I had forgotten all about them. The little gold box of letters we found when we cleaned out my mom’s house after her death. Letters written by my father to my mother after he moved to Florida, while we stayed behind in New York preparing for the move. Letters written from March 1967 through April 1967; 10 letters in all. Letters also written by my father to my mother when he went back to Florida in 1980 to work and my mother stayed on in Colorado, spanning time from January 1980 through June 1980; 15 letters in all.

I came across the little gold Godiva chocolate box bound by a rubber band tucked away inside a box of miscellaneous old photos and memorabilia. I held it in my hands for a few minutes, debating. Do I read them? Yes? No? It would be like reading their personal diary, or at least my father’s side of things. A one-way window into the world of the adults that were my parents together, as a couple, and not just the"mommy and daddy” I was familiar with. Do I really want to know? Especially the 1980 period which might contain things I don’t want to hear about. That was in the middle of what I call my father’s “dark period.” I finally decided that I needed to read what my father had written all those years ago that made my mother keep them. After all, both my parents are gone now so I can no longer judge them for whatever might be written on all those folded pages neatly tucked inside their envelopes.

And so, the decision was made. I brought the little box of letters upstairs and sat down to read.

Bee balm in bloom.

We had a good weekend. Mostly the weather cooperated except for Sunday when we woke to rain and thunder, and it rained/drizzled for most of the day.

On Saturday we took Mia and drove down to Lake Mohawk near Sparta. The weather was picture perfect as is the boardwalk at the lake. Perfect temperature, blue blue sky, a slice of pizza for lunch.

Baby figs!

We ate well over the weekend:

BBQ baby back ribs, coleslaw, and homemade baked beans.

 

Goat shoulder tacos and sweet corn. For a more detailed description of the goat tacos, see Rick’s blog entry, Get your Goat, Part 2.

 

Frangipane fig tart (seen here before baking).

 

Yesterday’s lunch poolside: grilled eggplant sandwiches stuffed with goat cheese. The baby eggplants were sent via priority mail straight from my sister’s garden!

At last but not least, Papaya Margaritas! These were seriously good!

Yesterday was a good pool day and we spent most of the day either bobbing around the pool or sitting in the cabana reading. Even with the rainy Sunday (we needed some rain) I can’t complain one whit about our weekend. Hope yours was good as well!

In case you were wondering (and some people have been!) I am still here. It’s interesting how some people worry about me when they see I haven’t blogged for a while. It’s very sweet—thank you for caring. All is well. I’ve been busy but also haven’t really felt like blogging.

Rick is home from his travels and finally staying home for a while.

My sister has come and gone. (Good visit!)

The bathroom remodels were completed with several days to spare before my sister arrived. She gave the guest bathroom her stamp of approval!

The pool is finally coming up to a good temperature after going up and down with all the rain and cool nights we were having. We had so much rain—over 3.5 inches worth—over a period of a few days that we had to let water out of the pool.

The day lilies by the pool are in full bloom now (see header pic above); my fig tree is laden with little green figs.

Now we are looking forward to a lazy, low-key holiday weekend with plenty of grilling, eating and libations and poolside laying about. On the menu plan: BBQ baby back ribs with baked beans and coleslaw, Papaya Margaritas, Goat shoulder tacos, a frangipane fig tart (not my figs ... yet). (But not all those things at once.)

And maybe, just maybe, I am out of my blogging slump. Is anyone still interested in vacation posts or should I move on?

Our hotel offered a “jungle walk” on the grounds behind the hotel. Rick and I tried twice to take it but it was cancelled because of the heavy rain we’d had the day before. I couldn’t understand why they would cancel because of rain. That is, I didn’t understand until I finally took the walk. Then I understood just fine.

Somehow I had envisioned a somewhat flat walk on a decent trail around the base of the hill/mountain behind the hotel. I should have known that in Panama nothing is flat. It’s either up the side of a mountain or flights of stairs.

Walks were offered at 10:00 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. Claire and I decided to try for the 3:00 p.m. walk after our walk on the beach. Weather permitting, of course, and in Panama at this time of year we soon learned that the sky can open up and pour rain at just about any time of day, but mostly in the afternoon. We got lucky because when we showed up pool side to meet our guide he told us we would go ahead and do the walk even though the sky looked a bit threatening. We told him our main goal was to see a sloth in its native habitat and hoped that would be possible. We doused ourselves with insect repellent, grabbed a couple of water bottles and off we went.

My first clue should have been the machete our guide was carrying. Hmmm ... is he going to have to chop our way through the jungle?

The trail started up (of course) over rain-slick rotting vegetation. Now I see why the trail could become treacherous from being too slippery. At least it had dried out enough from yesterday’s downpour to make hiking easier but you still had to watch where you were walking. The mosquitoes were thick once we entered the jungle. It was very hot and very humid. Within minutes of walking I was drenched with sweat. My clothes were sticking to me and my hair was plastered to my head. I could feel the heat in my face and knew that it had turned bright red from the heat and exertion. Claire and I both looked at each other and decided it was a good thing no one else could see us just then. Yikes. At one point our guide offered me more bug spray and I said I didn’t think I needed it, that they were leaving me alone. He and Claire both started laughing and swatted away a mosquito that had just landed on my cheek. I put more on after that.

Before we had gone very far our guide stopped and was looking into the dense vegetation on the side of the trail. Sloth! he said and started swinging his machete, making a trail through the tangle of plants. Claire and I looked at each other, shrugged, and followed him. I was starting to feel like I was in some kind of Indiana Jones movie. He continued to chop at the plants, but no sloth. A few minutes later, close to the same spot, we found this: fast asleep, high up in the tree—a sloth at last. Can you find it?

Our guide shook the tree until we thought it would pull itself out by the roots and still the sloth slept on, oblivious to his shaking perch. There was no waking this guy up from his nap. If you have trouble seeing it in the photo above, I’ve highlighted it in the next photo. You can see it isn’t even hanging on to the tree with one arm, which is flung outward. You can see the nails on its front leg and also on the back leg that is wrapped around the branch. That was one dead-to-the-world sloth.

It rained a little bit but it didn’t matter because we were already wet from sweat. I had to put my camera under my shirt at one point but it was only a drizzle.

A lone pineapple plant!

The trail got very steep at one point and I had to force myself to go on. I have been battling rib and stomach muscle injuries since the winter and had not been getting any type of exercise at all while I tried to get everything to heal. So, I was out of shape and afraid to make anything worse. I could feel every steep step in my gut. Do you realize how much you depend on your stomach muscles to climb?

Further up the trail and close to the top of the mountain our guide found another sloth. This time he was able to get it to move by smacking the trees with his machete, and as the sloth changed trees we had a great view of it. This series of photos shows pretty much how slow it was moving as each frame is a move.

It finally found a spot where it could settle back in and continue its nap!

Cute! I had always heard sloths were dirty and smelly animals but this particular sloth looked very clean. Just look at the length of all that hair! They are a lot bigger than I expected too. This one when all stretched out was probably as long as I am tall.

We saw a few more along the trail, but just as gray looking balls hanging in trees. All the sloths were saw were of the two-toed variety, our as our guide called them “white-faced.” He told us the three-toed sloths have a dark face and can be very aggressive when disturbed. I wondered how aggressive could a sloth really get?

Claire was out in front at one point and saw a small, brown animal run across the trail—twice! I didn’t see it and neither did our guide but he said he was pretty sure what it was. We didn’t recognize what he was trying to tell us it was though. Mystery animal. We saw lots of vultures sitting in trees and ant hills full of fire ants. We didn’t see any snakes or scorpions or any other kind of creepy crawly things. A group of monkeys with babies on their backs were a welcome sight. Can you see the baby hanging on?

From time to time our guide would use his machete on plants and vines that had started to encroach into the trail. It doesn’t take long for the jungle to start reclaiming its territory.

There were several nice view points along the way overlooking our hotel far below and one to the distant skyline of Panama City. I have no idea why I didn’t take a photo of the view, but after going through my photos I didn’t find any. I think I just got tired of switching between the telephoto and my normal lens.

We also saw several morpho butterflies along the trail. Sorry, no photos as they were there one minute and gone the next. Kind of like being visited by a medium-sized blue bird—they are huge. Absolutely gorgeous! You almost felt as if you had been blessed after they flew by.

We heard a noise kind of similar to a frog croaking and our guide stopped us to have a listen to what he said was a toucan! Such a strange sound! We never did get a look at it before it flew off. Too bad. I’d loved to have seen one.

There were some strange and very large trees along the way like these orange-barked ones. Our guide called them “stomach trees.” When he thumped on the tree with his fist you could hear that it was hollow. The natives used them for making dugout canoes. They had a strange root structure too, like gnarly fingers gripping the ground.

The walk took almost two hours and I can tell you we were ready to hit the showers! We cleaned up our mud-spattered shoes and legs at an outside faucet before entering the hotel grounds, tipped our guide for being such a great sloth-wrangler, and headed to our rooms. I can tell you that air conditioning and a cool shower have never felt so good! Hiking in the tropics is not a glamorous thing. Would I do it again? You bet!

As you already know from reading this blog, fireflies are Zen-like to me. They tend to relieve whatever stress I’ve managed to collect over the course of a day. I never cease to wonder at their blinking morse code antics to find a mate.

As I type tonight my mate is finally now across the Pacific Ocean and over the International Date Line. His today is now my tomorrow. I hate it.

Our weather over the past few days has not been conducive to walking the dogs. The air conditioning has been running at full tilt and the humidity has been off the charts. Added to that is the remodel that is still going on in our house which just adds to the the daily stress and non-activity of the dogs who are usually sequestered to certain sections of the house during all this. Tonight I took them for a walk and upon coming home it was the right time to sit out in the yard to observe the fireflies. Only Bella was game enough to join me.

I sat down in the grass amidst the clover with my final glass of wine for the evening and just watched. Fireflies winked and blinked all around me, sometimes coming as close as my big toe. Wink, wink, here I am! they said to prospective mates. I had to reflect on how lucky I am to have found my mate in life while others are still searching for theirs, even if mine is halfway around the world tonight. Safe journey, my love.