I left. I should find her walking along with the dog, or spot Bill on his long board in the sunset lineup, or walk up behind them in the grocery line at Automercado. Of course it’s not going to happen.

I think about Barbara all the time—and Bill, too. How did everything go so horribly wrong for both of them? Good God. In the back of my mind, I am actively wondering, no matter what else I am doing, where she is. As I sit here at my kitchen table with my computer, how close am I to Barbara right now?

People ask me, “Where do you think he put her?” I say, “I don’t know.” I have some ideas, but they are all shots in the dark. I’m up for a drive to a few places I have in mind, though, if anyone who has a car and a few hours wants to go. Yes, that is an  invitation.  I’m not expecting miracles, but I never rule them out.

“Where would I go if I had a body to get rid of?” I ask myself. But I’m not the right person to ask. I put myself in a borrowed car with expired plates and a body in an enormous board bag. I give myself about 20 hours. Would I go north? South? East?? Would I have to get a shovel? Or something to weight the bag like cement blocks or a lot of rocks or something? Would I be heading toward an estuary? A forest? A bridge? A dump? I don’t know. Would I put the board and the body in the same place? I should have studied criminal psychology.

She can’t be far. Ten minutes? Thirty? Could he have driven for a whole hour?

Costa Rica’s Guanacaste province is a maze of back roads through fields, forests and small towns. Brackish ocean inlets called estuaries punctuate the coast line like long, squirrely commas, surrounded by dense, marshy lowlands. Estuaries, on one hand, are populated with crocodiles—which could be an attractive idea for a terrified expat with a body in the back of an illegal vehicle. But estuaries lead directly to the ocean where unmentionable things could wash up on the beach in the morning or 10 years later. So, I don’t know. But I think about it. If you needed to dig a hole big enough for the board bag and the body—that would be one enormous hole! But it could be done if you were ridiculously strong and had all night. And were desperate.  In early December, the ground is not completely dried out yet. It’s been suggested to me that maybe Bill burned the bag. I think that a burning board bag in the night, no matter where it is, would run the risk of drawing way too much unwanted attention, so I personally don’t vote for that. Which means nothing.

If a perfectly normal human being can disappear in to thin air the way Barbara did, then what is impossible?

I’d like to look for her, but there is no place to start. I ask her to tell me in a dream where she is, but my only dreams are happy dreams about meeting again, even though Barbara and I are both aware, in the dream, that she is not alive. I think that she isn’t asking me to find her bones; she is asking me to remember her. She is asking me to help you to remember her. She is asking all of us that Bill not hurt anyone else.

Bill Ulmer is, today, being held in the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina. He was arrested on May 28, 2015 and is presently awaiting sentencing for passport fraud. At this rate, he may have served a significant portion of his sentence by the time he receives it. And any woman he approaches in the future, if she has enough sense to Google her suitors, will discover Barbara’s disappearance. Which may, when it comes to keeping potential victims out of harm’s way, be just as meaningful as any macabre discovery you or I could make on a solitary hillside or in the sand.

Like our Facebook page called “Where is Barbara Struncova?”

Barbara's face

Angels and Warm Air

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Everything is right.

Everything is right. I look out the window at the trees and I know their names. I missed that in the desert. You have no idea how sad you can be without trees until you don’t have any. The ocean is exactly the same. It was here all along just as I suspected. It doesn’t need me to live the way I need it. The air has a faint smell of wood smoke. Maybe from brush fires in the mountains? I don’t know. We saw some as we flew into Liberia at sunset a few days ago. Locusts shrill in the trees, especially at dusk and at dawn. Flocks of silly, exuberant parakeets carry on like wound-up school kids. In the heat of the day, giant iguanas called garrobos scurry across the yard and get into loud scratchy-sounding fights our roof.

It’s hot. This is the hottest time of year, when even people who were born here complain about the temperature. Daytime highs are about 100. The ocean is warm like a saltwater bath, and crystal clear. We’ve been out surfing twice so far, with very little success if you count waves caught, but if you count how happy we are just to be in the warm salty water, we should win trophies. The apartment we’re staying in has screened windows with no glass. “Inside” and “outside” need very few barriers. At night I can finally sleep without the weight of quilts and blankets pushing on me, annoying my feet. I’m all wrapped up in angels and warm air.

Getting Settled

Travel went well, even with our boatload of baggage. We managed to make all of our connections on time and everything arrived with us. Thank you United Airlines for at least making good on the big baggage fees you charged us. A friend picked us up at the airport, took us to his house, fed us, and gave us a place to sleep. The next day we moved our things in to this simple little apartment, and we rented a car for a few days.

We went to Immigration because our residencies are expired. We have an appointment to go back in a month with certain fees paid and papers prepared—I hope that’s the end of the process and not just a little step in a long one. I guess we’ll find out. We can’t renew our drivers’ licenses or buy health insurance until our residencies are renewed. I was afraid that we weren’t going to be able to open a bank account either, but we did, at the Banco de Costa Rica. No problem. Unless you count the hour and a half that we waited in line for someone to help us. That wasn’t my favorite experience, although neither was it a surprise. We went to the phone company and I learned that my lovely Samsung cell phone from the US of A is blocked by Verizon and I can’t use it with a Costa Rican chip until after I go to a Samsung dealer in San Jose who can unblock it for me. But new boss gave me a phone. What a great guy.

We’re still in the middle of getting settled. I’m not going to go over my to-do list here, but I do have one. At the top of it is STAY OUT OF THE SUN FOR A DAY OR TWO because I’m way too crispy.

Did I mention that I can now, finally, wear one shirt at a time? I just have to say that in honor of my co-workers in Moses Lake where I amused an entire clinic by wearing multiple layers, sweaters, and gloves all year long.

Coming Home

As you’re leaving the United States, people can make you question your sanity. Everybody acts a little jealous, but they aren’t, really—because Costa Rica is a 3rd world country and that doesn’t sound safe or comfortable. Are you kidding me? People sell their souls to be safe and comfortable. But any self-doubts that I may have had evaporated during my first trip to the supermarket. I practically bumped into an old friend as I turned up the shampoo aisle. She gave me a huge bear hug and the first, “Welcome home! We missed you!”

“I’m so happy to be back,” I said.

“How long were you gone?” my friend asked.

“Five years.”

“FIVE YEARS?! Wow.” Then she shook her head sadly, thinking that over, and said, “You must be happy. It’s hard being in the States…”

It is. It is hard being in the States. It is hard to be sad for a long time. It is hard to wake up in the cold from dreams of green leaves and warm water. But it’s good to be able to do hard things. I am sure that I will have to do plenty more.

Here’s the thing: I found my tribe. And now I know that. A crazy mish-mash of expats and Costa Ricans who live together by choice. Speaking each other’s languages, making things work, sometimes making each other mad, having each other’s back, being free to leave and choosing to stay.

New Job

And now it’s Monday morning and time to start our new jobs. I’ll be in the office of a property managing company, and Pio will be doing maintenance. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sunset April 3, 2016
Sunset April 3, 2016

Technical Difficulties

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I even had a poem picked out to post this week,  and then I hit a glitch: no Internet connection at home.  No,  not in Costa Rica yet,  still in Washington.  The Universe is clearly preparing me for the place I am going.  Being all proactive and such like,  I called Century Link last week to request that my service contract be terminated on March 21st.  They cut it off the moment I hung up the phone.  I can’t see that this was anything other than a blunder in their part, as I would happily have paid for another 20 days of service.

Anyway.  No Internet.  I have Internet at work, but my computer won’t connect to it.  A nice IT guy explained to me how to “update the driver” on my “wireless card” but to do that I need to, um,  access the Internet.  So.  No luck.

Thank Jesus and the saints for Straight Talk and the unlimited data usage they offer!  Big shout-out to Straight Talk.  Whoot whoot!  So I CAN post this uplifting tale from my phone by poking patiently at letters smaller than my fingers.

I hate typing on my phone.

So the posts may not be so plentiful just now,  but the blog will go on.  I will keep right on talking to myself as usual, and I’ll let you in on the conversation as I am able.

(How can typing on a phone make BOTH hands hurt?  I don’t know,  but it does.)  Pura vida.

And Just Like That

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And just like that, we’re going home. Back to Costa Rica where my spirit has been waiting for my body to rejoin it. If I tell you exactly how it happened, I’ll lose you along the way; there are lots of false starts and lots of networking with people you don’t know. Or maybe you do know them. I try to avoid throwing people’s names around on the internet unless unless I’m furious at them for the disappearance of somebody I know.

The road back to Costa Rica started maybe a year ago with my husband trying to make a call on skype and accidentally calling the wrong guy. That led us on a circuitous route to a sudden opportunity for which we ALMOST packed up and moved just after this past Christmas. But it fell through. We were so disappointed. For days, I could barely move. Then it happened again in January—BOOM. A bolt from the blue: a Facebook message from a friend asking if we’re interested in managing a small hotel in our old hometown. Of course we’re interested! And then, as suddenly as the possibility exploded into our lives, the air sputtered out of it like a balloon, and it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Then neither of us could move. We couldn’t even talk to each other—not because we were angry, but because there was nothing to say.

And I decided that this might be God or The Universe (or whoever sends us messages) doing just that—sending me a message. Telling me it’s time. Telling me to take this seriously. Telling me that maybe we’ve done what we need to do here, taken care of what needed attention, repaired what was broken. That you can’t always listen to your heart—sometimes you have to listen to your mind—but that maybe the light is turning green.

So I called the Immigration office in Costa Rica. I could have done that on any day of the last five years, but I was too afraid. My question was, “Can we renew our expired resident status?” and if they said no, I knew that I would have to carry my dreams out the door and drown them in the cold lake. But finally my need to know was greater than my fear of disappointment, so I dialed the number. In short, the answer is yes. A complicated yes, of course, but entirely possible.

Then I sent out two messages to long-time friends. I got two encouraging replies. One of the replies included the suggestion that I contact a third friend. The third friend, who I’d thought of contacting but talked myself out of “bothering” him, was actually actively looking for someone to do what I do and someone to do what Pio does. And the price was right.

And we are going home.

We’d been thinking about visiting Costa Rica on vacation in November of this year, and I was afraid it would destroy me. I was afraid I would do something insane like refuse to leave, or something worse like leave.

Costa Rica isn’t paradise. It’s a place on the map. There are problems and potholes, mosquitoes, mud, cockroaches, scorpions and thieves. Paychecks are small, stuff is expensive. But it is home. I wasn’t born there, but it chose me when I was twenty years old and I can’t help it. I would be happy here if I could. It would be easier, more comfortable and in some ways, safer.

We’ll be leaving Washington State on March 23, flying to Pennsylvania for a week, and then continuing on home to Costa Rica at the end of the month.

To transpose the words of The Good Lord into words of my own: “What does it profit a girl if she gains the world but her soul is so sad that it withers into a dry little nut inside her heart?”

elephant and machete
My preferred garden tool:  a machete