La Mesa

Today is sunny and Taller, a local villager, has come on his motorcycle to help Pecos build a table (mesa). We are using an old bark-covered slice of tree from a pile kept under a tarp in the jungle patch near our rental house. The planks belong to The Kid, who surely won’t mind.

Taller is the Tico caretaker for the family farm. Yesterday he spent the entire day with us and we hiked our little finca and also the family farm belonging to my three children and their spouses. Amazing. Our finca is situated in a wide, sloping bowl that faces southeast to beautiful vistas. In the distance is the great Mt. Chirripo. Taller has agreed to be our caretaker, too, telling us he will work for us on Tuesdays. Already he has planted rows of pinas (pineapple), bananas and other frutas on our farm. We hike through chest-high grass (to be mowed this coming Tuesday, Taller tells us) and select a site for our little house. We admire every metre of the property and imagine our gardens, orchards and flowers.

At the family farm Taller patiently walks us through groves of fruit trees, telling us about each one. Our Spanish improves by the minute – which, at this point, means we can understand one word out of thirty. We converse using much sign language. Taller tells us a story of going to Toronto, Canada for his honeymoon six years ago. He and his bride were handcuffed, held in jail for three days by immigration officials, and then deported back to Costa Rica. We lament the actions of immigration officials everywhere and discuss the plights of Nicos (Nicaraguans) coming into this country and Mexicans coming into the U.S.

Past the fruit groves we enter the dense jungle, following Taller on a narrow path as he points out various trees, shrubs and vines – including the sacred Costa Rican mountain palmetto, whose huge fronds are used in catholic churches from North to South America, he tells us. Costa Ricans would never cut a mountain palmetto.

We follow a path that turns into steep mud steps, carefully cut into the mountainside by machete at what seems nearly vertical. Down, down we go, hiking more than either of us has done in years or possibly decades. Finally we come to a magnificent waterfall that plunges straight down to another waterfall below and then continues its whitewater fall down the mountainside. We stand on slippery rocks, clutching to thin vines for dear life. Taller explains in sign language that The Kid had once moved mucho rocks here to make a swimming hole on the landing between the waterfalls. He demonstrates how The Kid runs off the rocks, grabs his ankles and leaps through the air to land in the pool of icy, rushing water. I am certain that this story has been told over and over in this village and beyond. The Kid is fearless and strung with high energy.

Taller and Pecos haul the two planks from the jungle and lay them on our grassy lawn. Then they leave in our rental vehicle to go to the home of another man to borrow a chain saw. They return shortly and Taller has me show him the desired size of the table. He cuts three equal lengths from the slab of wood with the chain saw and then turns each over to cut a striped series of half-inch cuts on the back side, top to bottom. Pecos is then directed to use the machete to hack out each cut. This is rather worrisome as Pecos is more of the city gringo type than the village macho type. Valiant once again, he leans each shortened plank against a small tree and hacks away.

As Pecos finishes each one, Taller uses his own machete to cut away the bark from the edges and stays busy running a hand belt-sander over and over each plank, smoothing it down to lumberyard perfection with smooth edges. He took another smaller plank and cut it into two equal lengths and then crosswise to make four legs for the legs and two side braces. Using his machete again with the blade against the wood and a hammer striking the blade, he meticulously spliced and fit all parts of the table together and nailed it tight. Scraps of slab wood were cut to size, trimmed machete-style, and then sanded to make side edges for the tabletop, finishing it off nicely. We were impressed. The table is heavy and we think it is built from ironwood. The legs resemble red oak.

Pecos worked alongside Taller for quite a while, but clearly Taller was the mastermind of Tico furniture-building, crafting this attractive kitchen-size table to perfection without modern tools or measure. While here, he also used a weed-eater on the entire lawn. Total cost for the day: $16 US. I will always treasure my Costa Rican mesa. Best of all, Pecos now knows how to build furniture Tico-style and we need a houseful. 