The Motherland
"Standing on soil feels so much different than standing on city pavement; it lets you look inward and reflect, and see who you really are, while you see a beautiful, unspoiled land as far as the eye can see. It allows your inner life to grow."
Ricardo Montalban
It's sunrise. High tide crashes onto the beach, and a fat hen struts toward me, completely unimpressed by the concrete and iron walls surrounding this patio. Her wings have not been clipped, and she wanders where she chooses; usually in the company of a big red rooster. His job is to wake the entire world just before sunrise, and he takes it very seriously. Yesterday morning, he perched on a stump just outside the gate and "let 'er rip" with a full-throated blast.
I am coming to understand why our host, the homeowner, calls this "the Motherland." As impressive as the Pacific ocean is, it somehow does not command ones attention in the same way the land does. Thriving life pulsates on every square inch of this sandy black loam. Everything from tiny sugar ants to gecko and iguana, free-range dogs and chickens, as well as free roaming cows and horses, birds of every imaginable size and color, flowers with Kodak brilliance, tiny bats that zoom around at sunset collecting mosquitoes; all coexist with the human population, young and old. As long as you aren't fruit averse, or insect averse, you too could thrive here. A man came by the back gate just yesterday, and for $5.00 whacked the tops off a couple of coconuts and all of us had fresh-off-the-tree coconut water. Today we will shave the meat of those coconuts into rice for a palate pleasing meal.
Unspoiled is a very fine adjective when applied to this land and its people. They are poor in cash, rich in life, and happy about it. I think if you offered most of them a penthouse in New York City, none would take it. It would be difficult to catch a perfect wave there. Best stick to the familiar soil of the motherland.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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