A Primate's Memoir by Robert M Sapolsky

Author:Robert M Sapolsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446450321
Publisher: Random House

Silence, dawn. Mist-filled forest everywhere. Hints of antelopes, birds. People emerging from their huts. Spires of mountain everywhere. Caught a ride on the logging truck going from Katire, clinging to the edge of the recently hacked-out dirt road, ascending to the upper edge of the forest that was being logged. Men working entirely with hand tools, cutting down trees here and there. An edge of clearing and the end of the dirt road. Beyond that, forest for fifty miles in every direction. A continuous plateau, thick, mist-filled rain forest forever, 10,000-foot granite peaks soaring out of the jungle, monkeys and hooting birds and bush buck and forest hunters, and every now and then, a break in the mountains, a pass, and a view of the pounding desert, 7,000 feet below. Like being on a huge, lush verdant ship, floating above the ocean of hell desert.

I put up a tent at the edge of the clearing, at the beginning of the forest. I would start exploring. My main goal was the peak of the highest mountain, some fifteen crow’s miles away, through the forest. Already visible, floating above, pure straight soaring rock and menace.

I had no maps. There were no maps. There were no directions, no one had gone in there. There were just little forest trails, here and there, made by the forest hunters. They came out occasionally to trade with the loggers, small silent men in loincloths who would then scamper back into the forest.

I developed this pattern of hiking that decreased my anxiety about getting lost and disappearing in the forest. The first day, I followed the first path for about an hour until it came to a major split. I stayed there awhile and went up and down the split until I felt I knew the trees at the junction perfectly, could recognize the path I had chosen (seemingly the one toward the peak) from both directions. I sat there, drew a map of the path past the junction, drew pictures of the trees at the junction. Played my recorder for a while and called it a day, went back.

The next day I breezed past that junction and went two more until I felt too anxious and went back and rehearsed those. It felt calming to know that I was relatively familiar with all but the most distal of the day’s choices of paths. A rhythm of anticipation developed; each day, closer and closer to the mountain, knowing the forest better.

It was thick, giddy with overgrowth; you want to scream at its complexity. Dark, moist, sheltering. Twenty-foot-high ferns, archetypal vines to swing from, sections of the narrow paths where you walked on roots and huge rotting leaves instead of ground. Every afternoon, the cooling rains came, light, invigorating, as you stood there with your head back. The smell and crush of decay underfoot. Along the paths, frequently a deep ravine, descending into a stream you could only hear, lost amid the giant ferns.

On about the fifth day, perhaps seven or eight miles into the path, I came onto the first village.

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