Rain Forests—An Evolutionary Centerpiece.
I have always had an inordinate interest in nature. Whatever reality is, nature would seem to be the closest we could come to such a concept. Front and center for any study of nature are the rainforests. While these cover less than 2% of the earth’s total surface area, 50% of the earth’s plants and animals are found there. There are two types, the temperate rain forests such as found in North America’s Pacific Northweast, and these used to exist on all continents except Antartica. Today, only 50% of these forests still exist, eliminated by human population expansion.
Rainforests play a major role in weather patterns and temperature regulation. Just in the Amazon Basin alone is found one fifth of the world’s fresh water. While 70% of plants identified as useful in the treatment of cancer are found only in rainforests, only 1% of the tropical rainforests species have been analyzed for their medicinal value.
From an original 6 million square miles, only 2.4 million square miles remain and these are disappearing at a rate of 5-10% per decade. Not only rainforests are disappearing but so are species of all sorts, and at a rate 1000 faster than if humans were not so voracious in their population growth and activities. In the past, the normal extinction rate was about 1-5 species per year. By midcentury as many as 30-50 percent of current species may be extinct or almost extinct.
Be all this as it may, and when all is said and done, very little is being done to stop any of this. So current scientists are full of crap, or the faith based cabal of reality deniers really are getting better answers from their unsubstantiated beliefs.
Like many biologically trained scientists, I have always wanted to spend time in a tropical rainforests where the principles which have guided the evolutionary process have been so active. Diversity is never so diverse as in a rainforest. HOWEVER, the more one knows about rain forests, the least attractive residing in one would be. Riding in a boat down the Amazon River is not exactly being in a rain forest, any more than a pebble passing from mouth to anus in a digestive tract has ever really been inside our body. The digestive tract is essentially a tunnel. Nothing is really inside our body physiologically until in passes through the wall of the intestine and gets into our blood stream.
If I could spend several hours in a rain forest, then leave and have a sumptuous meal at a nice restaurant, then retire for the night in a Sleep Number bed, this would be great. At least the four hours of misery would be well rewarded. Since actually spending any amount of time in a real rain forest would be rather unpleasant, I experience the reality of a rainforest vicariously via the words of those who have done such a thing.
In 2008 Ed Stafford set out to literally walk the length of the Amazon. No boat riding, just trekking through the Amazon from one end to the other.
He started out with a partner, but that didn’t last very long at all. Maybe the partner was too smart. Ed actually made it, but it took 860 days, over two years. For all but 4 months of this journey Ed had a local chap named ‘Cho’ tag along as his companion. So what is a rainforest really like? I could summarize the book I guess, but think it better I let Ed’s own words do the talking and leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions. So here goes:
It need be mentioned that most of the indigenous towns are no longer absent any knowledge of the outside world. “The village has no road access but we were amazed to see the Internet in the school as well as mobile phone reception, satellite dishes, generators, computers, etc. had been brought in by donkey.” As a result of climate change “the rains that used to fall for four months of the year scarcely lasted more than a month” and the crops undependable, so residents searched for new ways to make money.
“and marveled at how foul old people’s mouths could look after a lifetime of chewing coca and not brushing their few remaining teeth.”
“After three hours we had made 400 meters horizontally and 200 meters vertically. We were cutting through dense, tangled undergrowth and crawling under and over fallen trees to make any ground.”
“at one point on this 50 meter ascent I had my arms around Sergio’s waist to make him heavier so he could pull Oz up a vertical face that had no handholds. Ridiculous stuff like that you do because there’s no option. Your life is dependent on a dead tree not snapping or a clump of grass not pulling out of the earth.”
“Sergio warned me that if we did mistakenly walk in on an active drugs processing plant we would be killed immediately. “No two ways about it…..with satellite phones, Internet, GPS and modern weapons, the drugs industry is far better equipped than the Peruvian Police.”
“The Peruvian police were not allowed to enter this area, and it was, in effect, outside the law. If the police came here they would be killed.”
Ed often had to find local a local man to guide them from one region to another. “I asked Elias about his family. He explained that the couple I’d met were his uncle and aunt and that he was staying with them because his mother had been killed.” Elias was 16.
“Anyone who doesn’t know what Peruvian music is like is very lucky indeed. Never enter Peru without earplugs. For sheer lack of talent and low-quality music, no other country compares. In the mountains a fat woman in a vast, multicolored dress will hop from foot to another as if she’s been locked out of the public toilets and she squeals in a cheap microphone as if she’s giving birth. In the jungle fifteen ugly men will hoarsely shout slightly different lyrics over exactly the same cheap synthesized beat over and over again.”
“The current distraction was the manta blanca (white cloak), which is the term for the seams of sand flies and mosquitoes that enveloped us whenever we were near the water (which was quite often). If was difficult to quantify how many biting insects ere buzzing around us and biting at any one time, but it must have been tens of thousands rather than hundreds. ‘They will get much worse when the wet season arrives’, Cho added cheerfully, ‘then they are really bad’.”
“Everything became harder. Putting my wet clothes on every morning became a mental obstacle, walking became laboured and I found enjoyment in almost nothing…..I was thoroughly miserable and many nights I let myself cry silently in my hammock, tears streaming down my face in self-pity….I didn’t taste the bland fish soups or the tough paca (rodents) that we ate. I was, I am sure, depressed and yet deep inside me I had a voice asking me, ‘Are you physically moving forward? Yes? Then everything is OK”
“One thinks of the dangers of the jungle as coming from jaguars, snakes and electric eels but it was the insects that were driving me mad.”
“We are in a world of shit. We’ve not made the community we were walking toward; we’ve got no water and so we’ve not eaten, drunk, or washed. The mosquitoes are the worst I have ever seen….but I am not reacting (not coming up in bites). Perhaps I am building up a resistance like the locals, there are millions of mosquitoes outside the net. Millions. Today was bad. The guides are guessing our direction. I do not understand anything. There are no paths.”
“At first I used antihistamines to aid sleep, but it led on to using diazepam, tramadol, and even morphine to enable me to get enough sleep to move forward.”
“The Forested areas that are strongly influenced by the river can be nasty and dense…..thorns and brambles filled the gaps between trees and walking without a machete to literally open a path was unthinkable. Often the forest floor resembled a half-drained lake bed, and exposed roots and vines lay twisted and gnarled over the sucking, thick mud.”
Passes had to be obtained from local chiefs to walk through an area and were rarely granted minus any bribes. Then when Ed would arrive he was often the butt of jokes which he didn’t understand or thought weren’t funny: “Maybe I’m just too tired but half of the jokes are about how crap I am at walking and other half are about killing me. “Look after your gringo they would say to Cho ‘or we’ll cut his head off.”
“Many of the communities we passed through still had problems with alcohol and it’s sad to report that in most of the settlements there were several drunken men in the middle of the day, smashed out of their minds.. “
“The humidity meant there was no chance of anything drying overnight and so they had to go on in that state. Cho and I would develop a washing line system over the fire to dry our clothes every evening….I would dress my infected feet and take antibiotics to stop them turning into tropical ulcers. On went the vaseline layer and the football socks, lastly the black wellies.”
“villages here often didn’t have areas set aside for defecating…once you got a whole village without toilet facilities of any kind things became pretty smelly and dirty.”
“Raul is very worried about ‘trampas’ (traps). We’ve entered an area where the local method of hunting is home-made shotguns set up with tripwires across small paths. Walking at the front is becoming a less popular job.”
Clouds of mosquitoes would descend on us and bite constantly. The number of bites we were getting was absurd. With Deet being too valuable to use all the time (it sweated off so quickly) we would save it for breaks when eating…..I was getting bitten at least 10 times a minute, 4,800 bites a day, 33, 600 bites a week…but our bodies no longer reacted to the bites.”
“When I arrived in a town everybody would stare at me. When I went for a wash everybody would state at me. When I got changed out of my wet clothes everyone would stare at me.”
“At the moment I have an open wound on my left heel; sores around my waist from my pack waist belt; and cuts on my hands from falling over. It’s impossible to keep any of them clean or dry.”
“I am depressed. Quite badly so. I have fleeting moments of happiness but they are all short lived and basically I’m unhappy.”
“I had been cocky prior to the journey and my confidence had come from others complimenting me or commenting on my abilities. That false sense of confidence handoff been stripped from me and I was rebuilding myself based on nothing but my actual abilities. No opinion, no bragging or pretending, no hiding and no bullshitting.”
“There is a pressure, when writing about the Amazon to extend the myth and write about the place as if dangers lurk under every log. But the truth is that, although there are potential dangers, the likelihood of becoming prey is far less than people imagine. The fear of the unknown is the biggest cause of such, and, in truth, when Cho and I walked through the jungle I felt we were safer than if we had been walking through London dodging traffic and pickpockets”
“The pouring rain was now the norm; I couldn’t remember the last dry day we’d had.”
“The swamps were actually cool and refreshing to walk through and made a pleasant change from constant sweating on hard ground.”
The people in local communities made what little they could by selling crops. But unpredictable weather often destroyed crops. Indigenous people have a low tolerance to drink. People get discouraged and frustrated and drink to excess and domestic violence soars. Deaths are not uncommon from the violence. Water directly from the Amazon was filthy. No doctors or hospital in the communities. Poor education, lack of jobs, and extreme poverty was the norm. Had these people been left to their historical way of life they wouldn’t need money because they would live hand to mouth. But they want electricity and and all the gadgets that come with it so they drift into communities and suffer the poverty.
Ed and Chou were burning around 6000 calories per day and eating about 3000 leaving a constant calorie deficit.
“Chou and I then asked around the village for guides to the next region but no one wanted to walk. These were fishermen and didn’t ever enter the jungle at all.”
The backpacks Ed and Chou carried were well over 50% of their body weight. I can’t even imagine walking very far with something like that weight on my back.
“I was no longer thriving on the thrill of adventure and no longer in survival mode. I had had enough and I just allowed myself to be miserable and pissed off all day long.”
“The tropical downpour lasted only six minutes but we collected 35 liters of water.”
A photographer met up Ed and Chou to walk with them for three weeks.
“The going was abominable. The first day we hit a field thick with razor grass but had no option but to push through. A paper cut doesn’t compare to the wounds you get from razor grass; it is like paper that has been dipped in glue and then finely crushed glass. Our hand became bloody and our clothes ripped up. We managed only 4 hours that day before collapsing and deciding that we would have to camp. “(the visiting photographer) was physically strong but had no idea what he had let himself in for. ‘This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Id din’t realize it would be this tough. You have to experience this to believe it; words could not do it justice’. He had twenty more days ahead of him. He immediately became covered in mosquito and sand-fly bites and I felt sorry for him. He reacted badly to everything and we had to give him large does of antihistamines each night to allow him to get any sleep at all.” The photographer lost 6 lbs in three weeks.
Ed had insurance that would come and get him in case of an emergency. But Ed realized it was useless. “We had forty-eight hours of anti-venom with us and could keep one of us alive for that long. Evacuation through the vegetation we were covering was an absurd thought, and would have taken a week, absolute minimum had it been possible to carry a stretcher through the tangled forest.”
“Each day Cho and I walked with our clothes painted to our bodies with sweat. We broke for 15 minutes every hour and habitually wrung out our tops—that was as dry as they got all day. They were then used as rags to wipe the jungle grit and grime from the bak of our necks and the crooks of our elbows. For those precious ten minutes we would sit on our packs and exchange exhausted glances.”
“With mutual respect and complimentary skills, a two-man team could work very well indeed. I was so lucky to have Cho with me. So it was that his dedication set that song going round in my head. Cho learned the words and would sing “Dedication is what you need” at the top of his voice in English while walking”.
“Most locals travel through the remote Amazon by boat”
“I would never advise anyone to travel as I did if they want to meet people and learn about different cultures. I was almost always too tired to care.”
“We could tell we were close because we could smell the salt in the air and then we could hear the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing in the distance and then we rounded a corner and could see friends and behind them was the Atlantic Ocean….with just 50 meters of sand to go, Chi and i dumped our rucksacks and started running. With grins as wide as they had ever been, we tore down the beach and, somewhat bizarrely, ran into the sea holding hands until the waves tripped us and we plunged into the salt water. We hugged each other, somewhat unsure what to do next. I was so happy and the look on Cho’s face was one of pure happiness too. Born in central Peru, he had never seen the sea before. What a way to experience it for the first time.”
To any biologist by training, a tropical rainforest is the reality of so much of our evolutionary history. It is like being thrown into the pot in which a sumptuous meal will be the end result. To sense, in some sort of vague way, our ancient history, the rain forest is as close as we can come. It is a genetic hodgepodge with all the ingredients for successful generation of ever new species in ever changing environments. While the process itself is brilliant and the laws which control in it, in my mind, created by God, this brilliant process is no paradise. It is not a gentle process, nor a kind one, nor a fast one, nor one which probably has any predictable end, if there will ever be any end. Since we cannot, with human understanding, imagine any beginning, we cannot likewise imagine any ending. What does seem obvious, at least to me, is that our hell-bent destruction of the rain forests and other species, will likely bring on another massive evolutionary correction. We are destroying the very system which generated our human existence. The notion that we have dominion over nature, natural resources, and other species is a very peculiar self serving, short sighted, mind set.
The following is a video in which you can meet Cho and his home town in Peru. When I watched the video I was impressed with the picturesque but simple village and the beautiful surrounding hills. The people seem so innocent, so serene, so pleasant—and I said to myself “that might be a neat place to spend old age”.
https://vimeo.com/35052693
https://vimeo.com/35052693
But then I looked up Satipo in Google and found out this:
“The first inhabitants of present-day Satipo Province were the Asháninkas, Piros, Amuishas,Nomatsiguengas, Simirinches, Amewakas, Cakintis, among others. They left a legacy of petroglyphswhich are believed to be from more than 3500 years ago. Ceramics, stone and golden axes, as well as many constructions show that the area was also inhabited by the Incas. Many battles were fought between the Incas and the other natives, whose extensive knowledge of the jungle helped them win.
The first Europeans arrived in the province's territory in 1673, when the Franciscans founded Santa Cruz, their first settlement in the area.
Many Indian uprisings happened during the 18th century.
President Manuel Prado created the district of Satipo as part of the Jauja Province on September 18, 1940.
On November 1, 1947, a strong earthquake destroyed the city, causing entire settlements to disappear. Satipo could not be reached by land and remained isolated until 1960.
The district of Satipo was elevated to the provincial status by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry on March 26, 1965.
During the late 1980s, the province was hit hard by terrorism and caused a massive exodus from the province. Many persons were killed by terrorists, including Mayor of Satipo Fidel Juarez Torres.”
All this is just a reminder, not that we need any more reminders, “This is the best of all times; this is the worst of all times”. I will not be moving to Satipo me thinks. The still sad music of humanity cannot be escaped. Ed has achieved a well deserved niche in life, but what about Cho? On a whim and who knows what else, he up and left his home town to travel with a strange stranger through the Amazon from almost beginning to the end in the Atlantic Ocean. He seems like one of the forgotten humans who escaped briefly but his heart is still back in Satipo with his family, ever conscious of just how little they have, but seems accepting that responsibility to them must be a priority. His brief fame will fade, and probably already has, and whether he escapes to a better life is problematical, as is frankly, true for all current day humanity.
It just seems the evolutionary process is rapidly coming to another crossroads and Mother Nature is in the on deck circle. She will likely clear the deck again, and an new era will surface, sooner or later.
