The Bush (Jungle)

It's lovely to sit on our veranda and listen to the birds.  The heat has also encouraged the hatching of crickets and cicadas.  Sometimes the sounds are almost overwhelming.  It's early morning and the Chachalakas are announcing their locations to each other and the world.  Its a goofy, but wonderful chorus.  

A sadness to me is that more and more of these sounds are joined by those of chainsaws.  Everyone in Belize seems to be obsessed with cutting down the bush.  It gives me a small hint of what must be happening in the Amazon jungles.  Belizeans are obsessed with cutting down every tree, setting fire to what they've cut and planting corn.  The diet here revolves around the maize or hard corn.  They can't seem to tolerate a tall tree.  Traveling to Spanish Lookout, where the Mennonites raise crops and cattle, the land has been totally cleared and it resembles the Midwestern U.S.  The gringos are so afraid of bugs and snakes that they clear the land, forgetting why they came here in the first place. 

When we first started clearing for our buildings, we allowed the boys to cut everything.  We finally realized that wasn't right and had them leave the trees and just clear the underbrush.  This keeps the snakes away from the house, but lets us enjoy the shade of the trees and the residing birds and animals.  The cleared area is to the east of us, which is the direction most hurricanes would come, so we hope to spare the buildings from falling trees.  

The cleared area is probably only three to four acres.  We plan to leave the remaining eight or nine acres in bush as an island of refuge for wildlife.  It's small, but the best we can do.  

It's so wonderful up here on our hill, with the almost constant breezes and the beauty of the bush.  What a blessing.