Orienting Oneself to Mastatal

by Connor Harron

This post was first published at the blog Fed by Connor. Connor is one of our year long apprentices.

We are now interviewing applicants for our 2018 apprenticeship program. Help us spread the word by sharing this blog post!

If you’re anything like me, then you will find Rancho Mastatal to be a place of incredible beauty, endless inspiration, and powerful community. Even if we have very little in common, you will certainly find it to be unique. Among ecovillages and permaculture communities, over the years Rancho Mastatal has developed a reputation for its intricate systems, well organized educational programs, and gorgeous natural buildings that sprinkle the 300 + acre Ranch.

Mastatal is a small rural community in central Costa Rica near the Pacific Coast, roughly a three hour drive from the capital, San Jose. In Mastatal things come in singles: there is one dirt road lined by the local bar, one restaurant, a school, community center, convenience store, and a soccer pitch. Although the community center technically provides wifi, it usually doesn’t work, which can add to a sense of isolation that can feel simultaneously liberating and stifling. Despite its size, the Ranch sits in the heart of the community. From the main house you are a stones throw away from the bar, and you can often hear music echoing across the valley as the locals unwind in the evening over one of the two Costa Rican brews.

To orient oneself in Mastatal, especially coming from an urban hub like Los Angeles, requires a letting go of one's typical expectations. Many of the core team describe this experience as “losing oneself in a humble task,” or to be more accurate, a series of humble tasks. Fortunately, at the Ranch this is easy. Days here are filled from dawn until well past dusk, leaving precious little time to contemplate how or why someone has arrived in this space. Although often simple, each task requires focus and care in order to do well and avoid personal injury.

As an apprentice, our mornings begin at 6:00 am with “life skills.” These individual pre-breakfast chores make up the basic activities that are necessary to keep the farm running. These include managing the firewood, bio-digester (more on that later), and chickens; harvesting salad greens, caring for the main house/kitchen, nursery, zone 1 gardens, and orchards. To ensure that we gain experience in each system on the farm, the apprenticeship program is designed for us to rotate among the life skills on a monthly basis.

These tasks need to be completed by 8:00 am when we have a group breakfast, which depending on the number of visitors at the farm can range from 12 to 50 people. Cooking and cleaning shifts are also traded on a rotating schedule. After breakfast, all the apprentices chip in on a “work party” to help complete the larger projects around the Ranch. This can include trail building in the orchards, weeding and prepping new beds in the gardens, harvesting jackfruit or bananas, processing food for the kitchen, or even helping to build a new structure on the property.

At 1 pm everyone breaks for lunch. Nearly every meal served on the Ranch includes rice, beans, and a fresh garden salad prepared each morning. To add a little variety to the meals, each dish also includes something a little special. Whether it’s emplatanados con queso, fresh hand pressed tortillas or homemade dosas, each meal comes with a treat to avoid the monotony that is risked when eating arroz con frijoles three times each day. On the side, fresh salsa and a kefir dressing made from local cows milk and fresh herbs make each dish a true delight. To drink, there is fresh coffee from local shade grown beans, water kefir soda filled with pro-biotics to improve digestion, and a house-made rehydration drink (think homemade Gatorade) that is packed with electrolytes to prevent dehydration during long days working under the sun. In the evenings, there is even country wine or “hooch” as it is called here, that is fermented using yeast, water, local unprocessed sugar, and whatever fruit happens to be in season (jackfruit and passion fruit are two of the local favorites).

Afternoons at el Rancho are more varied. Three days a week this time is reserved for Personal and Practice Time. On the Ranch, one quickly realizes that these are extremely valuable chunks of time and can be used for many things, although jerking off in the apprentice house while a tour goes by (as the orientation packet mentions) is not one of them. It is however a great time for writing, taking a nap, swimming at the local waterfall, calling family, or sharpening one's tools; just to name a few examples. During the rest of the week, the afternoons are reserved for additional work parties, community check-ins, or cooking depending on the day.

Dinner is served every day (except Sunday) at 6:30 and begins with “circle time,” one of the oldest traditions on the Ranch. This time is nothing more, and nothing less than an opportunity each day for the entire community to come together, hold hands, and offer thanks (if one is so inclined) for anything/everything they are currently feeling grateful for. It is a brief yet powerful ritual that allows everyone to slow down, take a deep breath, and appreciate the wonderful space and community everyone here is privileged enough to enjoy. Afterwards dinner is served! The only rule is, be kind and respect those behind. This usually means there is more than enough for everyone, although specialty items (like guacamole) can mysteriously disappear rather quickly. The last person through the line rings the bell, meaning seconds are up for anyone still craving more.

After dinner and clean up, if you’re not ready for bed at 7:30, which is often the case, there are always a plethora of interesting people to chat with over a beer or glass of hooch, and any number of board games to be played until late into the evening (and by late I mean 9:30, because by then you will DEFINITELY be ready for bed). After lying down and becoming one with your mattress, dawn will come suddenly and this routine will repeat itself seemingly on end. At the time of writing this however I have now been here for two weeks. I can already tell that one day soon I will look up, only to realize it’s already December, time to pack my bags and head back to the “real” world. One lesson this experience has already taught me, however, is that for the individuals who make up this community, Mastatal is the real world, not just a temporary excursion. For those who choose to step outside the typical expectations of industrialized society and reconnect with the roots of human civilization, this is an obtainable lifestyle. Whether you want this world or the chaos of our modern cities to be more real, is up to you to decide.

Across the Permaculture Universe

We have a few spots left in our upcoming Fermentation Workshop! Learn the art and science of making microbes your allies.

Many of our core team members are starting to show off their work through some great photos on instagram. Check out Ali, Rachel, Laura, and Scott!

Our friends at ECHO have a new Central American and Caribbean forum, including development notes dedicated to this region. We are hoping to start sharing our work through their publication in the months ahead.

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

Meet our 2017 Apprentices!

Our newest apprentice team has arrived and settled into the Ranch life. They hail from across the United States and Latin America. They come from a diverse set of backgrounds and will undoubtedly shape the Ranch and our community deeply in the year ahead. 

Our team is looking forward to working, playing, and feasting with this group for the next many months.

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Léon

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Peter

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Juan

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Kelley

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Marissa

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Connor

We are now accepting applications for our 2018 program and will begin interviewing in the months ahead. Check out the page here for more information.

Is one year too long? Then consider our Sustainability Primer program, which runs this fall for three months.

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

Top Ten Tips for the New Apprentices

by Dorothy Farrell

This post is part of a series of reflections we are asking past apprentices to contribute to our blog. If you would like to share where you stand now and how your time at the Ranch effected your place in the world please write to scott@ranchomastatal.com.

"Everyone is looking at my feet," I say to my dad.

"No they're not," he scoffs back. Sure enough, he glances sideways at a group of teenage girls eying my dirty toes clad in Chacos. 

We are not in the jungle any more. It's December in New York City, I am traveling on the subway with a large backpack, and five layers of sweatshirts, never having worn more than one at a time in the tropics. Fresh off the airplane, here I am with my exposed feet and disheveled appearance-- "Is she homeless?" the girls snicker. 

I come home and sit under my first hot shower in a year and scrub the dirt from my feet. Goodbye Rancho Mastatal, I'll be seeing you one day. In the meantime, I have a new life to create. Sometimes reverse culture shock can be more cunning than culture shock. 

In case you are one of the seven new apprentices and worried about the ensuing change, this article serves as advice come January 2017. Are you ready? To be ready, you must clear your mind. You'll never be ready. Those who don't know speak of it. Those who do know don't speak of it. To stay afloat in the presence that is Rancho Mastatal means just this. This will all make sense soon. Now for ten more pieces of advice in preparation for your apprenticeship. 

My fellow apprentice crew enthusiastically chimed in for this article to not bring any white clothing. It is very likely to get stained by any number of hands on tasks. Even if you're not performing physical labor, even if you're just eating lunch, there's a good chance that anything white you wear will be found by a stain. The turmeric in the pickle is a renown dye, as is the achiote in the rice. Whole food diets, with their richly colorful displays, are your wardrobes' worst enemy. Even if your white blouse is hanging on a line miles from the orchards, the wood shop, the kitchen-- virtually every danger zone-- black mold will STILL find it, stain it, and make you regret bringing it. Tip #1: Don't bring white clothes.

Tip #2: If you are prone to stains but want to maintain your public decency, patterned clothing compensates (credit tip to Rachel Jackson). 

Stains and patterns aside, there is another debate on the type of clothing appropriate for the tropics. Expect the climate to be humid and hot. Cotton is not your friend. It takes a long time to dry and harbors all sorts of odorous microorganisms. Tip #3: Bring clothing made from synthetic materials that are comfortable to wear.

There are times, however, when you'll want to look sharp. Welcome to the campo of Costa Rica. Ticos take public appearances seriously, so pack accordingly. I recommend bringing something that is clean and modest, not something too out there. This is a small village, after all, and it's more valuable to blend in. A brief study of Costa Rican fashion will reveal that it's not too different from most mainstream, Western cultures. Tip #4: Keep an outfit clean reserved for community celebrations and appearances.

On that note, Tip #5: In Costa Rican culture, if you do not smell good, you smell bad. A good soap and light perfume are recommended for community occasions. The jungle offers delectable scents that can be sourced from plant materials on the Ranch. Tip #6: If you want to dabble in the ancient and romantic art of perfume making, bring a little bit of Everclear, coconut oil, and a spritzer bottle. Creative inspiration soon to follow, but I've had great success with vetiver root, galangal, orange peel, and lemongrass.

This brings us to the toiletry topic. Some people bring a lot of toiletries. In my experience, I learned the unnecessary reality of many of the things that can be purchased from the drug store. With a clean diet, acne can fade, and pesty bugs can be deterred. The humidity keeps your skin moist, and most lotions just sweat off. You may even want to try to go "no poo" (that is, shampoo) method this year. 

Tip #7: Abandon shampoo and conditioners. I had personally been avoiding chemical hair soaps for one year before the Ranch, but for other people, this may be a great time to go "no poo". It's usually within the first two months that hair builds up an excess of grease, then soon after, this balances out. Shampoo strips your hair of its natural oils, and conditioner replaces it with a synthetic luster. If you want to keep your hair clean with minimal input, try the baking soda and vinegar method. Use one tablespoon of vinegar for one cup of water. Shake in a bottle with a dispenser cap, pour overhead, and massage deeply into your hair. Rinse with water. Vinegar can also be applied to help balance the pH. Any type of vinegar will work just fine, and the smell dissipates quickly. After the initial grease sweat, your locks will evolve into tropical lusciousness. 

You may be concerned about sunscreen. Despite my pale complexion, the sun was never an issue for me. This is because most of the time outside is spent in the shade. Cheers to the benefits of an agroforestry canopy! If you're working in the sun, you'll probably be sweating any sun protection off. Tip #8: Favor sun hats and long, light sleeves for sun protection. Despite covering your skin, you'll actually stay a lot cooler, too.

Bugs can be another nuisance. Mosquito populations are typically non-problematic until the rains hit in April. That's when populations skyrocket. Maybe you don't mind the cloud of deet, or natural sprays that are also available, but the reapplication of sprays can be resource and time intensive. Tip #9: Either you suck it up and evolve some better antibodies, or just cover up with long pants and sleeves, and CERTAINLY bring a bug net for your bed. I've laid on my bed in October, the wettest month of the season, and counted literally dozens of mosquitoes trying to pass the unbreakable seal. Fortunately none of the sensationalized diseases that mosquitoes carry made an epidemic in Mastatal, so don't stress about vaccinations or antibiotics.

If mosquitoes aren't the type to sweeten your inner naturalist's cup of tea, think about the things that do. Maybe it's plants, maybe it's birds. Whatever it is, make a point to recognize those things at home before you leave, because when you come to the jungle, it's all going to change. Tip #10: Recognize the fauna and flora in your new home to develop a sense of place. A sense of awareness and appreciation for your home's native creatures will make rooting a lot easier. The dormilonas, which bow down when you tap or pee on them, and the carpet like moss that grows in the tree nursery, or the sprawling herb with small white flowers with purple stripes inside that attract the black bees with yellow bottoms-- those were some of my favorite Ranch weeds. You'll see patterns, and you'll appreciate the subtle natural life, too. 

Bonus Tip #11: Appreciate the foods that are locally sourced. Rice and beans are the vehicles of countless cultural traditions and can be transformed in one million ways, but they're delicious served simply too. The Ranch agroforestry system offers biriba, jackfruit, coconuts, bananas, cuadrados, and plantains all year round. Be prepared for the grandeur of seasonality. Lemondrop mangosteens will be one of your first tree harvests in January. Then the acerola, aka Barbados cherries, will ripen. These ferment into an excellent, complexly flavored wine. The Victoriana and arasa will ripen shortly after: Sour, yet delicious, when sweetened for jams. Mango season starts in April and lasts for the month. Pickle as many green mangoes as you can stand, they make the best kimchi, especially when finely shredded.  The pejibayes start turning color at the beginning of the rainy season, too, followed by the mamonchinos. The mamonchino tree with the best flavor lies at the bottom of the Banana Bowl, but you have to climb it, then sit in the branches with a huge pole with a basket on the end.  This is farm fitness, but the collection process is worth it. Nature really did perfect the art of candy. Come December, the oranges will begin ripening, and you can race Scott in a juice pressing contest. You will experience the cycle of a year as it truly happens, as an ecosystem partitioned it; for each part to be appreciated.

Maybe you're the type to meditate, maybe not. When I left the Ranch, and the data came back to my cellphone, and the advertisements jumped off the walls of the streets, and the drama of the world flooded in like a leaky pipe, that's when I knew what it meant to be able to meditate. I once thought about running away to a monastery, but I found Rancho Mastatal instead. There's no preacher, there's no text, there's just you and your purpose for coming. You come, you work hard, you play hard, and you learn. It might not feel like you're meditating, but, if you allow the experience to envelop you, if you allow yourself to tread lightly on this planet, you too can be a great apprentice. You may not become an expert wood crafter or beekeeper, or even learn how to count, but there you have it: ten pieces of advice from a gal who now walks barefoot in the city.

News and Notes from Around the Permaculture Community

Laura has been busy the last few weeks filming an online fermentation workshop series. She is partnering with Ranch friend Spenser Gabin in the creation of this course.  You can see more of Spenser's work at his website here.  

We were fortunate enough to host Erle and Suset from Wa Samaki Ecosystems on Trinidad during our Natural Building Practicum. It is always inspiring to meet fellow permaculture teachers, doers, and designers, and now we have the itch to visit their site which has been operating for nearly 20 years!

Our Central American Scholarship Program fundraiser is underway! We've already had over 20 applicants for the few spots in our annual PDC. If the fundraiser is successful though, we hope to have a record number of Ticos in our course. Please give if you are able and share the word!

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

No Pickup, No Problem: Social Capital Trumps a Shitty Situation

by Dorothy Farrell

My hands are grappling the rumbling, rusty wheelbarrow handles, and as we walk half a mile through the village, everyone can hear the five Rancho apprentices clunk on through. In a village of 120 people, your whereabouts are everybody's business. Don't worry, I want to say, this will all make sense soon. They'll be having a chuckle by the end of the day. For now, we are five warriors defending alternative energy. We are making the best use of our woman power (and Dan power) when the white pickup truck is out of commission. We are going to pick up poop.

As Timo explained in a blog post last month, poop is the essential ingredient for synthesizing our kitchen's methane gas supply. Once a week, the white pickup truck is driven half a mile up the road to pick up ten sacks of manure. Assuming you have the human labor and the car labor, it's a brilliant system-- until the white truck, which has seen more years than myself, stops working. No truck, no poop, you say. Chuckle chuckle. Four of the baddest chicks and one man are about to prove you wrong. Here are two cents, to boot, on what makes a functional energy system.

We make it to Finca Siempre Verde dripping in sweat. Chilo, our friendly poop dealer, greets us as we roll five empty wheelbarrows up the driveway hill. Since we're on the theme of biodigestors, he offers to give us a tour through his biodigestor system. It's a work in progress, but here are the pigs. He shows us the pig pen which gets hosed down, and where the poop drains into a pipe. He then shows us a newly built pen that is slightly lower than the kitchen. Here, Chilo explains, will be the new site for the biodigestor. The manure will wash directly into the feeder barrel, no transport necessary.

We are five champions of renewable energy and suddenly I am wondering why my journey to move poop suddenly seems less noble. Here is a system that capitalizes on the fact that the source of manure is located at point zero for the biodigestor intake. If Chilo had a failure in one of his auto parts, there would still be gallo pinto on the table. Is Chilo's biodigestor any different than ours, or am I just about to push 100 pounds of manure half a mile because we built a delicate, un-resilient system?

Biological systems, such as Chilo's pigs, are complex. They are composed of living, breathing organisms whose livelihood is ingrained in the health of the entire system. As long as Chilo (who is also a living component in the system) continues to produce food on his farm, process it in his kitchen, bring the scraps to his pigs, and maintain his system accordingly, then poop will continue to flow through the biodigestor, methane will continue to be produced, food will continue to be produced, and the pigs will continue to be fed. 

Now, suppose we swapped out those pigs for one of those nifty new robots on the market. The Porkolator 3000 is equipped with machinery that makes it the most efficient robot in converting biomass to waste product. This technological feat is revolutionary. As it turns out, however, the company that manufactures the Porkulator did not create the machine with the capacity to heal from, say, an erupted engine. So when that breaks down, and Chilo doesn't have a spare engine in the middle of the jungle, how on Earth will the gallo pinto get made?

Pigs are complex; Porkolators are complicated. The difference between a living system and a non-living system is that a living system has numerous connections and survival responses in accordance with the environment, whereas a non-living system cannot respond. A non-living system is complicated because if there are 1000 pieces and the tropics rusts one obsolete, the system will fail to function. A living system has 999 pieces you can name, and 999 to the ninth power of interconnections you cannot even see, that when one piece fails, the show must go on. On that day, our pickup truck proved to be complicated because the inability to start the engine meant that our biodigestor risked starvation. 

Pigs are not the only example of complex, living systems. Communities are also complex. In the wake of realizing that our biodigestor may not get fed, we rallied the troops and took action. That's right, our engine may have failed, but our spirit did not. That morning, five apprentices and ten sacks of manure rolled through Mastatal and it didn't matter that my forearms were burning or that my hands were too dirty to wipe the sweat from my eyes. We were resilient, and let warm gallo pinto be proof.

News from around the Permaculture Community

We love books at the Ranch! Our library is constantly growing as each of us pick out a few new books to populate our shelves. Our favorite publisher is Chelsea Green publishing, and the folks over at Permies.com have been busy reviewing many of their best books. Check out the review list to see if any belong on your shelf! 

The National Institute of Apprenticeships in Costa Rica is having their annual Agroecological Festival this December 3 & 4 in Cartago. We hope to attend. This will be a great opportunity for anyone interested in connecting with the Costa Rica permaculture and urban farming community!

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

Non-Traditional Education: Reconnecting to our Roots

By Tim O'Hara

Modern, conventional education systems do not work for everyone. They cater well enough to many of today’s students but not to a significant portion of the population that might be better served by alternative pedagogical approaches. In most countries, at the age of 4 or 5, or even younger, kids are shuffled into busy classrooms to learn subjects that will reportedly prepare them for a successful future. As our economies become less predictable, politics less appealing, and the environment ever more damaged, current educational models are losing traction with increasing numbers of people who recognize that the one-size-fits all approach to education is not working for our society.

Terms referring to non-standardized teaching methods and ideas such as homeschooling, unschooling, gap years, Waldorf and BOCES are all becoming more familiar in today’s educational vernacular. Instead of paying an inordinate amount of money to learn how to navigate broken social and economic structures to barely make ends meet as an educated, employed adult, more and more people believe that it’s important that humans begin to train and prepare for meaningful, place-based work that provides a fair wage while better connecting to the elements that we most need to thrive; clean water, clean air, clean soil and clean food.

In our specie’s experiment to educate our populations to be good, productive denizens of the planet, we have lost sight of how to responsibly meet our basic needs and in the process have contaminated the resources that are inherent to a healthy life. We’re becoming a society more apt to care for our latest electronic purchase than one another.

Most visitors to the Ranch come to learn in a different setting. Many of these people are attracted to our experiential methods of teaching. As an education center since 2001, we have discovered a great deal about our students and how they develop best. We have also witnessed a trend over the last decade and a half that has students arriving to the Ranch with ever decreasing hands-on skills. It’s not uncommon to host students that have never picked up a shovel, dug their hands into the dirt, or cooked a meal from scratch.

Our education systems today praise computer work more than physical labor. While I think both skill sets are important in today’s economy, I would argue that we’ve let the pendulum swing much too far towards the idea that the solutions to today’s challenges lie only in high-tech devices and multi-billion dollar mega-projects that ignore our historical connection with and dependence on nature.

As parents, Robin and I have chosen a hybrid approach that has our daughter enrolled in Mastatal’s local, Spanish-speaking public elementary school and learning from Robin through a Waldorf-style homeschool curriculum during our trips outside of Costa Rica. We hope that this will provide her with a dynamic and solid educational foundation that will prepare her for the global problems that she and others in her generation will inherit and face as adults. We look forward to explore the growing number of non-conventional educational options as she gets older.

Gap year programs like those offered through Winterline provide an alternative to graduating high-school students. They allow students to better refine their interests before investing tens of thousands of dollars in an education that may not provide them with the schooling that they desire or need. Organizations such as Winterline recognize the existing gap in public education and focus on providing students with opportunities to learn hands-on skills. The growing popularity in these programs is a sign that parents are more willing to let go of the rigid ideas and standards that they experienced as students.

We’re proud to be a part of a more common sensible approach to schooling and we believe that well-thought out, inspirational and practical, applied programs can oftentimes provide students with a superior and more relevant learning experience. Some of today’s problems may require large, expensive and highly-engineered approaches, but others demand simplified but intelligent thinking and a genuine connection to the earth. The latter can and should be cultivated in our society’s educational programs.

Paul Stamets, the renowned mycologist, provides inspiration and an example via his mycoremediation work that partners with our fungal brethren to clean up toxic sites using simple, inexpensive and accessible technology as do Vandana Shiva’s efforts promoting food and seed sovereignty in India. Winona LaDuke’s achievement to build and restore community by means of wild rice harvesting and her work with the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Wes Jackson’s advances in perennial grain production in the Midwest of the US with The Land Institute provide us with precedents to learn from. Our hope is that the Ranch too can provide an example and a place for compassionate people in search of a better way to learn, teach, heal and live.

Check out our calendar and consider organizing a group to join our team as we promote a more rational, sensible and connected educational movement.   

News from around the Permaculture Community

One of our favorite alternative education programs is Sustainable Summer. Their groups are always one of the highlights of our year and the students who go through the program leave us feeling hopeful for the future. If you are looking for something different to inspire your high- schooler, we can't recommend them enough.

We have two new stellar workshops on the calendar for May 2017:

• Agroforestry Skills Inspired by the Forest: Orchard Planning, Propagation, Planting, & Production - May 17 - 18 with Peter Kring

• Plant as Medicine: Reclaiming the Art of the Home Apothecary - May 17 - 18 with Ancel Mitchell

Our cob oven will be seven years old this season! We are looking at re-building the oven so that it better fits our kitchens needs. Ovens are great starter projects and these plans for a double chamber cob oven just might give you the confidence to tackle the project in your own backyard!

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

Going Home: The Long Road Leaving Mastatal

The journey starts with a 5am wake up; just as the sunlight is starting to spread through the jungle. I take a couple deep breaths as I admire the beautiful place that I am in.I take a last look around, heave my heavy backpack on, and head down to make a cup of coffee before embarking on what will be a 36+ hour adventure back "home." I have done this journey multiple times now, from California to Costa Rica and back and forth, and each time presents new challenges and exhausting travel times.

Every time I go from one place to the other I am overwhelmed with culture shock, but the shock is always greater in my trips back to the States. While leaving the small, tranquil, jungle town of Mastatal and landing in the big, bustling, concrete jungle of Los Angeles I am caught off guard by what is happening in the “real world.”

Fortunately, I do not and have never had to live in a city, especially not one as large as Los Angeles. I grew up in the small mountain town of Bishop, CA; population 4,000. For college I moved to what I considered the city of Durango, CO; population 20,000. Then I moved to Mastatal; population 100. You could say I don’t have much city or masses-of-people experience, and this probably factors into my feelings of shock when I leave the Ranch and get dropped into one of the biggest cities in the world.

After I chug down a delicious cup of local coffee, something I know I won’t enjoy again till I return, I head out to wait for the only bus out of town. The bus arrives and I awkwardly manage to load my bag on, which always seems to be a feat when traveling. So it begins; the first of many hours sitting, waiting, and fidgeting. If any of you have traveled to the Ranch you may feel the same way, but I think the bus ride is much easier on the way out then the way in. Better as the first leg of your journey than the last,.still with a fresh traveling bum.

I enjoy the ride through the jungle, on windy, bumpy, dirt roads, admiring the unique beauty of this place. We arrive in Puriscal and I head straight to get some chicharones. These yummy hunks of meat, an avocado, and bread have become my go to traveling food to fuel me through. I take my time because my flight doesn’t leave for hours and I would rather wander around the streets then wait in the airport.Still there aren’t many exciting activities to keep me in Puriscal so I load onto the next bus to San Jose.

The whole trip gradually eases me into civilization, each stop with an increasing population. The bus stops in the middle of San Jose, I get off onto the busy streets. I have done this journey many times but I have never had to find the next bus station to the airport by myself, so this will be the interesting part. As anxiety starts to come up with the increase of people and hustle, and every other person in a car is yelling “taxi, taxi!” I inhale, exhale, tighten my backpack straps, and start walking in the direction I think is to the next bus station.

After multiple blocks I start to think I may have missed a turn.I spot a group of police officers chatting on the corner and shyly approach to ask for directions. They all jump eagerly on the opportunity to practice their English on this lost, white girl.

I make it to the airport. The Costa Rican airport is so small that everything moves smoothly.This is where I will wait for eight hours before my plane leaves. I find a nice private corner, lay out my yoga mat and start stretching. I’m the wandering, hippy, dirty, traveler that doesn’t mind making herself comfortable and if that means doing some odd yoga moves in the airport then so be it.

On my flight to LAX I sit next to a Costa Rican man that is moving to Alaska to be with his family. I wish him good luck and warn that he better buy a coat! I arrive in LAX, wait in the two hour immigration line, get on the airport shuttle to the opposite side of the airport, find my next gate, find another private corner, and lay out my yoga mat in hopes to get some sleep. By this time it is at least midnight and there is hardly anyone in the airport.

It turns out not many people sleep in the airport; except for those too cheap to get a room. With the lack of body heat the airport feels like a walk in freezer, and this is not just because I am use to the heat of the tropics. I thought I brought enough warm clothes to bare the cold airports, but I can barely feel my toes so I try wrapping myself in my yoga mat. At this point I do look like a homeless person camping in the airport. The late hours of the night are also the time that all the construction and cleaning gets done in the airport, so between the jackhammers, vacuums, and freezing temperatures I don’t get much rest.

The early morning hours come, people slowly start trickling back into the airport. I continue to wait for my flight to Mammoth, the town an hour away from my home where I will get picked up by my parents. I have had this flight canceled on me multiple times due to not enough passengers, so I worry until I'm on the flight, if it will take off or not. If this flight doesn’t run that means one of my parents will need to drive the five hours to LAX to pick me up. That for lack of a better word, sucks. Finally, the time has arrived for the last leg of my trip; I board the Mammoth flight, an hour long beautiful trip over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I land. My dad is there to pick me up and we drive home. It has been at least 35 hours now since I left Mastatal; I am exhausted.

I am in a totally different place now. It always amazes me how one day you can be living in the tropics and the next you are in the high desert mountains. I went from a landscape of complete green, to one of different shades of browns and speckles of green. On the drive home my dad comments “it’s been raining a lot, things are looking really green here.” Ha! I think, a lot of rain, really green, you should see the jungle.

Usually my transition back into life in the States is cushioned by the comfort of being in Bishop, a town so small you almost know everyone. But unknowingly, I arrive back home during memorial day weekend. Which in Bishop is when the town holds its annual Mule Days event, a well known event that attracts 20,000+ people and their 20,000+ mules. All flooding into Bishop for a week of mule fun! It is as ridiculous as it sounds. Not having been to Mule Days in many years, a long time friend and I decide why not? So we put on the good ol’ blue jeans, cowboy boots, and plaid shirts and go down to watch the rodeo! I feel like I have walked into a costume party, what happened to the raggedy t-shirts, sweaty shorts, and old crocs of the jungle? I ain’t in Mastatal no more!  

Ali Ostergard

NEWS AND NOTES

Did you know the Ranch is on Instagram? Follow us here!

Have you ever wanted to build your own home? Just bought a piece of land in Costa Rica and want to create a jungle paradise? Well in 2017 we have the classes you need to re-skill and build your place in this world.

• Timber-Frame Construction--January 18th to 27th, 2017

• Earthen Walls, Plasters, and Artistry--April 11 to 22nd, 2017

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

Life with Limited Communications: How We Thrive with Crappy Internet

I’m unable to answer all of the emails that I receive into my inbox everyday. Even though I do receive my fair share of electronic correspondence, my inability to reply to all messages is not likely a result of the inordinate amount of inquiries that I receive compared to many of you out there. The reason is that I live in a place with shitty Internet.

I have a 2-hour window each morning before most people in town are awake to get into my account and open and answer my emails. After that, people begin to chew up the ever so precious limited bandwidth that serves our community. In my head I envision people in town rolling out of bed to take a peak at their Facebook accounts or watch a video on Youtube before school or work while I struggle to open a reservation request that might result in a booking and some income for the Ranch. Our painfully slow Internet means that I can generally check emails only once a day. If I didn’t respond to an email this morning, it will simply have to wait until tomorrow.

To add to my current communication challenges, I don’t have a cell phone, much less a smart phone. The pressure seems to mount each day to get one. Given my administrative obligations as the director of Rancho Mastatal, all of this results in a daily confrontation that I strive to find balance with continuously. For those of you with poor Internet connections, which may only be a small minority of you reading this, what do you do when you simply can’t open an email that you know you should read and respond to as soon as possible? How do you react when you can’t attach a simple Excel spreadsheet to your email to send to a prospective client? In an age when businesses increasingly rely on the Internet for their survival, how has the Ranch been able to make ends meet for 15 years, the first 8 without even a phone in our town, in a world that today demands email responses in minutes or hours, not days or weeks?

Honestly, I don’t have a great answer or fully know. It’s an interesting dissertation topic for a future graduate student that loves our community. I think mostly it’s been a life-or-death (for the business, not us as humans) need. Somehow, we’ve been able to organize our work and lives to make it work, in spite of the poor odds in Vegas. We’ve persisted and persevered while the communications here have slowly improved. We’ve been forced to depend on our amazing library (with real books) for research and traditional means to build friendships, trust and a dedicated following that have kept us alive and mostly well.

Every 3 weeks, for almost a decade, I drove 2 hours to find a reasonably fast Internet connection. I also relied on a terribly annoying auto response message that asked those emailing to me to please be patient when waiting for a reply. Many of you probably remember (and still receive a watered down version of) the message that states that I’ll get back to you sometime within the next century. This is mainly how I assuaged and bought time with those interested in our project and “stayed on top” of bookings and guest visits early on in our evolution.

In the earliest days, I would wait in line at the public phone in San Miguel, 4 kilometers from Mastatal, to make bookings for our educational groups. If I had to make more than one call, I would have to get back in line to make the second. A third. Back in line. You catch my drift. This little exercise might take me half a day. Setting up homestays for our high school groups would take multiple days. It now takes me an hour by phone.

The current reality, fortunately, is that I’ll probably be able to respond to an email that you send to me within a week, and if it’s high priority, even sooner. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. While most of you enjoy life with high-speed wifi and 4g service, we struggle with a 3g network that’s reminiscent of my first email experience with AOL and dial up just out of the Peace Corps in the mid-90s. I haven’t come that far in the past 20 years, but I’ve come somewhere, and all this said, there’s great relief and many benefits in not owning a cell phone and being tied to the Internet 24/7. I am currently avoiding total dependence on modernity’s electronic leashes (or nooses) but also appreciate and recognize the great benefits that the Internet brings to me, my family, and our business. Without it we would struggle even more than we presently do to make financial ends meet and stay in touch with our families. My weekly drive to the highest point in the region to check phone messages has evolved to a predawn wakeup and email session in my cozy cob home, and I’ll take the latter any day of the week.

Visitors to the Ranch almost universally, eventually feel relief when they spend many days, weeks or months with us and are unable to stay uber connected to their digital lives back home. The Internet and cell phones are yet other additions to a continuous string of technologies that we have to learn to find a happy medium with and balance. Like so many of life’s conveniences, too much has proven over and over to destroy our mental and physical health in the long-run, and just like coffee, hooch and phone access, a little can and should go a long way.

Timo

 

 

 

NEWS AND NOTES

We have a number of life changing workshops coming up.

• Wilderness First Responder--June 8th to 17th

• Sustainable Homestead Design--June 22nd to 26th

• Timber Frame Construction--January 18th to 27th

Please share around if you know anyone who is ready for a trip to beautiful Costa Rica, a swim in the waterfalls, nourished with homemade meals, and challenged with an intensive educational experience.

Abrazos,

The Ranch Crew