Antlab in Panama

My family is already counting down the days until my return. E-mail messages with subject headings of homecomings and last-minute summer activities. I suppose I have missed out on a big block of baseball games, mosquito bites, 100 degree weather, tornado warnings and friendly get-togethers. With a week left until my return to the United States, I am feeling the tolls of long days in the field, late nights reading, socializing and computing data.

Today I made my last long trek into the BCI field, heavy bags in hand, to harvest my transects. I sifted 40 transects and set up 54 Berlese funnels before dinner. I felt sad, as if a long hike up a hill had suddenly plateued into a misty haze, as if collecting isopods, watching them scurry across filter paper — my frustrated eyes willing them towards apples — my desires abruptly fell into alcohol … it’s almost over and I wonder if I’ve achieved anything with my efforts or simply skipped down trails and gazed in amazement. It’s also discerning to think I have developed a compassion, attachment, maybe … love for little crustaceans who occupy the litter with snap-jaw ants and white hyphee decorations simply to watch them expire into quantified data.

Tomorrow Laura will return to Holland, tonight a small portion of BCI bar babes will send her off, and I will try not to imagine myself in her place on the last boat leaving the island for a new destination until next week when I will see the balcony from a distance, slowly becoming more desert as summer field season 2006 comes to a close.