elusiveworld

5am,San Martine, Amazon.

Here I write to usher in the dawn. The cock has crowed his morning alarm and now a breeze rustles the trees along the cocha – the peripheral effects of the Santa Rosa weather system which can strip roofs of palm from village shacks.

The deep dark shroud of night is giving way to lighter shades of grey and it will not be long before morning arrives. For now I sit at a desk fashioned from a single tree. My pen moves quickly, connecting my thoughts with the paper harmoniously as this time between day and night always allows. Quiet and still, before the sounds in the canopy wake the people and they go about their daily life in the way they have done for thousands of years. The paper is of the tree and we are of the rainforest. What is more apt than to stain these pages with my own reflection of this place?

I wish for a dawn where day never comes, a constant grey zone between the lines where in my own thoughts I can understand my place in the world. I trust in decision, yet deep down I know that fate is the ultimate decider. I strive only to live as closely as I can to my destiny, so that I can meet it on my own terms rather than be pushed up against that reality without a moment’s notice.

Of course there are risks operating in the jungle, but these are carefully weighed. One bite from a coral snake, or a tug from below by a full grown caiman would spell a certain end to this life. As explorers we accept these risks and tread with care in lands where man is not master. The longer we stay here, the more we understand our place in the ecosystem. There is a tribe in Brazil who to initiate a boy into manhood, require of him to scale a tree and beat a wasp nest. The boy leaves the tree so badly stung, that death is not uncommon. This ritual stems from the belief that once the world was ruled by insects and wasps emerged the victors, and by being stung so violently by these insects, the tribe can affirm their place in nature, and act respectfully within it’s diversity.

By listening to our guides and studying their ways, we can become closer to the environment we live in and act less as cogs of a destructive machine, but become individual agents of positive change. Only by placing ourselves in a living nature where man takes second place can this realisation be achieved. Perhaps this is the most valuable of lessons. To leave the rainforest humbled, and willing to give of ourselves rather than take the resources treated respectfully by others in their native lands.