The jungle is alive with anxiety. It's not the big cats or wild snakes that send me into fits. It's the tiny clusters of life clinging to every branch that send a hot wire through my brain.
This is odd to admit. I have a fear of holes, clusters and tightly packaged circles. Nowhere has it been as acute as in the rain forests of Costa Rica. I just returned from a two-week reporting trip and eco-tour with fans of our station, and the every time we stepped into the wet and spongy forest I wondered what terrible surprise might lurk around the next strangler fig tree.
This fear of mine is real — I think. They call it trypophobia. Look, NPR has even written about it. For me, those stupid statutes of dogs or turtles covered in a mosaic of stones stoke my hysteria. Just do a quick Google image search for "cluster anxiety" and your own fears might emerge.
For me, it began a few years ago with a nightmare. In it, the back of my scalp itched terribly. As I scratched and picked, out came row after row of seeds — just like you'd find in the swollen head of a sunflower. As each seed emerged, my scalp was left with latticework of holes that looked almost exactly like this fungus.
Agh! One dream and I'll never be the same again!
Over time I've discovered the root of this fear: Organic growth. Like a wart or a cancer, it’s the type of insidious progression that consumes a host. And the thing about the rain forest is this: stuff is growing everywhere, on top and underneath, below and in the center of things. Life is piled upon life. And it's the tiniest stuff that’s digging into the biggest stuff, breaking it down and spreading. Spreading. Spreaddddddding.
You may think I'm nuts. And it's possible I am. I'm happy to report that once I discovered the rainforest was alive with clusters, I found some comfort — if not obsession — in confronting each new example with a rational curiosity.
Oh, look! A seed pod with only half its carriage remaining.
Wow, that decaying leaf is covered in black thorns!
My, oh my! The tufts sprouting from that caterpillar's back must be a helpful defense … or something.
There's a beautiful — yes, beautiful — fungus emerging in brown and yellow circles from a rotting stump.
And then, of course, I return home and this theory falls apart. I search YouTube for trypophobia and the horror begins again.
