Yesterday, John and I came upon a troop of over 30 monkeys during our morning walk up and over the Cristo headland. I’d never seen such a large troop. John had only seen that plentitude a few weeks earlier and near the same location.
Monkeys live lives separate from us.
Well, for that matter…
Iguanas live lives separate from us. Bee colonies. Ant colonies. Anteaters. Crabs. Salps. Tarpon. Crocodiles. Magnificent Frigatebirds. Fungi. Fireflies. Trees.
Yes, Trees, with their magical subterranean roots and their leaves which manifest food out of nothing more than sun and air and a bit of water and a teeny bit of nutrient stolen from rock, live lives totally separate from us.
These creatures’ ancestors have been here, gracing the hills and waters and streams of this bay we humans have labeled San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, longer than we have been here. They learned how to survive and love and frolic before we humans invented the words “survive,” “love,” “frolic.” Before we humans invented cameras and video technology and social media that allow me to share with you today my sighting of this troop of monkeys.
They have been here all along, the monkeys. They are here now, hidden, around us, “out there” as we read this post. They are foraging, resting, caring for their young, standing guard, birthing, dying, arguing, building community. Traveling along trees. Feasting on the trees’ leaves, seeds, flowers. Breathing in the trees’ hourly gift of life-giving oxygen. Resting in the trees’ forthright limbs.
I, homosapien, human, saw them yesterday and stopped my climb up the Cristo headland hillside just long enough to film them for you. And then I contined on my walk, engrossed as usual in my own thoughts and worries. I dabbed at the sweat pouring off the tip of my nose. I greeted, in turn, the barking dogs that bark at us every day when we pass by their homes.
It is so easy to think that we humans are all there is, or all that really matters anyway. It’s easy to see the parakeets and vultures and butterflies, and yes, even monkeys, as eye-candy entertainment flitting across our world’s giant screen.
We are the center of our Universe, after all, aren’t we, regardless of where we might be – whether in Paradise in San Juan del Sur or in an apartment in Berlin?
But to the monkeys, the iguanas, the bees, the ants, the trees…who are WE? Co-creators, survivors, lovers, frolickers?
Or mere Mammals who build elaborate structures, and make loud, rumbling noises, albeit often mechanical, of our own?
And/or both?
