Full Moon Hype
By Liisa Juuti
“Grrrt! Grrrt!” I’m in the climax of my
jungle adventure dream, crossing a river with a wounded animal in my arms, an
indigenous boy by my side and we’re trying to head to the nearest village. A
big bird appears from the jungle and we start following it.
“Grrrrt!” I wake up and realize there is a
huge raven right outside my camper. It’s 5 a.m. I’m trying to get back to my
adventure dream but the raven insists: “GRRRRRT!” So I give up and get up. “What
is it?!” I open the curtain to witness the most amazing, mesmerizing
start to a sunrise that I’ve ever seen in my life. The oranges, purples and
pinks accompany me into an exceptionally deep meditation. My morning
meditations have become my ultimate refuge and source of energy and inner peace
in this intense place.
The day starts apparently in an ordinary
manner, but I feel strange, as if that raven wanted to prepare me for
something. We have an unforgettable morning whale watching which simply cannot
be described by words. All of a sudden we, the 10 strangers in the boat, have
an experience so great and special to share that all we can do is smile and
cry. No words come out, nor are needed. “Magic and goodness prevail”, I think.
At noon I hear Priscila, one of our ladies
in the kitchen, running hysterically to the kitchen. She is crying in a way
that immediately switches me into an intuitive survival mode. The raven and my
meditation come to my mind as I run to her. Gisela, her 4 year old daughter is
choking with a candy in her throat. I remember an image from my childhood, my
mother with her hand literally inside my sister’s throat, pulling out the coin
she’d just accidentally swallowed. M-T and I go through an emergency plan as we
run to the camper area where the employees stay. Thank God no action was needed
– Gisela was already fine. After about a half an hour of shiatsu and emotional
support Priscila, Gisela’s mother, had calmed down, too.
On the second whale watch Shawna, our
extremely funny joke cracking guest from Washington took care of entertaining
us and the whales. She spends her days teaching Mexican teenager immigrants in
Arizona. In the middle of laughing and singing everything from Christmas songs
to the Sound of Music, Edelweiss and Happy Birthday, another guest accidently fell
over her. I couldn’t first see the pain in her from all the laughter and
singing, and it wasn’t until during happy hour that we noticed her totally
swollen ankle. “Once it took me a week to notice my hip was broken!” she
laughed with a hibiscus-margarita (that was her invention, by the way) in her
hand and ice over her ankle.
I crashed into bed emotionally exhausted,
thanking God for saving little Gisela’s life, for these amazing guests we get
to attend every year, and for the whales bringing so much joy to our lives. No
ravens around my camper.
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