There's always a way through barbed wire

Okay, first of all, part of my post got cut off last night. I meant to include that I had been able to check my email and I had a message from S.L. (recall, he is my thesis advisor). It was good news—I finally have official confirmation that I got the NSF grant! Hooray! Now I’m not going to have to worry about how I’m paying for all this!

Now onto today. The power was out this morning, but the women in the kitchen were still able to slice some fruit for me and make me a sandwich for lunch—by candlelight. I went out to the forest and found monkeys by the rock wall at the back end of what I’m calling C-trail. There was some kind of inter-group encounter shortly after I got to the monkeys. All sorts of howling was going on, and I was standing in the middle of two groups that were apparently trying to negotiate who was going to get to eat some scrumptious (actually, unripe) berries on a tree across the trail. The interesting thing is that there wasn’t any fighting or aggression (other than the howls) going on, and many individuals (juveniles included) kept going back and forth between the groups. My personal feelings on howler monkey group dynamics is that the “group” itself is pretty flexible. Maybe a little like my experience with the social systems at Dunlap High School. You belong to a core social group, but the exact composition of the group varies from day to day. That is, sometimes you hang out with different groups and sometimes people from different groups hang out with you.

I got some good feeding data, and then the monkeys took off into the jungle. I think what happened was that all the monkeys were actually feeding in the same area, and then one group took off into the jungle up the volcano while the other group went back down to the “A-trail.” Unfortunately, I stayed with the jungle group and I ended up trying to hack my way through vines the size of my arms and spiderwebs as tall as me. This proved to be a futile task. Eventually I went back down to the A-trail and discovered that is where the rest of the group went. From then on, it was lovely. The A-trail is at the edge of the forest; it borders an empty field and the view is amazing. I think the monkeys like it there because from that vantage point, you can look down and see the lake and the mountains beyond. There are also many huge boulders along the edge of the forest and field. Seeing these boulders always makes me think of eons ago, when Volcán Maderas was still active and coughing up these gigantic things.

When I left the forest I went a different way today. The monkeys were so far over on the A-trail that I found another little dirt path heading southwest (the direction back to the road). I decided to take that one and see what happened. For one thing, going this direction strengthened my theory that there’s always a way through barbed wire. That became my motto the last time I was in Nicaragua. You’d be going along in the forest, and all of a sudden, you’d come to a semi-clear field and a barbed wire fence. And there’s always a way through. You just have to be patient and scan the fence for an area where there’s enough room to shimmy through or jump over. Today I think I had to creatively find a way to get through 3 barbed wire fences to continue the correct direction on the path. I’m glad I went this way because it gave me more perspective on the size of the forest and the way people use the land. Little patches of forest would be separated by a plantain field, or a rice field, or a corn field, or a field that looked abandoned and was becoming forest again. The path was really steep in places, but I got some really amazing views of the landscape. Looking down, I could patches of forest separated by agricultural fields, and at the very bottom I could see the lake. To my right was a crystal-clear, cloudless view of Volcán Concepción. When I finally got back down to the road, I was really close to home. Since I got a tetanus shot right before coming back to Nic (come to find out, the last time I was here my tetanus shot was not up to date), I may take this path again sometime.