I will be posting occasional field notes and asides from my travels in this space as well as straight up chronicles, reports and opinion pieces. The following is from the Amazon:
Nighttime in the jungle. I’m in a hammock. The fire is burning to my right. The cicadas are on full throttle. In the distance an owl, a toucan, macaws, frogs. Different noises than the typical forest.
I just ate a potato. We found it and dug it up. We buried it beneath the fire to cook. I drank water from a vine. I learned which trees hold magnesia. Which ones are filled with licorice that the Germans, I’m told, buy and make Chiclet gum from.
We hear things rustling among the trees: “Here. No. There.” I’m with a two local guides. Branches crack. Leaves crunch. The fire’s pops become sounds of solace; fire keeps intruders away.
I notice darkness only truly turns to black when you shine a light into the sky.
We are some 50 miles away from the Ariau Towers eco lodge outside Manaus where I stopped before hopping into a canoe to get out here. This is as far into the jungle as I can get in a day. Of course, it’s night now. Dawn will take me farther into the jungles’ s depths.
Alan, one of my guides, informs me that the last time he was out this far he lost place of his canoe. He had to swim and wade for hours through the rainforest’s wetlands to find it. That’s dangerous, he says, because of alligators and snakes.
I pray he remembers where we docked this time.
Something is approaching camp. I can hear it make its way closer and closer…