RTGFKAR Joins the blog

Ramon The Gringo Formerly Known As Raymond or RTGFKAR has joined Monkeymind in the blogosphere. Here is his first entry:


A Typical Atypical Morning
It’s 5:30. Awakened by some noise or internal clock, since I have been going to bed extraordinarily early the last week or so, my efforts to return to sleep are fruitless. I arise and try to quietly make my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee without the flushing toilet, the squeaking door hinges or the banshee-like howl of the unplumb doors screaming as the wood rubs against the tile floors.
Surprisingly, having wakened no one, or, if I did, they groggily wrote it off as the remnants of a nightmare, and drifted back to sleep, I take my cup of coffee, and passing two more angrily vocal doors and the jangling of searching for the correct key to open the last barrier to the exterior, I gain access to the patio.
It is dark. Or almost dark. No moon, but the night is giving way to day as the Earth turns us in to sunlight.
But I don’t notice the light, or lack thereof. My other senses are drowned out by sound. In the bedroom, a few loud calls sifted through the slats of the jalousie windows, but nothing like this. I am standing at the side of a rushing river; no, a rushing river plunging over a cataract. The noise is astounding.
I close my eyes, and , after a few moments, the sound does not diminish, but clarifies into a thousand bird calls, overlapping, echoing, complementing, conflicting, blending into the roar that mimics the loudest riparian rush I have ever heard.
I make my way in the dim light to the center of the yard, and, standing on the concrete lid of the septic system, I turn full circle. I cannot distinguish the stand of coffee trees twenty yards away from the mass of Volcan Baru several miles away, from the bulk of the low hill across the road, several hundred meters away. They are all silhouettes in deeper shades of gray, like images from a southwestern painting come to life, cocooning me in a bowl of sound.
Above the roar, I begin to sort out a few landmarks from the fabric of sound: here a “Caw”, there a “Whit-whit-whit Woo” like a rock or log in the river creating a unique current or backwash. As I concentrate, I can separate the background fabric into threads of different chirps and coos and tweets that interweave. If I don’t concentrate, they flow together.
The sky lightens, and the hills and trees begin to coalesce into their own identities, but the sound remains and I notice… there are no birds flying! No soaring, no swooping shapes flashing by. The sound comes from the Earth itself and the trees and rocks that are growing out of it.
Another voice joins the chorus. More shrill, and distinct, it is one I can identify: “Aw-Aw-Ca-Aww”, strident, loud enough to be noticed, but nothing like the “Cock-a-doodle-doo” it is supposed to sound like.
Here, it is ever-present, not just the wake-up call at sunrise. I can pinpoint the fowls in the various yards around our casa, and some from farther away.
I look around again, and notice the grays are resolving themselves into discernible shapes, and suddenly the sound has dimmed, and as I turn, shapes begin to flit from tree to tree and soar overhead. The river of sound is dissolving as if evaporated by the light. Echoes and splashes of sound will color the day, even through the heaviest rains, but I will have to wait 'til tomorrow to hear the torrent rushing by again.