The Spirit of Cuyabeno

There is a place, remote and mapless, where one needs to hear the call of the birds to be sure that time isn’t standing still. Only their shrill calls can break the visual spell of this place. Here, the trees are kings. In the shadow of one grows another. Everywhere one looks, their roots and branches and trunks writhe in a primeval dance as old as our breathing planet. They claw their way toward the light in an endless cycle of life and death. Here, amid this watery world, flooded by the rains that fall on the Andes’ peaks thousands of meters above, they defy gravity; they perform the seemingly impossible. Their leaves dance in the breeze, and their branches sway. They harbor unimaginable biological riches, which, in our ignorance, we would banish with the sway of a chainsaw. Here, in this place in the eastern Amazon, the trees form patterns, patterns upon patterns. Mesmerizing and infinite, beautiful, and life-giving.