More Video from the Darien
Without a camera, I am relying on others footage to convey a little about they area where I am hoping to cross.
Jungle Survival Videos
A quick list of the videos I am watching, taking notes on, as I prepare to cross the Darien Gap on foot. I am making the best of my time now in Panama City, waiting for official permission to cross from the Servicio Nacional de Fronteras.
The first are a series of short clips from Ray Mear’s Extreme Survival show on the BBC. Honestly, the show is more for entertainment purposes and for those sitting at home on the couch than true instruction, but they are fun to look at and will give you an idea of the type of forest that I will be encountering, minus FARC guerillas, AUC paramillitaries, and the flora and fauna specific to the Darien, including Jaguars and over 30 million species of insects in Los Katios National Park, Colombia.
I have learned much of what he covers here with my friend Beatrice from Venezuela, but like what he adds for fishing for crawdads, eating palm hearts, and how to start a fire from the cotton-like seed pods and strips of rubber tire. Using rubber is obviously not my first choice, but it does burn long and well, even wet, a highly prized commodity. A look at the leaves that he is walking on clearly shows that he is there during the dry season in the Osa peninsula. The bamboo, the leafs, much of what his is using there is dry. It isn’t even that dry in Panama City, yet alone the Darien rainforest.
One of the most important things, he says, when in the jungle, is not to panic. This project is about learning to live and acting out of trust in God and not fear. The Darien is my catechism. Enjoy the videos! C
Eternal Recurrence: From Tucson to Tocumen
Kuna woman from Panama
One of the things that I value most about the opportunity to do this project, is that now approaching two years, it has become a frame, a window, to view my life and its patterns. I see myself, I am beginning to know myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, what gets me up and keeps me going, what makes me stumble and stop, and what helps me to get back on the road of my life.
I found this video today, looking for another video to post (now that the website is back up!). I didn’t have the opportunity to see this video when it first came out, as I left walking, crossing over the border into Mexico when it was released.
Again, I am in the same place, but in a different location, now in Panama City, getting ready and gearing up to cross the Darien Gap, perhaps the most difficult border yet, and perhaps not difficult at all as I have yet to try. And the story is the same. I am in a comfortable location in Panama City, a city that I quite enjoy, and when I look towards the next step, it “looks like” from what others tell me, not a fun place to go.
Over 100 miles of roadless dense jungle, from Yavisa, Panama, to HWY 62 in Colombia, a region infested with landmines, drug traffickers, the Colombian guerilla movement FARC, paramillitaries, a recent outbreak of equestrian encephalitis, denge fever, malaria, and it is actually illegal to cross. I face the prospect of being jailed when I enter into Colombia, that is if the Panamanian police allow me to walk beyond Boca de Cupe. 10 FARC soldiers have been killed in Panamanian raids over the last 2 months, increasing tensions, and there is more…rainy season, food, drinkable water, money (should I carry it?), most important: coming back to my children…and the list goes on.
Yet, what if this is all in my mind, all in my thinking that is stopping me from making this next leap of faith? Is taking this next step be an unnecessary thing? Why don’t I just go to Cartegena in Colombia and make up distance that I would have walked had I crossed the Darien.
All these issues and more, unresolved at the moment, my fears keeping me paralyzed and not able to move from Panama City, where I am working, raising money to purchase the things I need to make this crossing safely and successfully, utimately knowing in my heart that all it takes is to get off the couch to produce what has never been done before, to break the patterns of always the same happening over and over…to face what is uncomfortable in my life without the fear that stops me.
Sending out a special thanks to Mikki and Nadia at Elevate films for all they do. Their life and those at Elevate committed to others always. Thank you.
From Costa Rica: Interview with Chris Howe about his walk from L.A. to Brazil (part1) #72 TheRawInspiration.TV
Video shot in May, 2010, by a wonderfully warm man, Ka Sundance, a life coach and inspirational speaker, living THE life, now in Dominical, Costa Rica.
Part 1:
Part 2
Video from Guadalajara (Lake Chapala)
Shot by a friend that I stayed with from couchsurfing.org just outside of Guadalajara, Mexico, near Lake Chapala.
Iamwalking Video
Iamwalking movie introduction directed by Jeff Schneider and produced by Elevate Films .
TED Speaker Daniel Kahneman on Happiness
Many of you who have been following this project know that it is multifaceted, multidimensional, at times academic, at others allegorical, spiritual, metaphysical, and still at others, it aims to speak simple truths available to the widest audience possible. And on almost every level, this project explores the concept of what it means and the means to be happy.
The walk and especially the prayers are part and parcel of this process, this inquiry, within the examination of time, of our past, our potential for the future, and how our perception and our experience of time fuels us in the moment.
World-renowned psychologist, and Nobel laurete Daniel Kahneman, speaks to this as well, and while not offering definitive answers, is definitely asking the right questions, contributing to and furthering the conversation about what it means to be happy in our relation to time, experience, story, and subjective memory.
