Mother of God

by Paul Rosolie

  As the hours wore on we covered miles of clay-colored river. Surrounding us as we traveled were the massive carcasses of fallen trees. Flooded from the storm the night before, the river had risen almost ten feet overnight, gaining force and wearing away the banks on many bends. The eroded clay had released trees hundreds of years old into the river. Our motorista took great care navigating the churning waters and swarming minefields of debris. Once when a tree trunk four feet in diameter struck the ground, the current lifted the back end out of the water; it towered forty feet above our boat before crashing back downward with chilling force, narrowly missing us and soaking everything on board. At another rapid bend in the river our boat was viciously broadsided by the current of a massive whirlpool more than seventy feet across that threw some of the supplies on board over the side. The swirling current held our vessel as if it were a blade of grass for several rotations amid bus-sized chunks of timber that shook us violently. Everyone was alert during these moments; even I managed to lift my head for a time. The weight of the trees around us could have turned the small boat to splinters if we got pinched. It took the tightening of every sinew in the boat driver’s forearms and the gravest furrowing of his brow; waiting, maneuvering, and then waiting some more until a window appeared, he then gunned the engine. The dangerous exit sent us rocketing free once again downriver.

  Back in Puerto, I made emergency travel arrangements to fly out the following day and spent the night in a hotel room, swathed in Vaseline, never happier to be watching Seinfeld reruns. In all it was seven days between the moment I realized I was in trouble and my arrival home to JFK Airport in New York. On the flight home I had three separate plane connections to make, and each time I found myself with an entire row to myself. Several different people in the course of my numerous return flights discreetly got up from their seat after seeing me and never returned, undoubtedly asking the stewardess for another seat. Walking to my gate before flights with a swollen and disfigured face, covered in highlighter-green ooze, I was an obvious leper and drew the stares of hundreds. I still can’t believe that they let me fly.

  At JFK I experienced the usual change-of-worlds shock, which was returned by the customs officer who checked my passport. Looking up to see if my face matched the one on my passport, his eyes popped. “Buddy, what happened to you?” he asked in a blunt New York brogue. I smiled, though it hurt. “That’s why I’m home, man. I need a doctor!”

  “Jesus Christ! Well then, welcome home, dude,” he said, shaking his head as he stamped my passport, “Now go! Go! Go!”

  At the emergency room doctors took one look at me, heard the word Amazon, and got me into an air-locked room where doctors entered and left wearing hazmat suits. Yet when tests came back they found it was not any sort of disease. What I did have was a horrible MRSA (methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus aurens) infection of the skin. The infection had spread over all the open wounds, from mosquito bites, to my shaved face, and to my eczema, and had devastated the entire epidermis. I spent four days in the hospital on IV support. The doctors repeatedly told me that had I not made it back when I did, I might not have made it at all. But it would not be my last run-in with illness in the jungle; far from it. In the years to come I would endure botflies, tularemia, numerous pique parasites, dengue, and wicked relapses of MRSA.

  All told I came to spring semester three weeks late that year, though it took some explaining and finagling. Telling the story of why I was late to professors sparked some lasting friendships.

  To this day I am heartbroken to have left Lulu. Given the choice, I wouldn’t have missed a moment with my anteater, and if I ever find myself with a time machine and some powerful antibiotics, I know exactly where I am headed. Emma and JJ continued caring for her after I had gone, and as weeks went by, her solo excursions in the forest become longer and longer. She gradually got the hang of eating ants, and eventually returned to the jungle, leaving us to wonder about her fate.

  That she came to live entirely in the forest is a major success. Given her tenacity, I am confident that she’d be able to fend off jaguars, and with the rich forest around the station she’d have an ample supply of food. Though I missed out on her last days at the station, all I could do for her was to continue to work with JJ and Emma to protect Las Piedras.

  I continued to bring and lead volunteer expeditions, and my skills further improved. My relationship with JJ kept growing and we spent more time before and after volunteer trips, having adventures of our own. We discovered that without others to look after, we could travel harder, faster, lighter, and more quietly to elevate the caliber of our explorations. But we still weren’t finding anacondas. JJ began asking around, talking to his family, and quickly arrived in the counsel of the man with the answers: his father, Don Santiago.

  8

  The Wild Gang

  We need the tonic of wildness. . . . At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN: OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS

  Winter had descended on the jungle. Low clouds cast a somber light on Puerto Maldonado. The locals call the phenomena friaje, a seasonal period when cold mountain air from Patagonia travels northward along the Andes, gripping the lowlands in a temporary chill that drops the temperature as low as sixty degrees. As a result the usually steamy jungle town appeared silent and unfamiliar. Instead of being bustling and tropical the streets were quiet, and the few people walking about were insulated from head to toe in what northerners would recognize as snow gear. Children were bundled like Eskimos by protective parents: hats, gloves, coats, and scarves. It was a comical overreaction to weather when a sweater would have sufficed. Nonetheless, I had no sweater with me and bore the motorcycle cab ride with clenched teeth. Arriving at Barrio Nuevo, I dismounted the Suzuki dirt bike, and the driver extended a gloved hand, into which I placed two soles.

  The previous night I had slept in a hotel room, after two weeks of working with Emma leading an expedition. Nearly a year after I had come downriver and parted ways with Lulu, having completed two more semesters at college, I was back. So far I hadn’t seen much of JJ, who had stayed in town to carry on the legal battle and to take care of Joseph, who was beginning preschool. But on returning from the expedition, I had been told that JJ had made progress on the anaconda front, and he wanted to meet early the next morning to discuss it.

  I checked JJ and Emma’s house, which was vacant, then made for the Durand family residence farther up the road, a cluster of dwellings that sat atop red-clay cliffs, two hundred feet above the Tambopata River. As I approached the house I looked out over the confluence, where the mouth of the Tambopata pours into the Madre de Dios River’s sweeping bulk.

  I passed the rope-hinged gate into the open yard. There was no one in sight. There was the feeling of winter here, too. All seemed still—even the chickens were quiet. I rapped once on a flimsy door and was told to enter by a voice I didn’t recognize. I entered a room made from boards, glass, steel, and tarp. The interior was without light, and bodies crowded around a table in the dim space.

  When I entered, the Ese-Eja family sprang to life with greetings. The table was a war zone of beer bottles, cigarette butts, and playing cards—evidence of a productive morning. Exchanging hugs with Chito, Robin, Pico, Melissa, and many others I made my way around the suddenly merry room of drunken people. Pico seemed to be the farthest gone. He bellowed my name and wrapped a powerful hand around my wrist, dragging me into a rough bear hug.

  During the last month leading volunteer expeditions at Las Piedras, Pico had come as the designated motorista. Over the course of those weeks Pico and I had formed an uncanny bond. He was entertained by my love of the jungle and would burst into uncontrollable laughter, swearing and clapping his hands when I jumped onto a caiman or caught a snake. He thought I was crazy. Despite
the language barrier, we communicated well and spent hours yakking a profane interlingual gibberish and having a great time. The day before, he had piloted the entire return journey from Las Piedras station to Puerto. Now he was enjoying his first day off in weeks in exactly the way he liked best: wasted.

  He forced me to sit, sending his daughter Kiara to fetch her grandmother. I tried scolding him and the others for drinking in the morning, but they would hear none of it. Apparently this was the only way to spend a cold friaje Sunday morning. Pico was talking a hundred miles per minute as he fit my hand into that of Robin, who lifted his head from the table where he had been drowsing. Robin was the muy guapo of the brothers, the charming football player who got all the girls. Women were defenseless against his big, sultry eyes, careless but perfect hair, lazy swagger, and tortured Latin ooze. At the time he had already earned the reputation of ladies’ man, even before he became a licensed wildlife guide with a big job at a tourist lodge on the Tambopata. And there he enjoyed a constant rotation of international chicas.

  Robin and I spontaneously arm-wrestled with locked fists. Much noise resulted from our long stalemate, and a powerful crescendo overtook the room when he slowly but surely brought my arm to rest on the table. We each downed a glass of beer. JJ’s mom, Doña Carmen, entered the room next, pushing aside the cigarette smoke and bending over to give me a rough kiss on the cheek and throw an alpaca sweater over my shoulders. “Look at my crazy boys!” she boomed in Spanish, as if ashamed of their state. She slapped Pico on the head and shot me a wink. There was nothing she loved more than having a crew of her children at home and under her roof. Over the din she shouted, “Have you found JJ yet?” I told her I had not, and she rolled her eyes.

  As Robin and I prepared for our second battle, this time with our left arms, Doña Carmen swiped one of the many phones scattered atop the table’s wreckage and called JJ to tell him I had arrived. With one hand pressing the phone to her ear, she used the other to sling the dead duck she had been holding over her shoulder. Matriarch of the family, she had treated me as one of her own from the day she met me. In her mid-seventies, she was more Viking than old mare. She almost always was carrying an ax or machete, ready to disembowel or chop up whatever her sons brought home for her pot. Today it was duck for lunch, and I could see piles of spiny bones on the dirt floor. I had missed a catfish breakfast by only a few hours. She asked me if I wanted to eat and I told her I already had. Moments later she slipped a piping-hot bowl of catfish soup under my nose. It was a delicious construction of jungle ingredients: catfish, rice, herbs, and water. Her husband, Don Santiago, I was told, had caught the fish the day before.

  I heard the purr of a Yamaha motorcycle pulling up to the house, and a moment later JJ entered with his signature gusto and energy, removing the helmet from his head and clutching me in a powerful hug. I laughed; we had just seen each other yesterday! But today was different and his eyes were wild. He pulled a chair backward up to the table, as men do when they have something inordinately important to say. Leaning forward with intensity, he placed a hand on my arm, and with the neutral cadence of his broken English said: “We go to La Torre.” It was half statement, half question, and it silenced the room.

  My eyes widened, and more than one brother perked up at the mention of the river. Pico, who had fallen to the floor laughing moments before, suddenly demanded to be lifted back to his seat, and even Doña Carmen pulled up a chair. “Verdad?” I asked. For real?

  “Sí!” said JJ. The conversation continued in Spanish. “We must go, the cold is the time. I spoke to my dad yesterday. We will find many anacondas.” Pico slammed both fists on the table in excitement and bellowed; a map was passed over my shoulder and spread on the table. JJ continued. “With the cold, the snakes will come out of the water looking for sun. This is the right time to go!” Doña Carmen nodded her head knowingly and was the first to speak, asking JJ whom he intended to take. Thinking for a moment he used his fingers to list himself, Pico, Chito, and me. Chito looked nervous.

  We planned as if preparing for a dangerous heist. Each brother offered advice on locations and strategies for finding anacondas, citing decades of expedition knowledge and various locations on the map—none had ever gone out with the intention of finding snakes before. Paper was found, and we listed the supplies needed. Coffee was brought in, and our crowd leaned tightly over the table. From the tone of the conversation the weather seemed to guarantee that we would find anacondas. I saw the family as I had never seen them before. More than one brother expressed relief at not having been selected for the excursion, labeling our party loco for intentionally seeking the great snakes. Pico shot me wild smiles of anticipation.

  As we ate and talked, Doña Carmen stood over us shaking or nodding her head, depending on whether she approved or disapproved of the conversation’s content. She took pride in her family’s thorough planning. From across the table I saw her watching me out of the corner of her eye. First a drunken Sunday and now an expedition into ancestral hunting grounds restricted to all but the Ese-Eja; I was being drafted into intimate corners of her family’s life and for some reason, she approved.

  Elías emerged from the opposite room and slapped a four-fingered hand on my back and smiled. “Cuidado tus huevos,” he said. Watch your balls. As he smiled, the seven-inch scar that traveled from his chin to his temple twisted. Elías was one of the elder brothers, in his early forties. I barely knew him at the time but would later learn that he was the toughest of the crew and had the reputation for ending fistfights with his head. I told the man missing a finger and half his face that I’d be careful. He gave me a “rock on!” smile, lit a cigarette, and nodded to the music.

  Several times I was asked if I knew what I was doing; no one they had ever met had wanted to catch anacondas. I told them that I had worked with snakes my whole life, and JJ vouched for my skill; he had seen it. But now JJ’s older brother José spoke up. “Juan, I don’t think you understand what you are doing, and neither does he. Do you think this is a joke?” José tilted his head in my direction. “You can be crushed in seconds; people have been eaten.”

  “Oh, come on!” I said. There was no way that was true.

  “It’s true! His father-in-law was swallowed whole!” José yelled with his open palm pointed toward Elías. We all looked to Elías, who was now rocking in a hammock, and he nodded: it was true. In later years I would learn that the man had gone to check his boats by the riverbank one night, and never came back—in the morning the largest anaconda anyone around had seen was observed just next to the boats, with a human-sized lump in its gut.

  The thought of man-eating anacondas was making Chito’s face turn pale, and he was almost completely silent during the entire conversation. Almost all the brothers were experts in all things jungle, and had learned from their father and worked as farmers, loggers, or hunters at some point in the past, if not their entire lives, but Chito, barely into his twenties, had not grown up in the forest as the rest had. He was terrified of snakes. I would find out later that JJ and Pico had selected him deliberately because of his shy nature. As we talked about the dangers of anacondas, he grew still paler. I told everyone that I had it covered when it came to snakes. They approved my participation just on the basis of my confidence alone. And so the expedition was set. Tomorrow we would head into the jungle as anaconderos: anaconda men.

  The creation of Bahuaja-Sonene National Park is a landmark in the history of wilderness stewardship. Its story begins in the 1980s, when American veterinarian Max Gunther purchased a 260-acre hunting reserve at the confluence of the Tambopata and La Torre Rivers, and converted the land into a tourist destination. Gunther’s lodge, which was named Explorer’s Inn, was a tiny spot, a teardrop on the beach compared to the ocean of pristine jungle behind it. In the beginning, Explorer’s Inn was a small operation and attracted few visitors. The wildlife had largely been scared away or killed. But still, though modest in number, people were drawn to the area. This fascin
ated a young Ph.D. graduate from Princeton named Charles Munn.

  Charles Munn had already unlocked the secrets of macaw reproduction while working in the Manú region, making him a legend in the field of conservation. After finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton, Munn approached the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for a job, but explained that he did not need the money. He warned his boss that if the society did not let him do what he wanted, he would leave “in a heartbeat.” It was during this time that Munn, fascinated with Explorer’s Inn and the Tambopata, began devising an audacious goal: to protect an entire ecosystem. Munn and other scientists devised a radically aggressive plan to save the region in its pristine state, an objective never before achieved. For more than a decade Munn pursued a plan that others considered insane: to designate the entire Tambopata and Candamo river basins as one protected national park.

  Traditionally, protected areas must exist between inhabited areas and cannot encompass an entire ecosystem. This policy has been followed across the globe, but Munn saw a unique opportunity to shatter the mold. Why should the fact that no one lived in these areas preclude them from protection? But to protect the drainage of both rivers, an area between one and two million hectares had to be set aside. The audacity of the plan was laughable, yet Munn persisted. These areas were largely uninhabited and would never again be such prime candidates for protection. It was now or never.

  Unlike most famous conservationists, who promote themselves in the interest of furthering their work or who write books to inspire others, Munn is virtually impossible to research. He has been described as the conservation world’s Bruce Wayne. Little is publicly known about Munn except that he comes from a wealthy family and has done things that no one else could.