New Year's in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica we watched the sun sink into the Pacific from our vantage point on Playa Tamarindo. The "Sunset Catamaran" would make its nightly tour of the half-moon cove while tourists flocked to the beaches for sunset selfies. One member of our group timed the disappearance of the sun from its starting point, sitting on the horizon, to its absence. Only ninety seconds separated the day from the night.

How laughable, our need to quantify time, even something so liquid and ephemeral as a sunset. While our day ended, someone else's began. The pink and purple of our evening sky was but a reflection of the rising glory somewhere around the world. And yet, we chop our river of time into blocks, charge or pay money based on the arbitrary hour, and we count the years of our lives with pleasure or disappointment (or rising panic).

The hours of vacation melted away in boogie board sessions, leisurely lunches (served by waiters on "Tico Time"), and walks along the beach or neighborhood while a damp breeze brushed away cobwebs of holiday stress like a soft dust cloth on our skin. Diving into the minutes with focused attention we made impressions of painted butterflies, jowly iguanas, curious howler monkeys. We deepened relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins, parents. Time stalked at our hemlines, demanding dinner reservations and travel time estimates, but we escaped the tyranny of calendars, deadlines, Facebook.

Yet the tides of time swept us inexorably back to San Jose and packing for home. The cousins stayed up to celebrate the ball's drop on the East Coast while most of the adults went to bed, as if an early snooze could postpone our return to reality.  Back to Colorado routines today,  I ponder resolutions to eat right, exercise better, write more, even as my creative brain pokes fun at yet another artificial distinction in time. I excuse my need for the New Year on the longing for more sunlight, a turn of seasons, a change of mind.

Happy 2017, everyone. As time flows forward, I hope you find a beachy cove or an inlet to pause and rest before picking a point to begin again.