By Luis Villa

“Luis, ¿crees que estarás bien?” “Luis, will you be ok?”

I was asked this on several occasions as my time in Costa Rica drew to a close.  I had been living there for twelve years, immersed in its abundant natural beauty.  Around 25% of this Central American country’s land area is conserved as a national park or other nationally-protected area.  Tropical forests cover approximately half of Costa Rica.  Similar in size to the state of West Virginia, it hosts roughly the same number of bird species as does all of North America.

Many Costa Ricans inherently understand the wellness benefits associated with having close contact with nature and the outdoors.  The aforementioned question was posed to me with this in mind.  The people asking it understood that moving back to Los Angeles, meant going to a place that did not offer quite the same access to a trail, river, or forest as what I had grown accustomed to.  I probably reinforced this understanding shortly after returning to southern California.  From a pedestrian overpass, I snapped a picture of the L.A. River below me, sharing it with friends and family in Costa Rica.  They had never before seen a river with its banks and stream bed covered in concrete.  I tried in vain to highlight the lone sea gull in the image as evidence of a healthy, living riparian ecosystem, but folks simply responded with incredulous texts.

Despite unnatural looking rivers, my answer to all who ask if I will be OK in L.A. is “¡claro que sí!”, “yes, of course!”

More than a decade of total immersion in Costa Rica’s explicit, all-encompassing nature has made me more appreciative of the subtler instances of the natural world and outdoors beauty that occur in urban settings such as L.A. (including solitary sea gulls).  I have never been more aware of and enthralled by all the gorgeous trees lining southern California streets, the abundance of neighborhood birds singing in the mornings, and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, replete with exceptional outdoors recreational opportunities, serving as a majestic northern backdrop to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.  In fact, my first outing with Latino Outdoors was a hike in these mountains, a little over an hour’s drive for me. Thanks to my keen awareness that a trek into this wilder part of L.A. County is not an everyday thing for me, I savored it in the way that a famished backpacker relishes their rationed out meals.

So ¡claro que sí!  I know I’ll be OK as long as I maintain a deep appreciation for subtle nature and an outdoors that is not always readily accessible.

The rest of the LO team and I invite the support of everyone who shares our enthusiasm for getting diverse communities of people outdoors and doing away with real and perceived barriers to nature.  We thank all people and organizations who already contribute in many different ways.