A Place in the Rain Forest: Settling the Costa Rican Frontier

By Darryl Cole-Christensen

Book Overview

In the 1950s, Darryl Cole-Christensen and his family were among the first settlers of the Coto Brus, an almost impenetrable, mountainous rain forest region of southeastern Costa Rica. In this evocative book, he captures the elemental struggles and rewards of settling a new frontier--an experience forever closed to most people in Western, urbanized society. With the perspective of more than forty years' residence in the Coto Brus, Cole-Christensen ably describes both the settlers' dreams of bringing civilization and progress to the rain forest and the sweeping and irreversible changes they caused throughout the ecosystem as they cut the rain forest down. Writing neither to apologize for nor to defend their actions, he instead illuminates the personal and subjective factors that cause people to risk danger and hardship for the uncertain rewards of settling a frontier. In his own words, Cole-Christensen says, This is a book for the scientist who wants to recapture a sense of an incalculable world departed, for the student who asks: How is it that our forebears changed and restructured this land? For the adventurer who dreams of the expanse of frontiers, for every person who, having passed once through the darkening forest along a path in twilit stillness looks back to find that a blanket of murmurs remains.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292711913
• ISBN13: 9780292711914
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Evocation of the Rainforest

It is beautifully written--- the writer must also be a poet. The evocation of the forest, the air and the rain, the sweating labor of the horses and the men, the mud, all was done very well. The fine language combined with the author's humility made this an unusual book to come out of a backwoods experience. It is about farming on the frontier but it is also very much about his own growth!

This is a deep, thought provoking and wonderful book.

A Place in the Rain Forest is not only the story of an adventure, but a journey of the spirit. I found myself listening to the sound of the rain falling in an untouched wilderness and walking with bare foot peasants as they came to settle a new land. Cole-Christensen had a tremendous insight to the character of the land,the people who live on it, and the consequences of their actions. It is a story for any one who has ever wondered what it would be like to go to a wilderness and become a settler.....