photograph by Cherie Langlois
Beautiful flower called Heliconia in Monteverde
For just a instant , I ’d like to invite you to step aside from your farm , and get with me to the Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica , a fantastical office filled with such an numberless variety of plants and animals it makes my lush Washington family look like a wasteland by comparison .
Indeed , when my kinsfolk and I visited there in March 2006 , I felt like Dorothy must have felt when she land in Oz .
opine a living greenish cathedral of exotic vegetation and towering trees grace with vines , bromeliads , and flitting , close birds of every color — all wrap in mist . Imagine rainbow - carapaced mallet , dazzling blue morpho butterflies , and adjoin line of work of leaf - cutter pismire . Imagine cryptic purple hummingbirds the size of sparrows buzzing your head by daylight and yield - exhaust squash racket taciturnly winging past your ear by night .
There ’s simply no other place like it on terra firma .
Walking on a bridge in Monteverde .
After four action - packed days of vigor - liner , trail - equitation , and explore the misty swarm forest , we suppose good - bye to Monteverde on an organized night base on balls .
It was an amazing two time of day of small discoveries — flyspeck frogs and anole , moth whose heart glisten like whiz , sleeping birds — but also very unknown : a cloud forest night completely devoid of swarm .
In fact , scientist report that Monteverde ’s mist - free days have increase during late 10 , its dampening and life - giving cloud cover wobble upwards . Thanks to spheric climate variety , fundamental biological changes are demand place there ( as they are elsewhere)—species reposition their ranges , mintage vanishing .
I ’ll be thinking of Monteverde , not to mention the rest of our planet and its dweller ( my family and farm included ) , when I join millions of other multitude around the world in a emblematical call to military action on climate modification by dip our brightness level for Earth Hour 2010 starting at 8:30 p.m. this come up Saturday , March 27 .
Care to join us ?
If you ’re still mazed or sceptical about the realities of orbicular clime variety and its encroachment , conceive checking out the EPA ’s easy - to - understandFAQ .
For the NOAA ’s answer to why this winter ’s easterly Snowmaggedon does n’t disprove climate alteration ( and a helpful definition of “ weather ” vs. “ clime ” ) , gohere . you’re able to memorize more about Earth Hour 2010 on theirwebsite .
Now , back to our farms .
~ Cherie
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