El Yunque is also where we met Frank, shown at right (last name omitted to protect his privacy). A longtime electrical engineer, Frank had a personal crisis that initially dragged him down but ultimately led him to a life as a park ranger, something he’s done now for 15 years. “I work as close to heaven as you can get,” he says.
Frank will be 72 this year, though in person he looks a decade or two younger. (The light breezes of the mountains and Frank’s obvious gusto for his constant level of physical activity probably has something to with it.) He does a whole set of ranger-y tasks: trail maintenance, guiding visitors, search and rescue, etc. He roams around with a wide-brimmed hat, a hand-carved walking stick he made himself, and a necklace with a large ivory-looking tooth on it. A few times a day, he leads short hikes for visitors starting about two thirds of the way up the main mountain. Lani and I were lucky enough to get him all to ourselves on a slow afternoon. We wandered with him under the variegated canopy.
He talked about the hermaphroditic rain forest snails, then followed up by finding a pair that were in the process of mating (very, very, very slowly). He pointed out the 1,000-year-old palo colorado trees. Ecologists can’t measure their age by growth rings because trees don’t have growth rings in a place where there is no seasonal cycle.
Frank also spied some of the tiniest orchids in the world.
Clinging to the underside of small leaves that are themselves holding onto a tree trunk, these orchids have flowers far smaller than the “a” inside the @ sign on your keyboard.
I’ll tell more about how Frank ended up in the rain forest in Part II.
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