It takes 21 days to make an action a habit. Just 21 days to engrain something into your mind. After 21 days you won’t have to actively think about performing a certain action. It will become passive action, an absent minded action. After 21 days, it will become a natural part of your daily routine.
As our time in Refugio Bartola comes to a close, after 21 days ironically, I have experienced how actions that seemed so abnormal to me on day one have become a part of my daily routine. As a reflection of my time spent in the rainforest, I have decided to focus on 21 things that have become a habit. 21 things that are now engrained in my memory. 21 things I will never forget.
- Tethering a dragonfly in less than 30 seconds.
- Being content with putting on slightly damp clothes every day.
- Knowing how to get my sunken boot out of mud that comes up to my knee.
- Avoiding bullet ants at any cost. Or any bugs larger than my pinky finger for that matter.
- Knowing how to get numerous termites off my backpack after I absentmindedly put it on a huge termite trail.
- Having no phone or internet access and loving every second of it.
- When losing my footing fighting the split-second response to grab the nearest tree next to me since they usually have very long, sharp spines on their bark.
- Having the stamina to hike almost 6 miles every day, in addition to realizing it’s alright to just sit down in the mud when the trails gets too hard to maneuver.
- Learning how to identify and catch strawberry frogs.
- Using numbers and colors of trail markers to know exactly where I am.
- Knowing how to maneuver up very steep slopes only using the vines in the mud as grips for my feet.
- Following a troop of monkeys, regardless of where they take me.
- Recruiting three girls to remove large insects, including a five-inch long praying mantids from our room.
- Being able to identify the animal by its eye-shine.
- Having to revise my classification of small, medium, and large spiders. Black widows at home are tiny compared to the spiders I have seen here.
- Watching my step on muddy trails to avoid stepping on turtles.
- Avoiding hummingbirds and bats that come really close to crashing into my face at full speed.
- Knowing what trees to stand under when it starts pouring buckets during our experiments.
- Clearing spider webs from trails without having the spider swing into my face or on my clothes.
- Avoid spraying DEET too close to my mouth since it turns my lips numb.
- Not screaming when something starts crawling in my hair. Or in my shirt, pants, and boots.
So there we have it. 21 things I will never forget. Habits I hopefully will be able to use again sometime soon.