We distinguish ourselves with personal features that separate us from others. Our identities are built of unique traits. That is how I came to identify with bipolar disorder. Quite it was such a prominent part of my life for so long that it is challenging to put my finger on what I am today.

I think it is normal for people to long to identify with other people who share something with us. When I was first attending Quaker Meetings, I began to consider myself a Friend, or a member of the Religious Society of Friends. This meant a lot to me because historically Quakers played a pretty big role. Quakers were involved in some serious social change movements. As early as George Fox, the man who founded this religion, Friends have refused to remove their hats even for the king of England. In the United States, Quakers were influential in the movement against slavery and for women’s suffrage as well as the civil rights movement. In 2001 I traveled to a settlement of Friends in Monteverde, Costa Rica where I lived for a semester. I never really explored outside walking range, but was known to walk up to twelve kilometers a day at that time.

In Monteverde, I attended a Quaker Meeting but learned a good deal more than just to identify with the Quakers. I lived so near the rainforest, walking with my sister in the Busque Nubosa or cloud forest preserve; I appreciated nature and learned about ecology. I did not know it at the time, but I would take this appreciation with me back into the United States. Later I would find it was difficult to untangle the bipolar disorder and culture shock from returning to the States. It would be a challenge for me to separate those mentally ill thoughts and feelings from a budding environmentalism, activism, and religiosity.

In Costa Rica I lived with my sister, a botanical artist who was determined to add meaning to my life. She encouraged me to pick up fallen epiphyte flowers, scattered on the path from fifty feet up in the canopy. I was her assistant. I ended up in her artwork, sometimes positing, other times unexpectedly, gazing over the edge of the continental divide. There were places where we could stand and visibly see the Pacific Ocean to our left and the Atlantic Ocean to our right. The beauty of places such as that, and many Appalachian locations quite honestly, are so stunning, they harbor a home in the human soul. My identity is composed of scenes like those: reasons for fighting, for gripping onto nature, grappling with factors that make the environment unhealthy.

Everyone who ever has spent a week in Monteverde seems to have seen the Howler Monkeys there. But Anna and I experienced a deeper wilderness. We spent all day wandering paths that Anna navigated like an expert. At one point hundreds of migrating white faced monkeys converged with our path. Anna told me to sit tight, knowing the wild animals could grow defensive if they felt threatened. I sat tight. They swung through the forest for almost an hour. They left me shaking, quaking quite literally, and trembling at their power.

I mention these things because this trip changed my life, my world view, and my experience of nature. For the longest time after this trip abroad, I was hyper conscious of limiting my use of material possessions as a personal attempt to boycott the behaviors that hurt the environment. Today I think I could use a refresher trip to Monteverde. Many people who go abroad get an understanding of the global meaning of poverty. I must say I too gleaned that understanding. But I walked so much, I spent every waking moment in the woods, spotting flocks of parrots and rare animals, I learned so many plant names, I became so familiar with the wilderness and these things are so distant for me today. In fact I write this in a coffee shop, noisy with voices and music, cluttered by spinning fans and food people would be better off not eating. Maybe there is a coffee here from Costa Rica; maybe it is fair trade. But my memories in me are fading. I can write down what Costa Rica means to me, but I need a refresher course to infuse it in my soul.

One day, around Easter 2001, my grandmother was dying. Anna and I walked down the road of our rental house. Usually we walked up the hill towards one of the established nature preserves. But Anna wanted to see the unusual temperate boreal forest the other direction, down a way I had never been. We walked in silence. Anna, usual set on educating me about biology and rarely quiet, seemed somber. I trailed behind her observing trailers where people lived and farms of cows. We got to a point where the trail met a view. Because of the lay of the land in Costa Rica, views can be stunning beyond words. I remember making a promise to the land in the height of my ego. I said I would return to that mountainside overlooking San Luis and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean. I promised to protect that view, to use the “American privilege” Anna encouraged me I had, and to use the privilege for good, to return for the land.

It is eleven years later, and I am doing less and less for the land. But completing my degree is something, if I stop thinking of myself shards of pottery. I simply am not broken or I am done being fixed. The world is larger than me. The world craves justice and liberty. The environment needs respect and attention. I am needed. The mountains from Costa Rica to Appalachia need a voice; they need someone who will sacrifice a lot for them. They need a person devoted and committed to their preservation. Just as I have healed my mental illness as well as I can, the environment needs a steward, a patron who will fight for the beauty in it.