Living the Simple Life

It was time for a change. My best friends here, Carlos, Monse, and Jacob, had either returned to the US or were about to. I liked Heredia, the city where I was living, but I wanted to explore other parts of Costa Rica; I wanted to experience something completely different. So I quit my job, sold my furniture bit by bit, from my bed to my favorite coffee mug, and moved out of my apartment and into a room lit by candlelight, with a shower without hot water.

I currently live at Alba Nueva, the New Dawn Center http://www.thenewdawncenter.info/about-newdawn.html, an organic farm in the Talamanca Mountains, the unexplored, rarely traveled, extension of the Andes Mountain Range, in the southern region of Costa Rica. Each morning, I work, which consists of either construction (we´re building a bamboo structure), mixing concrete, or planting and weeding in the vegetable garden. It´s not exactly lesson planning.

For lunch, we eat organic vegetables, straight from the garden, and fresh fruit, right off the trees. In the afternoon, I take classes: naturopathy, massage therapy, medicinal plants, and Spanish. The farm is run by Ed, who moved to Costa Rica 30 years ago from the US, married Jessica, a local Tica, and raised two sons here. The only other people living on the farm are Tanner and Ryell, a couple who are studying abroad through a college in Washington State. Each night, we eat dinner together and write in our journals.

This new simple life is not without its challenges. First of all, the buildings have been constructed with open spaces and we are surrounded by critters of all kinds; I´ve seen a tarantula already. Needless to say, I sleep beneath a mosquito net with a bottle of "Off" insect repellant by my side.

But it isn´t the mosquitoes that worry me, or even the tarantulas. As soon as the sun comes down, the snakes come out. I walk through the grass with a flashlight in hand, stomping the ground to let them now that I´m coming. Snakes don´t bother you if you don´t bother them...so I make sure, every step of the way, that the rounded twig I see lying in the grass in front of me is, in fact, a twig.

The classes have been challenging in their own right. It isn´t that they are difficult (there are no tests) but they challenge the modern way of thinking. Naturopathy is a controversial alternative to modern medicine, claiming to cure all sorts of diseases, even cancer. Every day I learn a new way of looking at the world.

The diet it professes - vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, and seeds, ´the diet of our ancestors´- is quite different from the Standard American Diet (which Ed abbreviates, ´SAD´). I am a vegetarian, which helps, but I love my carbs, and I´ve already caved and cooked up some pasta.

When I first arrived and Ed told me he was putting me in a room ¨lit by candelight and closer to nature¨, I said I´d prefer a room with electricity. But then I changed my mind. There is a certain freedom of not having to check my watch for the time, of not having a phone vibrating in your pocket - of living with the bare essentials. I´ve found myself strangely compelled to the simple life.