Part of the appeal of living in the Arctic is the experience of being somewhere out of the ordinary, extraordinary. I have to admit that this desire to at least visit extraordinary spots has permeated much of my life. A desire that is mostly left unfilled, but however brief these temporal experiences were, they are etched deeply into me.
I miss the jungle. No, that is not quite right. I long for the jungle. I visited the Amazon basin only briefly, five days (can that be all?). If I close my eyes, I can still easily bring lines of marching Leaf Cutter Ants marching in front of them. I went back to see them twice, canoeing across to their colony away from the group, to lie on the ground and watch them pass before me. I still marvel at their evolution, so many sisters, in different castes unique to their rolls in the life that is the colony. I still can not wrap my mind fully around it.
All of that green, and shadow. And through it all the briefest brightest colours. A shaft of sunlight bedazzled with the iridescence of a Blue Morpho butterfly, flashes of tanagers in and out of leaves, a hermit hummingbird hovering before my face, trying for all the world to determine the nature of this strange red flower (my t-shirt) in the sunlight. The scene I will never forget, of huge orange flashing fireflies dancing in and out amongst the trunks of trees, as twilight deepened amongst us, as we waited for bats to emerge from a hollow tree.
And sounds. Screaming Pihas, countless insects, and tree frogs. The first day, as I layed feverishly sick in bed, I wondered why someone was constantly using a microwave oven nearby. Beep beep beep. Embarassed when I asked to learn that it was an insect, calling for a mate.
I missed experiencing the true nature of the jungle though, the forest canopy. The canopy observation tower at our lodge, high up in a huge buttroused forest giant was closed. It had begun to rot away in the humid air, and someone had almost fallen through the week before. The canopy is where life concentrates in the jungle, far above the dark forest floor where only shafts of sunlight reach, but only briefly as new trees reach to fill the gap above. The canopy is where mixed flocks of birds forage, so hard to glimpse from below, your neck straining from gazing up to pick them out amongst the foliage. I didn't get to see the forest from above. I missed the jungle.
Hmm, I seem to have gotten carried away, and all I had wanted to do was to point you to someone who didn't miss the canopy. Drawing the Motmot was there, go revel in the sights (and sounds) of the canopy, where lizards queue up to eat sweat bees from your skin.