Creating Worlds

by Liam Howley Casting shade upon my path, the mighty boughs of the kapok sway, and fluffs of cotton swirl and float like giant tufts of snow that falls. A wall of wood that guides the trail to twist around the buttress holds this giant. It leans, having grown to receive the rays of our star, hinting at its future, and the creation of all things. Was it not the fall of the kapok that created the mighty Amazon, its branches the many rivers of the land? Which one carved the path of the Tambopata I wonder? If I knew I could look above and see the way to the ocean, the mountains, and the heart of this vast fantastical land. Trumpeters herald my arrival to this king of vine, branch, leaf, stem and root. Their white tipped wings flutter briefly through their short flight, their panic at my presence a warning to the spirits that I intrude. This floodplain trail that calls me ever forwards reflects my otherness as water seeps into my knee high boots, and grateful for the cool relief I wade. A tinamou’s alarm rises from the forest floor, exploding into a short burst of frenetic flight that guides it a short distance further up the trail. The tinamou in this ancient world holds the story of its creation, a princess forever altered by a demons spell, her warrior killed, and the fall of the Kapok that defended her in a mighty battle with the demon spirit. As I continue walking my spirited steps frighten the tinamou ahead, forever doomed to flee from those who intrude. Just one day previous I caught my first glimpse of a sloth (Bradypus variegatus) settled in the fork of a tree. How the world became as it is can be seen in the stillness of the sloth, for she was killed by the older of two brothers. The younger brother, enraged by the loss of his lover stamped the forest floor with such ferocity that the world shook and divided itself, separating sky from earth. Within this sky the younger brother and the women lived for some time till returning to the earth by cotton rope. Upon their return, the men and the older brother retreated to the forest to become the spirits and masters of the forest, controlling many animals and plants, and the wind and rain, the lightening, earthquakes and floods. And hunting the Ese Eja, the spirits, the edósikiana, complete the cycle of predation, shooting them with their arrows, just as the Ese Eja hunt the animals of the edósikiana for their food. I imagine it is a sadness that moves the sloth to such stillness, or maybe an awakening of wisdom, hearing the silence upon which the forest breathes and sings just as these words appear on a blank sheet. For in this way the sloth contains an understanding of not just how the world was created, but by how it exists in this cycle of mutual dependence. I have come upon these myths through many encounters, yet the encounter that added most enlightenment was with a copy of the doctoral thesis of the ethnobotanist Miguel Alexiades. He elegantly describes the Ese Eja world, placing it in the context of the evolution of Amazonian society. Within his report he cites Albert in saying “that Amazonian societies… render the cosmos as a social totality, ruled by a complex system of symbolic exchange between human and non-human beings, where shamanism is the cornerstone…” Yet shamanism alters as the society alters. No dogmatic system holds these people, their culture evolves according to their situation. Were once they revered the eyamikekwa, the shaman of the world of animals, created as he was shot with an arrow of the edósikiana, no eyamikekwa shaman exists today. Yet as they were semi-nomadic then, relying on the meat of the forest, and the herds of white lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari ), known to the Ese-Eja as ňo, today they are agrarian, tilling the land for the sheaf of corn and grain of rice. It is telling that their ethnobotanical medicinal centre is called Ňape, named after the last eyamikekwa shaman of the local Ese-Eja community. Today Shamans enter the spirit world through the use of a psychotropic vine called ayahuasca, delivering an understanding of the ills of a patient through cultural markers that more commonly refer to the world of plants than the kingdom of mammalia. White lipped peccary tracks embedded in the mud around my feet remind me of when I stood in the middle of a great herd in the wilds surrounding the Tambopata Research Center, or TRC as it’s known. The first trace of their presence is the overwhelming stench of mammalian sweat that they exude from their dorsal glands; the second is noise. To describe the teeth gnashing, seed crunching, hoof scraping sound of almost five tonnes of feeding herbivores, alongside the screaming, bellowing, barking and grunting, is to describe one of the most startlingly scary sounds of the forest. My initial introduction to them came in the form of “if you hear, smell or see peccaries, climb a tree”. Locals seemed to follow their own advice, and after hearing the thunderous sound of a herd in full panicked flight, and seeing their headlong rush away from my encroaching steps I had considered it sound judgement, however I later saw the manner in which a local shaman had herded them along by clapping too sticks together as he walked. I felt emboldened. So when I came across the next herd, and detected their shifting path, I looked about, found a large shihuahuaco and stood between its colossal buttress roots. Slowly but surely they approached, turning clods and uprooting plants in their destructive search for seeds, fruits, fibrous roots, tubers, grubs and worms. Grunting in their pig like way, their tusk like canines pointing skyward, their teeth clacking in that most gruesomely grinding manner, their young weaving in and out of their feet, I stood and watched as they approached, sniffed, and returned to feeding, until I was surrounded, but still only standing at the edge of this vast herd. Only when prudence finally entered my mind did I realize that I should not let too many get ahead of me. Mimicking the shaman, I made my move, used the blunt side of my machete and tapped the buttress root of the shihuahuaco to send pulses of hollow vibrations throughout the surrounding area. Alarm, panic, fear, gripped the herd, and within moments, the bolting peccaries had fled a hundred metres before calming again to feed. Ficus fruits littered the floor at this point and they weren’t so scared to be removed from this food source. I smiled, felt my heart beat slow from its hammering pace and made my exit, stealthily stealing across the forest floor towards the trail to the lodge. The tremendous awe of seeing a bolt of white lipped peccary made me wonder about the wildebeest of Africa, or the bison of the plains in the northern continent that must once have been the greatest and most awesome natural spectacle on the planet. I stroll back towards Posada Amazonas lodge, a trail of mosquitos following in my path. A rufous coloured mot mot flutters across the trail and disappears from view. Pichicos to the locals, or tamarins to the visiting tourist, the smallest and one of the most charismatic of the neotropical primates, chatter an inimitably high pitched conversation non translatable to my ears for I’m only learning Spanish in order to communicate here. They look at me in a curious manner, and then return to their feasting on the grubs they’re pulling from behind the leaf sheaths of the shapaja palm, unalarmed at my presence. Their size means that though they are often kept as “pets”, they are not hunted for meat. This fact combined with the complex hierarchy and social organization of the different sized primates, including I must add inter-species cooperation and even association has relegated the tamarin to the lower rungs of the forest, where it is often sighted at head height and slightly above. As I leave my hosts, the ground rises as the mosaic of habitats leads me from floodplain to terra firme. My boots still drenched from the flooded path squelch out my presence so that the dusky titi monkeys, or tocones, stay away from the trail. I can hear their highly complex algorithms quite close as I approach the lodge, yet do not see them today. The ever present drone of the mosquito grows rapidly in my ears as I stop to look for their white tipped tail and dusky brown body, yet to no avail. I am driven onwards, to return in search of water that will rehydrate my sweltering body, and wash me clean of my sweat. Yet I am caught as I remove my boots, watching the mating dance of the mosquito, for they hang outside the lobby in a spiraling dance that inspite of its lack of substance contained a definite oval form. I search in my pocket for some paper and my pen, and quickly start scribbling… Bloody Landlords Dancing around the vacant maypoles place, In delirious orgy swam the mosquitos twisting path, And sure enough in that hectic predators race, The blood of prey is sought, The blood of which I am. Should my ancestors laugh at my unseemly face, With my elbows nipped and irritated drones assault my ears, Then I will laugh returning their bad grace, For mosquitos have been round since there’s been years. Move, move quickly if you wish to keep smooth skin, Free from itch and bump and sucking styles filling sacs of blood. “There are no flies on him,” they say to describe the busy man, But that man must live within a concrete hub, For where there is wild the mosquito rules the land. I had been out to map the trails of the lodge, updating changes, additions and all that goes with maintaining an open forest for visitors. With that fact firmly accomplished, I head for the shower, and to settle in for the evening. Photo: Chris Murray