The rain came hard and fast this past weekend — the kind that doesn’t just fall, but roars down in blinding sheets. Downtown Boquete, Panama flooded, streets turned into brown rivers, and shopkeepers fought to keep the water out.
Up here on the mountain, we watched the torrents roll past — the blessing and the burden of gravity. We were lucky. Others lost everything as roads collapsed and whole hillsides slid down covering everything.
The geography of the Cordillera Highlands is a paradox: supremely benign one moment, wickedly unpredictable the next. Life here demands fortitude and adaptability — qualities that, I think, shape both mountain dwellers and writers.
Today, instead of working on the sequel to Chasing Tropical Ice, we organized the digging of new French drains (basically a ditch lined with plastic and and then filled with gravel) to route water away from the BBQ area we’re building. It’s not glamorous, but it’s satisfying — a reminder that creation isn’t always about words on a page. Sometimes it’s about channeling what’s already flowing and trying to give it direction.
More rain is predicted for Thursday and Friday. Hurricanes are crossing the Atlantic, spinning toward the Caribbean and the U.S. coast. We’re below the hurricane belt here, thankfully, but we get the blowback — the low-pressure tantrums that swirl off every storm that slams into the Gulf or southern Atlantic.
Today, the sun breaks through in quick flashes, bright on wet leaves, then gone again. Clouds gather on the horizon. Cool and quiet mist from the valley envelopes everything. It’s a rhythm I’ve come to love: light, dark, pause, repeat. The same rhythm that runs through writing and life in general. You never know what the next page, or the next storm, will bring.
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