Finding Myself in a Wilderness
The True Story of a Modern Jungle Jane
by Laurie Huffman
(click on each picture for a larger view)

Some people buy ski boats with their disposable income. Others buy summer homes. I bought a jungle.

I came by my love for tropical environments as four-year-old child living in Coco Beach, Florida. My father was a rocket scientist helping design the Titan missile at the nearby Kennedy Space Station.

My dad’s head was in the stars, for the most part, but my six-year-old brother and I were usually down on our knees in the mud playing with our back-yard menagerie, which included monstrous land turtles and baby alligators.

I remember the two of us fishing off the dock for blowfish, so we could rub their tummies and watch them inflate like balloons. When we threw them back into the water they would float around for a few laughable moments before they could decompress and finally get back below the surface of the water.

At that early age I relished the opportunity of circling myself with growing things. I liked the way bugs and animals looked. I enjoyed watching them wiggle around and I relished the heat of the tropics and the green that surrounded me.

I was glad to leave the stars to my father because my heart, even at that age, was caught up in the circle of life that kept turning through the hot, humid, postage-stamp size jungle that was the backyard of our Florida home.

Pint Sized Teacher
We later moved to Sacramento, with its adobe architecture and golden fields that seemed the very opposite of our steamy, swampy Florida paradise.

So I put my aside my role as budding swamp explorer and tropical biologist for a few years and jumped headfirst into the role of schoolteacher. I was already in third grade and the path into the future seemed clear to me.

In order to prepare for my teaching activities, I would solicit surplus pages from lesson grading books from elementary school mentors at the end of the academic year and use them in the “neighborhood school” that I conducted during the summer in my back yard. I created lesson plans, had classroom lectures, took attendance, and handed out grades.

My dear brothers and most of the kids from our Sacramento neighborhood made up the student body in my little school. They were really great students, though I think nobody ever actually learned anything.

Now it is three decades later and I’m a language professor with Los Medanos College. Everything now is different, of course, from the little backyard school when I was in third grade, except that I still am blessed with having an incredible set of students. However, the students in my classrooms now actually learn things from me. I’m teaching them to speak both Spanish and English and to become familiar with cultures that are different from their own.

My students usually leave each of my classes with a smile on their faces. As I shut off the light and walk out behind them, there’s a big smile plastered all over my face, as well. Learning is most efficient when conducted in an atmosphere of kindness and love. It is most effective when it is fun.

Living the American Dream
I’m a third-generation descendant of a family whose story illustrates the American Dream as vividly as any I’ve ever heard, I guess.

People say that if you come to America and are willing to work hard you can achieve almost anything. That doesn’t happen in every situation, of course, but in the case of our family, was absolutely true.

My grandfather was an immigrant field laborer from Mexico. He came riding to America in a boxcar in the 20’s and ultimately built a thriving Bay Area business. He accomplished all this without even being able to sign his name.

My father outdid my grandfather by becoming a genuine rocket scientist, eventually founding his own successful engineering company.

My mom had the most challenging career of all in managing our home so that everything happened smoothly. Everyone in my home, while I was growing up, had work to do. I can’t remember a moment during my childhood where anybody in my home was idle or bored.

I spent some years pursuing my mom’s career as a housewife, plus pursuing a second fulltime job as a teacher and graduate student.

My California life-style began to weigh heavily on my spirit. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, I was running vigorously, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I had schedules to keep, commuter traffic to put up with, and endless sequence of stressful days that I had to somehow endure. Besides all that, I was faced with the challenge of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I love the hills and hubbub of East County living. Some of the best people I ever met and greatest places I know about are found in the shadow of Mt. Diablo. But twelve months of this energetic lifestyle sometimes get to be too much.

I finally decided that I need a get-away. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to be able to flee to a place where I could shelter for a time from schedules, traffic, stress, and budgets? I began to dream of a place where I could wake up to the sounds of jungle animals and birds. I wanted to see green wherever I looked.

Supporting the American Dream with a Costa Rican Hideaway
Finally, I enrolled in graduate school and went to Costa Rica as part of an intensive program leading up to a Masters degree in Spanish. I fell in love with the country and with its people. I began to dream of someday retiring there and living a more quiet, relaxed, and spiritual life.

About a year later, I was offered the opportunity to buy a 50-acre rain forest on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I trembled a bit from both fear and excitement as I signed the deed and handed over my hard-earned money to my Costa Rican attorney.

In spite of my misgivings, I felt that I had just bought a piece of paradise! I was now responsible for hundreds of trees, banana plants, and coconut palms. I was the lord over an estate whose residents include innumerable monkeys, brilliant butterflies, comical toucans, small brightly colored endangered frogs, and bugs.

Especially bugs! Billions of bugs! Bugs of every shape and size — from mites so tiny that they ride from flower-to-flower in the nostrils of hummingbirds to magnificent rhinoceros beetles that might spill your drink if one of them landed on the top of your lemonade glass.

I love my jungle! I can take a throne-like seat on top of one of my hills overlooking the brilliant azure of the Caribbean and breathe my lungs full of the clean, pure, rich jungle-generated oxygen. I feel every part of my body being reenergized while the fragments of my spirit slowly resolve themselves into a perfectly centered and integrated whole.

I know just how he felt when Tarzan returned to his jungle and felt his conflicted Lord Greystoke persona fade into background as Jungle Dweller identity reasserted itself in all its simplicity and strength.

My jungle hide-away is the perfect retreat from which I can resolve problems and make decisions that cannot be made amid the demands, noise, and frantic din of my California life. The untamed nature of the jungle gives a sense of wholesomeness that helps me cope with the jangle of civilization.

I’m still trying to come to terms with the simplicity of my jungle life; and keep asking questions, that fortunately I also keep finding the answers to:

Can life really be this unencumbered?

Can I be sufficiently self-indulgent to allow myself to wake up every morning to the sounds of howler monkeys chasing each other through the beauty of the rain forest just outside my bedroom window?

Can I channel the same energy that gets me through my hectic days in California into acts of service to local Caribbean women and children?

Can I do things like nurture baby monkeys who are separated from their mothers, while at the same time growing and sell tropical woods and fruits in order to make a living?

Can I model a lifestyle for my sons that will be compelling enough for them to seek the same simplicity for themselves?

Wrestling with Paradise
I've played the role of jungle woman for the past eight years, retreating to my hidden paradise several times each year and asking myself these same questions over and over — all the while I’m planting seedlings and caring for the marvelous creatures in my jungle hide-away.

With help from local villagers, friends, and family-members, I have been building bridges and digging river channels, hacking out hiking trails, and building structures for protection against the tropical rainfall. I’ve also been planting sugar cane and tropical fruit trees to the delight of my three sons and the enjoyment of some of their wild animal pets.

I’m preparing to introduce my rain forest to folks who, like myself, love nature and are willing to experience the wild side of life.

Even more than attracting people to visit my jungle, I’m trying hard to promote the principle that you don’t have to be satisfied with whatever rut you’re stuck in. “Take risks!” I tell people. “Invest your life in something you believe in.” “Break the mold of your life.”

The underlying message I tell people is, “Don’t be your job.” Friends and acquaintances used to think of me as a professor. Now they come by and say things like, “How’s your jungle?”

I believe that all of us should pursue things that feed their spirit.

Anyway, buying my jungle was a real risk, but one that was worth taking. I have a caretaker named Rogelio whom I pay to watch over the place when I am not there. He recently confronted a group of men who were trying to poach trees and wild toucans from my property.

He told the men, “You must turn around and leave immediately. This property is owned by a señora from North America. If you touch anything that belongs here — even If you take just one small leaf off of one of the plants — it will be like pulling an eye out of her head.”

What a blessing to have such a person as Rogelio take care of my property! You couldn’t pay enough to find someone with the wisdom he showed in defusing that potential confrontation.

I’m heading back to paradise on two separate planned trips — January 4-11 and July 10-20. I lead an expedition of no more than fifteen people. This is more of an adventure or exploring trip than a mere sightseeing tour. Together we learn Spanish and Central American zoology. We will visit people living in jungle villages and in the thriving modern city of San Jose.

We plan to visit my jungle retreat and actually do some work for a few hours, perhaps planting small saplings that in a few years will grow into towering columns helping to brace the rainforest canopy against the sky.

As I move closer to the magical age of 50, reflect on the history of my family and of my life in California, and begin to consider the future of my sons, a vision is beginning to fill my mind.

I foresee a unique, unfettered lifestyle as we bask in the biodiversity, beauty, and tranquility of our jungle preserve. I’m trying to establish a staging area in my little jungle from which I can mount an offensive that will bring that vision into reality for a lot of us.

There are many things in my California life that have set my spirit fluttering like a bird trying to escape back to my private Costa Rican jungle retreat. Maybe it is our winter fogs or our East County traffic jams. Sometimes it’s simply the feeling I get while trying to understand the politics of my job. Or it is the pressure of trying to juggle my sons’ schedules. Or is it the stresses of budgeting enough to afford our comfortable California lifestyle?

When these tiresome demands of modern life begin beating against my spirit, I close my eyes and think about the breaths of pure oxygen that I soon will be taking in my own jungle paradise — the sounds, sights, and smells that will bring healing and contentment to my spirit.

My CV