Excerpt from The Gringo's Hawk

I was better at sea than on land, and a lot more comfortable. At that time, most Costa Ricans feared sharks much more than vampire bats or pit vipers or jaguars, and lobster had little monetary value, so the coastal reefs were still intact. I was the only one for miles with a mask and fins. Few people had even seen them. They called my snorkel a "chimney." After returning from a quick trip to San José with a spear gun (and flashlight), I began to provide seafood from the reefs near the point for some of the local people and in this way gained rapport with the subjects of my "research," becoming more a competent peer and friend than foreign tourist.

Strain developed between my fellow North American students and myself. They needed me desperately as interpreter and I needed desperately to have my own space, peace, and freedom. They were buddies from the same university, and I was the odd one out. They were going to do a joint project in human genealogical lines, while I was going to try to achieve some cultural insights as a "participant observer." This soon precipitated our separation, still friends, but on different teams. After about a month, the other students left for a cattle ranch closer to their subjects, and I went to live about a mile and a half away from "town" with my contact-friend Chinto, a 5-foot-3, 130 pound "jungle animal," as he laughingly referred to himself. He'd invited me to help him plant his rice crop in exchange for room and board plus seven colones (almost a dollar!) a day. He would have taken a loss by hiring me if it hadn't been for the seafood I now and then provided his family.

Stabbing with a pointed pole through the ground-litter of charred branches and tree trunks to make holes in which to plant five grains of rice, hour after hour under the unrelenting sun, caused me to give up on hygiene and frequently attack Chinto's water-filled gourd. The blisters that erupted on my fingers and palms made him laugh hysterically and gave me an acceptable excuse for resigning temporarily.

Chinto would have to finish alone, since the children of the farm were only big enough to work as little live scarecrows to keep the black diablo birds and the doves and the parrots from digging up and eating the seeds or sprouts. While the children banged on pieces of metal roofing, Chinto made war banners out of dead snakes, vultures, and a sloth. After the first bird attacks were repelled, it would then be a backbreaking struggle to clear the rice field of strangling vines and choking weeds.

Some herbicides could kill some weeds without killing the rice, but the worst weeds were immune and absurdly fast-growing. The more I learned about local agriculture, the more I learned about the epic battles people worldwide had to wage against weeds, pests, plagues, and the elements, which in my opinion were invincible but somehow had to be overcome if the humans were to survive. The people, on the very edge of what could be considered their "niche," stubbornly insisted on battling the odds.

Watching Chinto return from his field late every afternoon, drenched in sweat, stained with ash, slightly bent over with backache and fatigue, with maybe a swollen cheek or eye or lip from a wasp sting, I wondered whether it was really worth it. Was human habitation in such a place desirable or even feasible?

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