It’s Spring! No, it’s Fall! Wait – It’s Summer! Huh?

Occasionally people who live in North America ask us if we miss the seasons. They claim one thing they like about living in, say, Nebraska is the change from when it’s too cold to be outside to when it’s too hot.

The questions are sort of based on the assumption that here in the Southern Pacific area of Costa Rica, where the temps remain comfortably in the 80’s for highs and 70’s for lows all year, we must get bored with the weather. That we don’t have seasons. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For starters, we have dry season and rainy season. Those aren’t just different names for the same thing; during one, it doesn’t rain, during the other, it does. During one, your car gets dusty on every trip. During the other, it gets muddy. In dry season the air has a lighter feel to it. In rainy season everything that has ever wanted to become a waterfall gets its chance. Dry season is hotter by a few degrees. Rainy season is more humid by a few points. The differences are noticeable, and the changes are welcome.

Okay, so that’s the biggest and most obvious seasonal difference, but it’s certainly not all there is to it! Tammy and I walk our jungle trail each morning for exercise, and have started noticing more and more subtle differences.

It’s fall. As the rainy season winds down, a lot more leaves start falling. Sometimes when it’s windy, you’d swear you were in Michigan in October. They pile up. We sweep them off the porch. They cover our trails. Some trees go completely bare naked and look as though they no longer have the will to live. Our first year here, we thought they wouldn’t.

It’s spring. For the last three weeks, portions of our trail have been covered in yellow flowers. Huge trees, leafless as if in fall, are covered in blossoms that drop on us like confetti. Mango trees are blossoming exuberantly. Soon the ‘mayo’ trees will cover the mountains in color.

It’s summer. Any Tico can tell you that. The rains have stopped. The skies are clear. The ocean is settling down and getting clearer by the day. The rivers and streams and shrinking. Tourists are filling the towns and surfboards. You can’t get a rental car at a decent price. You can’t get a hotel room at a decent price. Wooohooo! Summer in Costa Rica.

So all of the seasons are happening at once, but even that isn’t the whole story. When we pay attention, we start to notice the cycles of life. It’s January. We’re seeing a lot more huge frogs and huge grasshoppers. We’re just starting to hear the incessant shrill of a bazillion cicadas all trying to find the best mates all day long. That will last for about three months, with some gatherings so thick that when you walk under them you can feel a fine mist that is created by their collective pee.

There will be a golden orb spider season, when webs of the strongest natural material known to man glisten richly in the sun and catch things as big as birds. There will be a woodpecker season, when they drill and clean holes in the tree trunks so they can lay their eggs. There will be times when the no-see-ums get more irritating. There will be that season when caterpillars are all over, looking for a perfect spot to cocoon. There will be the monkey season, and the toucan season, when certain trees have the right kinds of berries and fruits.

At first it all seems sort of random because you don’t pay that much attention like you would when the first blizzard slaps you across the face in Wyoming each year or the temp tops 100 for the first time each year in Oklahoma. But it’s not random, and after a while you know what to expect; what to watch for, what to dread, what to look forward to.

In about three months all of Costa Rica will be on tiptoes holding its breath and waiting like parched sponges for the first refreshing rains of the year. But for now, we’re taking all the pictures we can of the flowers, and the leaves, and the bugs and animals and birds that tell us we are moving through the seasons, day by day, in temperatures that hardly change but a world that changes endlessly.