We settle into a routine here, put our solar power lanterns in the sun every morning, charge our electronics during mid-day when the solar panels are abundant, care for one another, clean up after ourselves in everything we do, give gratitude for the land and elements which provide us with our existence, rise with the sun, settle with the night, tune our ears in to the difference between morning, day, evening, and late night jungle sounds. Warm showers are only available during the day as the hot water runs on a sun-fed system, but often it’s too hot to want that mid-day so we learn to breathe through the initial few seconds of shock during every cold shower. Clothes are washed by hand and dried in a solar-dehydrator, towels are hung on the rungs of our bunkhouse to dry, we grab citronella grass and rub it between our hands to extract the oil we frantically rub all over ourselves as the sun sets and the bugs come out to play with our irresistible skin. There’s an opening and closing, a beginning and ending, a breathing in and breathing out, a using and replenishing, connections constantly being made between the inputs and outputs, and amongst each other. This is life in the purest form I have ever experienced, beauty in its simplest form, gratitude and respect for work in its most basic, primal form.
Goals require planning, rewards require work, travel requires movement, energy requires energy, life requires death which requires life which requires this cycle to loop endlessly back into and onto itself. Where along the way we lost sight of all this I do not know but I do feel a nourishing in my soul and heart that has never been so full, so complete, and so perfect.
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