Wild Spectacle by Janisse Ray

Author:Janisse Ray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

JUNGLE

Chan Chich Lodge in northwestern Belize will be the last stop on our tour of paradise. Headed there by bus, deep in rainforest, we ask our driver to stop so we can identify a bird sitting on top of a snag. It turns out to be a knob of wood.

“A green-tailed stationary treetopper,” someone calls.

There is more joking now. Everyone is excited to be heading to the jungle, into the possibility of seeing a jaguar.

“Well, if we don’t see a wild one, maybe at least they’ll show us one in a cage,” Doug says.

“Could I take a picture and pretend it was wild?” Craig says.

“You could get in the cage with it and I’ll take your picture,” Doug retorts.

Dan joins in. “You could probably ride it if you really had the guts.”

“If I rode it, you’d be seeing my guts,” says Craig.

At Chan Chich we don’t see a jaguar. But the air at Chan Chich is filled with jungle sounds, more languages I can’t speak. Packs of howler and spider monkeys move through the trees, filling the canopy with a chattering rambunctiousness. Chachalacas, chicken-like, fill the sunrise with eerie and heartbreakingly lovely calls. The males gather in packs to chorus every morning. “They’re telling lies about last night,” Doug says. I am beside myself with all of it, with white-collared peccary, kinkajou, gray fox, yellow-bellied gecko.

Hiking the wild trails, we add forty-three new birds: white collared mannequin, oscillated turkey, melodious blackbird, crested guan, bat falcon, plumbeous kite, rufous-tailed jacamar. Near the lodge a few trees are filled with the nests of Montezuma oropendulas, which I sit and watch for hours. The fascinating blackbirds weave long, teardrop-shaped basket nests that hang like six-foot ornaments in colonies on trees. They are large birds, the males up to twenty inches (the females smaller), and brightly colored, with chestnut and black bodies, blue patches on their cheeks, wattles pink as peppermints, and large yellow-gold tails. They are a raucous lot, their various calls described as water pouring from a bottle, branches breaking, and whips slashing.

We see swallow-tailed kites, gorgeous black-and-white raptors with deeply forked tails, marvelous aerialists, a flock of them that I greet like the old friends they are. They have begun their slow return to North America, no doubt, working their way up the landmass. In another month I may see these very birds back home.

Then we are saying goodbye to the jungle, and after another night in Belize City, we bid adiós to the country that loves people who love wildness. Belize begins and ends with a register: sulphur-rumped flycatcher, long-tailed hermit, red-billed pigeon, mottled owl. Yes, each of these is a name written on paper, but in my memory and in my knowing, each listing is more than the poetry of its name. It is an alive and very beautiful animal, as much in love with and at home on this planet as I, its every action a dedication to spooling out a simple and fulfilling future.

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