Of Contrast, Color and Light

I am seeing this place, San Ramon specifically and Costa Rica generally,  with a new set of lenses. Gone is the immediacy and excitement  of  the first moments of exploration a year ago.  At that time I wrote of the hesitancy to press the lock release very early the first Sunday morning, wondering what lay ahead for my solo wander.  Today, the button is easily pressed, but I am continually struck by even having to press this lock release in the first place.  This is a city of contrasts.

Sunrise on mist over the San Ramon valley

At once beautiful and ugly, peaceful and noisy, clean yet dirty, fragrant yet sourly pungent, bland but colorful, secure yet insecure.  Friendly though, without its ugly opposite, and that, along with a sense of pride, is perhaps its greatest asset.

Peter, Ann-Marie, Paul, Amy

The "walking club" has seen all of this.  It has been my custom to take early morning walks, at first solo, and then a growing cadre of students accompanying me.  I must recognize my die-hard walk mates this trip: Amy, Paul, and Ann-Marie.  How many times we said "buenas dias" to the many out and about at 6:00 AM.  We follow the morning light and have seen these contrasts daily:

By contrast

Trash day at a rare alley

the contrast of a tiny manicured yard next to a vacant, trash filled lot.  Beautiful flowers running along a coil of razor wire atop a high security fence.  The fragrance of lush flowers along the roadside while smelling the pervasive creeping septic stench.  Or a heron standing daily in a ditch, its brilliant white plumage in striking contrast to the green foliage creeping along its banks, sentinels to a fetid, trash filled pool, The canyon of city streets, defined by their close proximity and rows of security gates, fences and shutters.  The deteriorating ramshackle nature of "home" to some, and the opulent nature of home to others, yet it is still home. The difference: location and affordability, and perhaps the tiniest of green space, if only in a large pot behind the gate.

The ditch.

Market colors

While apparently devoid of urban zoning controls, it is not unusual to have a grimy transmission shop next to a house, or a larger industrial building next to a house.  It seems that, driven to entrepreneurialism in their own houses, people set up businesses in their own houses, creating this diverse mix of service industry in the deep shadows of a residence.

The valley road

Textured hillsides of coffee, cows and banana

There are many gray mornings, a foggy valley in which we reside, giving rise to blue skies (we are blessed not to be in the rainy season).  Yet there is much color here - the diversity of flowers, birds, prolific muralists at work, clothing, and portions of buildings.  They catch the eye and hold it, if momentarily, in distinct contrast to the prevalence of brown or grey shades.  Or, as is perhaps our favorite morning walk, traversing up to the high ridge above our hostel, and descending into the rural Piedades valley beyond - a transition of hardscape to softscape, motor noise to birdsong, grey to green interspersed with rich texture and color, rewarded at the very bottom with a large grove of bamboo "singing" its hollow wind-borne clinking song accompanied by the gurgling creek running through it.


From flat to very steep, dark to light, bland to colorful, noisy to quiet, these walks challenge all of or senses, and uplift our souls for the day ahead.