I’d been prepared for the virgin rainforest to be different from the
fragments surrounded by ranchland I’d been reading about in all the research
papers and articles, but I’d not expected it to look, feel and even smell so
very different. I’m here at “Camp 41”—41 kilometers off the paved road
north from Manaus to Venezuela—a small but permanent logistics station for
researchers from the Smithsonian and Brazil’s INPA (the National Institute for Research in Amazonia).
In the total darkness, I’d been wakened about half an hour after midnight by
a truly strange sound: it was like a woodpecker on steroids, or a howling
wind amplified by a jackhammer and played through the biggest and best rock
concert sound system available. It modulated up and down taking about 40
seconds each cycle, from a low roar to a tremulous higher quaver, drowning
out the insects, frogs and other night sounds of the forest.
I’d been prepared for the virgin rainforest to be different from the
fragments surrounded by ranchland I’d been reading about in all the research
papers and articles, but I’d not expected it to look, feel and even smell so
very different. I’m here at “Camp 41”—41 kilometers off the paved road
north from Manaus to Venezuela—a small but permanent logistics station for
researchers from the Smithsonian and Brazil’s INPA (the National Institute for Research in Amazonia).
In the total darkness, I’d been wakened about half an hour after midnight by
a truly strange sound: it was like a woodpecker on steroids, or a howling
wind amplified by a jackhammer and played through the biggest and best rock
concert sound system available. It modulated up and down taking about 40
seconds each cycle, from a low roar to a tremulous higher quaver, drowning
out the insects, frogs and other night sounds of the forest.
