Thursday, May 16, 2013

All about the Beesiness


May 5, 2013

          The day started out pretty depressing for me as the battery for my camera died before we moved out for the pine ridge forest. I felt like a chef without pots and pans, Batman without his utility belt, a teenager without their phone, I was depleted. To make matters worse it was dry and somewhat depressing compared to what we've been accustomed to in the Chiquibul. The Chiquibul canopy hovered over us with its overwhelming assortment of green leaves shielding the beaming UV rays of the sun. All while a single tree of the pine ridge could barely cover a sliver of grass. The objective of the day was to run a linear transect 300m with a point at every 10m. Then we would look for the closest pine tree in each NE, NW, SE, and SW section of each point. Things that were measured were dBh, height (using the laser) and distance from transect point to closest tree. We got into a rhythm from the get go. After about 11 transect points Boris cut it short as the other group ran into some african bees.  Overall we were all about business, not too much bickering, just BEEsiness.

        Mr. Mesh and Angie kindly came to meet us at the pine ridge forest with some Belizian fried rice and guava juice! That definitely helped out with the scorching sun and dry atmosphere. Soon after Boris took us over to an area that over looks the Macal river. This is where my depression kicked in as I didn't have my camera. The landscape was just amazing. Will tried to talk some sense into me by saying, "it's all about the mental pictures, man. It's all about the mental pictures". I wasn't having it. I wanted to capture it all dammit! Here's my "mental picture".


So much for mental pictures..

         The depression doesn't end there. We stopped by the bridge where it met the Macal River. As we got off there were colorful butterflies everywhere. Butterflies for days! I wanted to get a close up pic of every one of them! Life really knows how to kick a man when he's down. Eventually I came to terms with my situation and just decided to go hop around on the river rocks. It was refreshing. I've never experienced anything like it. Soon enough, we all heard a splash into the water. It was Alberto, the friendly/crazy bus driver. His thoughts were "once one goes in, the rest of them follow". He was damn right. We all followed suit, jumped in and embraced mother nature's freshwater. It was refreshing after the rough day we had. Especially a whole day without my camera. As I was in the water, not once did I think about my camera and trying to capture every moment. This was one mental picture I could take. I mean if I had my camera, my clumsy ass probably would have slipped in along with it.




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