The Road Less Traveled

Giant oaks all dressed up in red and green epiphytes hover over a graveyard of their ancestors in various stages of decay. Everything in the cloud forest is green and slippery with different species of moss. Young vines stretch up out of the ground, seeking a host. Mushrooms poke their vulnerable heads out of a blanket of damp leaves. This is a comfortable forest; you could bed down on some sphagnum moss for a nap.

Never before have my arms ached after a hike. That’s what happens when you set off up a steep trail-less mountain led by a former soldier, and a handful of fit farmers and park rangers. We ventured into the Erapuca Wildlife Refuge, first winding through pastureland, then young regenerating forest, and dodging hidden holes and scaling steep mucky slopes in the older cloud forest. We wound through the “midget forest” where you have to crouch to get through the maze of lichen-draped trees, stopping a few times to motivate those in our party who didn’t want to go on. We finally emerged above the clouds to a view of the whole valley and a lunch of veggies and pasta that tasted like pure bliss in Tupperware. Then we monkeyed our way down, swinging on the reliable trunks and slipping on the misleading terrain back to the truck. I’m left with good memories, complaining muscles, a pound of forest mud in my clothes, a bottle-full of mountain spring water, an urge to sleep for three days, and a bottomless hunger. This is my first trip to this wildlife refuge, and many who are working to manage it have never entered. It is nice to know what we’re trying to protect.