That Time I Went to the Amazon Rainforest

An aspect of my work centres on the eccentric position of humans in the natural world and questions the assumption that humans are superior to other life forms. At a recent adventure to the Amazon rainforest as a participant of the artist residency, Labverde, I often found myself to be distracted— fumbling with fogged up glasses and anxiously avoiding spiky trees and stinging insects. Removed from the comforts of home my self-image shifted from a somewhat competent, functioning adult to someone who was becoming a misfit in the forest. Amidst a thriving forest heaving with life and heat my vulnerability was revealed. 

 
 On a previous trip to South America, I landed in the highest airport in the world in La Paz and almost immediately felt the effects of altitude sickness. After checking into the hotel, and unaware of what was happening to me, I decided to go for a walk. After a short time, I was beginning to really struggle and decided to return to the hotel. The only way back was up a very steep street. Halfway up the steep incline I was no longer able to stand up straight and completed the trek on all fours. Strangely, it seemed perfectly normal to me at the time to crawl on all fours on the streets of La Paz. 
 

As body and psyche were responding to the unfamiliar, JG Ballard’s The Drowned World came to mind. Vague, fragmented memories emerged of the main character’s seemingly irrational desire to head towards the uninhabitable territory near the equator. Although, I wasn’t so unhinged to go running naked into the rainforest to befriend jaguars, I did find that I was not quite my normal self. 

 
Don’t know why, but I found myself bemoaning to a male participant that because of all the perspiration I was having trouble putting on my bra. Not a typical conversation a woman has with a man she has known only a few days. Helpfully, he suggested that with some coordination he and his roommate could each grab a strap and…One…Two…Three…PULL!!! 
 

The Drowned World is a story of social regression and de-evolution associated with a climate catastrophe. The novel characterizes a group of scientists who have discovered that the fauna and flora were de-evolving to the forms of the Triassic period­­­­­­­­— a dry, warm period when dinosaurs first walked the earth. These scientists were also experiencing vivid dreams of prehistoric earth. The dreams were, apparently, tapping into long buried memories of our ancestry- remembering the entire evolution of the world. 

 
Studies have shown that hallucinations at the transition from sleep to wakefulness are frequently encountered. They are bizarre and contain spatio-temporal distortions. These conscious experiences sometimes assume a nightmarish quality. And this will forever be my excuse for the following event.
I woke in the middle of the night needing to visit the bathroom. Bumbling around the dark cabin I inadvertently disturbed my cabin mate. She sat upright, started reaching out to me and saying something my sleepy self couldn’t comprehend. In my half-awake state, this young woman with long dark hair, flailing arms and speaking in tongues was something out of a horror movie. I locked myself in the bathroom, yelling ‘What do you want? What do you want?!!.’
The next morning, at breakfast, I overhead her telling friends that during the night she had a panic attack and, inexplicably, I had run away. Oops.
 

​Upon my arrival home, the book Microcosm by Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan was waiting for me at the Post Office. The text delineates the extraordinary evolution of life from the creation of complex molecules to the formation of single cells through to multi-cellular organisms. The cells of multi-cellular organisms are thought to have formed through the process of symbiosis. In this process, separate bacteria cells blend together to create new wholes. 

Humans are not disconnected from this path of evolution. Our cells, as the theory goes, consist of bacterial remnants, such as, the nuclei, mitochondria….etc. It is fascinating to consider that human thought, which apparently sets us above all else, is a product of cellular structures derived from ancient bacteria. 
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The Labverde residency was a unique opportunity to be immersed in the vast biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest. Life intricately interlaced to adapt to either depend on or fend off fellow life forms. A delicate balancing act of survival on a grand scale. It was a great reminder that an eccentric misfit is merely a small, dysfunctional part of an immense biosphere that is fundamentally an evolution of bacteria that started 3.5 billion yrs ago.

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