The cabin swayed and trees cracked throughout the night. Nina and Dory slept together in one bed and Nate and Dolores in Nate's room also slept embraced. Dolores' choke hold on his throat awakened him from his drunken stupor just before dawn. The after shocks continued but at greater intervals and with less intensity.
They ate breakfast quickly, Dolores packed a Lunch and Nate had the instinct to take a photograph of the bedraggled foursome including himself with the camera on a timer. Years later the picture was one of the few records of this time and it showed a motley, veteran team whose full purpose was not yet realized or clear.
They set off to see about pulling the last canoe, the last fluvial transportation of any kind, out of the canal which led to the hyacinth lake.
Nate cut thick sections of bamboo with his machete, sliding them as the canoe progressed across the land again and again underneath it to produce a rolling effect.With Nate and Dory pulling from the rope used to moor the canoe and Nina and Dolores pushing, they established a fairly steady rhythm with the girls in the rear retrieving the passed bamboo "wheels" and placing them again in the forward path of the canoe.
They launched it into the lake. Nate paddled in the rear and Dolores paddled in front. The scene on the lake was idyllic. No unnatural signs of damage could be seen in the forest all around them and the birds, monkeys, even a sloth ever so slowly, seemed to be acting as if nothing unusual had happened.
They grounded the canoe , not more than 5 minutes down the stream,next to Gustavo's canoe.
"It's much shorter on foot," said Nate, and they took a path which must have been Gustavo's. The path ran right along the stream in places and they came up behind traditional hunters blinds that Gustavo had woven here and there along the path at well chosen points , where the motorized canoe would be making a particularly serpentine turn- to make an assault on Benecio.
They walked on and Nate continually checked the stream which had a downriver facing entrance from the Napo River and therefore a less likely chance of damage unless the Napo had flooded tremendously (Garzacocha, the lake was spring fed and rainfall caused most of its rising and falling but once or twice a year waters from the Napo, especially when it overflowed its banks entered the lake for a day or two and then would drain.) which all indications so far were that it had not.
They found him, a body face down in the damp Amazonian soil, a large tree limb resting on his back.
Nina screamed.
Which produced a loud grown from Gustavo.
Together they removed the the heavy tree branch and in three languages simultaneously asked him if he thought it was all right to turn him over. He hesitated in an effort to assimilate the information. Then turned himself over.
"Chupcababra." said Gustavo after drinking some water from the canteen Nate found in his disheveled campsite.
"Yeah," said Nate "Chupacabra, a million of them. Hell hath no fury like the chupacabra."
There was dried blood on Gustavos scalp and forehead and Nate surmised that he might have a slight concussion. He explained to him about the earthquake and that Benicio was no longer a threat and without overwhelming the man gave him the huge emerald to hold which made Gustavo's eyes bulge more than any chupacabra could, Nate was sure of that.Overwhelmed, he had the need to lie down flat again.
They left him with Nina and headed towards the Napo River another 20 minutes on foot. What they saw when Nate's machete quickly laid clear an opening in the brush was incomprehensible. Everything was coated with glopping crude oil from bank to bank and the river itself was so jammed with logs that one could walk across it if it were not so slippery with the black goo. The river flowed no more than the stream of their emerald mine.
Nate, Dory and Dolores sat down on the bank to ponder this natural holocaust smothered with petroleum as if to seal in and obscure all record of past life and grief, watching small crabs, the only living thing that they could discern, go in and out of little holes in the sides of the riverbanks as if it were the last shopping day before Christmas.Soon a noise that to Nate sounded like a distant crash of bowling pins, came again much closer and then finally was upon them with water in waves equal to great ocean waves which held in them the crashing of logs against logs and other debris. Human debris. Cows. Horses. Buildings.
Ultimately it slowed like an outgoing tide and left the trickling stream of water and oil amid the logs once more. Their were several Dorado bagre the giant catfish of the Napo river sobbing with difficulty through their gills in a shallow pool of water just beneath them. Nate jumped down quickly and threw the fish, each weighing fifty pounds or more up on the bank, and taking no more than a quick glance up river hurried back up the 8 feet or so he needed to clamber to reach safety again.
"If you've never had a ceviche of bagre, he told Dory, its to die for..."
"I was expecting some analysis..."
"What the fuck do I know. I don't think anybody knows. But I can guess that there is half a forest blocking the flow of the waters that normally run into this one and every now and then there is a break in the logjam and what we just saw happens. I figure when there is more water than trees, that's when this river will start flowing again and that's when we'll start to think about getting out of here."
"And when will that be?"
"Hopefully before we run out of beer. But then again, I bet Gustavo knows how to build a still."
He cut a tree limb with his machete and strung the three bagre through it.They barely flopped in protest. He lead the way with one end of the limb and Dory and Dolores held the rear with great effort.
They arrived back to find Nina kneeling close to Gustavo who now sat with his feet outstretched and she was combing his hair. It was a a fairly good likeness of Gustavo's own "doo" and he felt the waves she had created with his comb and smiled his approval.
They kissed and she helped him to his feet.They kissed again.
Dory could not bare to watch this show of affection and turned her attention to a woodpecker, its red crest exaggerating each head thrust ,work on an ailing palm tree in the distance.They were still kissing when she turned back and recognized the tenderness in Gustavo and the genuine happiness in her friend she knew so well.She was happy for her friend, she decided then and there, come what may.
"Entonces," said Gustavo, holding perhaps one of the most valuable emeralds in the world,but the idea of it just beginning to register, " somos ricos."
"We are not just rich," yelled Nate, and the forest shook. Another aftershock. He lowered his voice: "We are endowed."
Nate and Gustavo each took an end of the pole with the bagre and Nate described the river to Gustavo who said he would take a look the next day. Not even his lifetime in the rainforest, Nate knew, would prepare him for what he would see.But one thing was for sure if the road hadn't swamped Benecio, this river of of logs and tar would keep him out for a long time to come .
They began to paddle back across the lake with Nate and Dolores doing the work and at the waters edge nearly everywhere they looked was the green heron, the Garza, that Garzacococha, the lake, was named after and the moment was not lost on Gustavo who fondled their giant emerald. "We should call it the Garza Emerald,"he said.
"Couldn't think of a better name,"replied Nate, transfixed on the the multide of herons.
"The Garza Emerald," said Nina softly,"yes".
"I like it," said Dory.
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
#19 After Shocks
At something less than half a pound, Nate was not sure if it was bigger than the Patricia Emerald or the Gachala, both from Colombia, but it was in that league.
He had called the girls up to the mine shaft to hold more flashlights on the spot. He became the mining equivalent of an oral surgeon careful to make his final yank on his patient's unnecessary wisdom tooth both precise and bloodless; a professional extraction that would take all of the green mineral, partially embedded in ore, out in one piece.At first he used several different sizes of chisels at a great distance from the prize to break it away from the surrounding ore. Then made a parallel hole to determine the depth of the beryl with a water infused drill. He spent a long time looking into that hole and picking at pieces of stone that the drill left loose but did not flush out.
He drilled another hole and another until holes radiated around the beryl locked since eternity with the ore that had molded its fate to perhaps one of the most valuable gems ever discovered.
Finally, he inserted what looked like a common crowbar behind the mass and popped it out catching it at the edge of the hole and dropping the crowbar, taking it gingerly with both hands.
They sat by the bank of the stream, the four of them, creating adorations for the stone as washing it brought forth its true magnitude and left no one jaded.
"This is the baby Jesus of gems,"he told them softly, and made a cradle for it in his hands.
He chronicled the Gachala and the Princess for them and about how much larger emeralds- one weighing several tons had been found but not of gem quality.Then he noticed the trapiche, the sugar cane spokes beginning to fire their way to the surface and he pointed them out to Dolores and he only laughed.
Of course, the girls understood and Dory surprised herself saying:"and who gets the money for this one?"
"This one is priceless."
"Everything has a price."
"Yes ,"he said, with tired ecstasy, "everything has a price. Believe me when I tell you that there is more money here than any of us could spend in our lifetimes."
"And how do you know how much money I can spend in my lifetime?"
"You can start a foundation and have money for many worthwhile causes for the rest of your lives. In fact there is so much here... I don't have any details but after I make sure Dolores is comfortable,and after we all buy everything we could ever dream of then we could set up my a foundation if we want too. And while we'll all live like a fat cats- won't it be infinitely more interesting to give this money away than buying more things than we need."
"And you just thought this up?"
"It's the heat of the moment," he said tearing up and beginning to cry openly,"Maybe it will pass. Sure I'll have the best of everything but if we let this stuff out so that we don't flood the world market we may have... we may have...
a billion dollars here. Now what am I going to do with a billion dollars ? Or more for christ sake? " He was crying openly now and Dolores was signing calmly and he signed back to her and she began to rub his back so overtaken was he with this flood of emotions that he brought the four of them down with him and they all began to cry at the outlandish fate they had been presented with. Fate and responsibility and the turn their lives must now take when a cracking sound pervaded the jungle and threw them all onto their backs.
Trees snapped everywhere. Another c-rack! And great giants of trees wobbled in every direction.
"I think," shouted Nate, I think it is an earthquake! Head for the cabin for the clearing. The land continued to roll with each successive aftershock and they made whoozy, drunken strides with equilibrium lost as if on a wild carnival ride finally arriving at the center of the garden and the CAMPARI table . None of the plants were damaged and as the after shocks continued trees swayed and branches fell. The forest was the last place anyone wanted to be.
"I'm going to try to get the radio," said Nate and staggered like a drunk man against the aftershocks that seemed to be occurring at one or two minute intervals.
He returned with the radio on to HCJV, they are talking about Apartment buildings falling down in the capital and telling people to go to Parque Carolina which held a million people when the Pope visited. The announcer is hysterical. Now he is saying that the Epicenter was Reventador, that their were two earthquakes of of 6.9 and one of 6.1 and that it caused the Volcano to blow. The Napo region - us - is not reporting and it is feared that all is lost."
He signed all this to Dolores who calmed down rather than panicked.
"What about Gustavo ?" asked Nina.
"These announcers are hysterical. I have plenty of batteries but I'm going to turn this thing off for awhile to conserve our sanity. How could they be getting these reports so fast. Maybe by divine intervention?"
What about Gustavo," she repeated.
"We'll have to wait and see.I believe that he made it. He's out there scared shitless somewhere and if he doesn't show up by sundown. I...We will go look for him. Tomorrow morning. We''ll do a portage with the canal canoe. No problem.
Let's move down to the dock.
"Here's what you got to think about now," he said after everyone sat. "There will be shortages of food and water everywhere else in Ecuador and thanks to our Black Dirt that will never be an issue for us. The cabin is safe because it is built on pillars that only shifted about six inched and broke a couple of plates. So we will have a roof over our heads for as long as we need it. I'm pretty sure I stored in enough beer and rum.Sorry much for the trivial but I like a few creature comforts. We have fish in our lake and as near as I can tell because of the circuitous and lengthy route our yacu takes to get up here whatever is going on in the outside world will not affect us- at least not for a long time.(I'm guessing here.) But the biggest deal of all, if it's true what the guy said that the Salado- Lago agrio section of the Trans-Ecuadorian highway, about 75 miles was totally wiped out in a mud slide from Reventador which means that Benecio will be stuck in his Gringo Chili - his restaurant serving American road workers- for the next three months or so. I don't know that for sure but that's exactly where he lives.
Now I'm thinking that this information could be accurate because there are oil pumping stations all along that road and right now my guess is that they are spewing amazon crude like fire hoses befouling land , man and beast with black ooze, but they have sophisticated communications and would be the only ones who would have instant information like that. So Ding Dong The witch is Dead ! The Wicked Witch is Dead ! I'll bet my fortune we don't have to worry about Benecio anymore.We really don't have to worry about anything anymore. Look, I've even socked in a pretty elaborate first aide kit should we need it.
Dory muttered something in Dutch.
"What was that?" he asked
"If you know how to deliver babies," said Nina softly.
"I'm not sure what to make of that remark."
"Make nothing," said Nina, "Make nothing."
Ok, so I, m throwing an earthquake party, C'mon Dory make lemonade out of your lemons. Nothing to be done.So we can sit out until sunset and I'll get the folding chairs and the radio and a bottle of rum and groove to the aftershocks and wait for Gustavo.
Nate was smiling broadly when he returned to the dock carrying folding chairs and glasses and a bottle of Jose Cuervo deciding it to be a better choice than the rum for such an ocassion and some limes in his pants pockets, a shaker of salt in his shirt pocket, a knife between his teeth and of course the radio which he had retrieved from the garden table. He sat out each chair playing the fool as a maitre d' and with a slight stumble kicked the radio into the water along with the third chair. He jumped in after it and after several dives brought it up tannic water draining from every orifice in the device.
Disgusted with himself, he gave the radio a good shake and still more water came out. Then he tried to turn it on. A blurt of calming music came out-
Then all was quiet.
"Always Strauss," said Dory,"In times of trouble they feed Strauss to the masses to calm them down."
"Fucking hell,"said Nate.
"Fucking hell is right , "said Dory, "Now we are just as well in the silent world of Dolores. And just as well in prison...And we are some of the richest people on earth.We could just as well only know sign language for what we will hear of the world...maybe the radio will dry out. And what would we do with the information anyway ?Ah,gotfadamma! Cmon Nate, put your chair next to mine."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
He had called the girls up to the mine shaft to hold more flashlights on the spot. He became the mining equivalent of an oral surgeon careful to make his final yank on his patient's unnecessary wisdom tooth both precise and bloodless; a professional extraction that would take all of the green mineral, partially embedded in ore, out in one piece.At first he used several different sizes of chisels at a great distance from the prize to break it away from the surrounding ore. Then made a parallel hole to determine the depth of the beryl with a water infused drill. He spent a long time looking into that hole and picking at pieces of stone that the drill left loose but did not flush out.
He drilled another hole and another until holes radiated around the beryl locked since eternity with the ore that had molded its fate to perhaps one of the most valuable gems ever discovered.
Finally, he inserted what looked like a common crowbar behind the mass and popped it out catching it at the edge of the hole and dropping the crowbar, taking it gingerly with both hands.
They sat by the bank of the stream, the four of them, creating adorations for the stone as washing it brought forth its true magnitude and left no one jaded.
"This is the baby Jesus of gems,"he told them softly, and made a cradle for it in his hands.
He chronicled the Gachala and the Princess for them and about how much larger emeralds- one weighing several tons had been found but not of gem quality.Then he noticed the trapiche, the sugar cane spokes beginning to fire their way to the surface and he pointed them out to Dolores and he only laughed.
Of course, the girls understood and Dory surprised herself saying:"and who gets the money for this one?"
"This one is priceless."
"Everything has a price."
"Yes ,"he said, with tired ecstasy, "everything has a price. Believe me when I tell you that there is more money here than any of us could spend in our lifetimes."
"And how do you know how much money I can spend in my lifetime?"
"You can start a foundation and have money for many worthwhile causes for the rest of your lives. In fact there is so much here... I don't have any details but after I make sure Dolores is comfortable,and after we all buy everything we could ever dream of then we could set up my a foundation if we want too. And while we'll all live like a fat cats- won't it be infinitely more interesting to give this money away than buying more things than we need."
"And you just thought this up?"
"It's the heat of the moment," he said tearing up and beginning to cry openly,"Maybe it will pass. Sure I'll have the best of everything but if we let this stuff out so that we don't flood the world market we may have... we may have...
a billion dollars here. Now what am I going to do with a billion dollars ? Or more for christ sake? " He was crying openly now and Dolores was signing calmly and he signed back to her and she began to rub his back so overtaken was he with this flood of emotions that he brought the four of them down with him and they all began to cry at the outlandish fate they had been presented with. Fate and responsibility and the turn their lives must now take when a cracking sound pervaded the jungle and threw them all onto their backs.
Trees snapped everywhere. Another c-rack! And great giants of trees wobbled in every direction.
"I think," shouted Nate, I think it is an earthquake! Head for the cabin for the clearing. The land continued to roll with each successive aftershock and they made whoozy, drunken strides with equilibrium lost as if on a wild carnival ride finally arriving at the center of the garden and the CAMPARI table . None of the plants were damaged and as the after shocks continued trees swayed and branches fell. The forest was the last place anyone wanted to be.
"I'm going to try to get the radio," said Nate and staggered like a drunk man against the aftershocks that seemed to be occurring at one or two minute intervals.
He returned with the radio on to HCJV, they are talking about Apartment buildings falling down in the capital and telling people to go to Parque Carolina which held a million people when the Pope visited. The announcer is hysterical. Now he is saying that the Epicenter was Reventador, that their were two earthquakes of of 6.9 and one of 6.1 and that it caused the Volcano to blow. The Napo region - us - is not reporting and it is feared that all is lost."
He signed all this to Dolores who calmed down rather than panicked.
"What about Gustavo ?" asked Nina.
"These announcers are hysterical. I have plenty of batteries but I'm going to turn this thing off for awhile to conserve our sanity. How could they be getting these reports so fast. Maybe by divine intervention?"
What about Gustavo," she repeated.
"We'll have to wait and see.I believe that he made it. He's out there scared shitless somewhere and if he doesn't show up by sundown. I...We will go look for him. Tomorrow morning. We''ll do a portage with the canal canoe. No problem.
Let's move down to the dock.
"Here's what you got to think about now," he said after everyone sat. "There will be shortages of food and water everywhere else in Ecuador and thanks to our Black Dirt that will never be an issue for us. The cabin is safe because it is built on pillars that only shifted about six inched and broke a couple of plates. So we will have a roof over our heads for as long as we need it. I'm pretty sure I stored in enough beer and rum.Sorry much for the trivial but I like a few creature comforts. We have fish in our lake and as near as I can tell because of the circuitous and lengthy route our yacu takes to get up here whatever is going on in the outside world will not affect us- at least not for a long time.(I'm guessing here.) But the biggest deal of all, if it's true what the guy said that the Salado- Lago agrio section of the Trans-Ecuadorian highway, about 75 miles was totally wiped out in a mud slide from Reventador which means that Benecio will be stuck in his Gringo Chili - his restaurant serving American road workers- for the next three months or so. I don't know that for sure but that's exactly where he lives.
Now I'm thinking that this information could be accurate because there are oil pumping stations all along that road and right now my guess is that they are spewing amazon crude like fire hoses befouling land , man and beast with black ooze, but they have sophisticated communications and would be the only ones who would have instant information like that. So Ding Dong The witch is Dead ! The Wicked Witch is Dead ! I'll bet my fortune we don't have to worry about Benecio anymore.We really don't have to worry about anything anymore. Look, I've even socked in a pretty elaborate first aide kit should we need it.
Dory muttered something in Dutch.
"What was that?" he asked
"If you know how to deliver babies," said Nina softly.
"I'm not sure what to make of that remark."
"Make nothing," said Nina, "Make nothing."
Ok, so I, m throwing an earthquake party, C'mon Dory make lemonade out of your lemons. Nothing to be done.So we can sit out until sunset and I'll get the folding chairs and the radio and a bottle of rum and groove to the aftershocks and wait for Gustavo.
Nate was smiling broadly when he returned to the dock carrying folding chairs and glasses and a bottle of Jose Cuervo deciding it to be a better choice than the rum for such an ocassion and some limes in his pants pockets, a shaker of salt in his shirt pocket, a knife between his teeth and of course the radio which he had retrieved from the garden table. He sat out each chair playing the fool as a maitre d' and with a slight stumble kicked the radio into the water along with the third chair. He jumped in after it and after several dives brought it up tannic water draining from every orifice in the device.
Disgusted with himself, he gave the radio a good shake and still more water came out. Then he tried to turn it on. A blurt of calming music came out-
Then all was quiet.
"Always Strauss," said Dory,"In times of trouble they feed Strauss to the masses to calm them down."
"Fucking hell,"said Nate.
"Fucking hell is right , "said Dory, "Now we are just as well in the silent world of Dolores. And just as well in prison...And we are some of the richest people on earth.We could just as well only know sign language for what we will hear of the world...maybe the radio will dry out. And what would we do with the information anyway ?Ah,gotfadamma! Cmon Nate, put your chair next to mine."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Monday, January 5, 2009
#18 Chupacabra
The emerald mine was behind a waterfall, the one Dory had heard so clearly that day in the forest whose flow of water varied from gushing romance to squalid trickle depending upon the amount of rainfall it received. The girls , however, did not work in the mine, but in the stream bed below.
It took only two days for the work to become routine for them, only rarely impressed now by a stone whose beauty or size caught their attention. They worked the stream bed by first gathering with hand trowels in their five gallon buckets almost indiscriminately ore that lay in and at the edges of the shallow stream, then heaving the buckets into the sluice where Dolores, a well-trained miner without auditory distractions would pick out the stones, smiling slyly to herself when she found nuggets of ore with their bounty well-embedded. . Bucket after bucket of ore was dumped into the sluice and not so much as a millimeter chip would escape Dolores hawklike eyes. There were many cabuchons just lying about, the oval uncut beauties that Nate had shown them as being the loot Virginia Wiggins had taken for her son , just lying along the stream bed like luxurious sleeping beryl beetles ,scarab amulets glistening in the sun. So easy was the accumulation of this wealth.There had to be a consequence somewhere down the line .
Nate's jackhammer, powered by a generator, could be heard booming intermitently from inside the cave that now barely flowed water from its depths.There had not been rain in several days. But the waterfall that did cascade had enough force to bring down the rock, dust and pebbles he dislodged -and sometimes chunks of ore, as he hammered away at what he had told the girls was a vein, a particularly rich deposit.Dolores would get up from her command post behind the sluice every time there was a significant fall of rock and scrutinize it closely, sometimes picking up a bucketful and running it through the sluice where upon she would choose several samples and take them back up to the cave presumably to confer with Nate.
As if dropped from the sky, Gustavo appeared, passed the girls without speaking to them, looking very alarmed . Nate sat on a ledge outside the waterfall resting and upon seeing Gustavo jumped to his feet to try to look past him for signs of trouble then quickly climbed down from his vantage point warmly greeting Gustavo while telling Dolores and then the girls to hide. Dolores set the girls in motion with convincing shoves and they followed her to a canal. One of the canals Nate had spoken of that this large civilization had created , no doubt, and there was a canoe waiting and she motioned the girls in and began to paddle. An electric blue Morpho butterfly played above their heads as Dolores with strong unbroken paddle strokes lead them through the canal that opened onto Mandicocha lake a mile later.Mandi meant water hyacinth in Kich-Wa and this cocha was choked with it.She skillfully threaded her way through the plants, the water was shallow and she used her paddle in places as a pushing tool heading steadily toward what must have been a predetermined destination; the shady cover of a stand of bamboo on the far side Lake.
Dolores was stoic but the girls spoke rapidly in their mother tongue trying to think of all the wicked scenarios that could have transpired and what they would do, what could they do to extricate themselves from this prison without walls. Somehow they decided Dolores would know what to do for she had shown true allegiance to Nate since Benicio's departure and they each grabbed one of her arms and held on tightly.
It was during this conversation that some startling news from Nina came to light as well. She was late. She was late and she was never late and she thought she was truly in love with Gustavo. Dory chastised her at first: Why had she not been more cautious ? If she had known why had she not asked Dory for the Morning-after-pill that she knew Dory always carried ? Had Nina forgotten that her whole life was ahead of her and what would she do with a baby so young- at the same time trying to calculate how many weeks you could be and still safely terminate a pregnancy. Was it 12 ?
Margaret, Nina's mother,became an angry picture in her mind and her words ,came bellowing back to her. The same words she had used with Dory, taken aside for just an instant ,before leaving on every summer trip the girls had ever taken together and this was the fifth one:"Now you take care of my Nina." The mother knowing full well that although Dory was the more daring of the two she also had more common sense.
Dory and Nina had been friends since kinder and when at the age of 12 Nina contracted Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Dory stayed true to her friend through the infections and chemotherapy astonished by her quiet courage and Nina for her part at the suggestion of her writer father kept a journal of her ordeal that was published when she was cured and though not as poignant as The Diary of Ann Frank, was reviewed with accolades and sold some 6000 copies and was still in print and selling steadily. Nina never spoke of it among her peers and she had instructed Dory to honor her desire not to receive any kind of celebrity from her near fatal childhood illness although she did answer the letters from children and parents, a few a month, that her publisher forwarded to her offering hope and strength to all of them- and the royalty money conveniently helped her to fund her summer travels.
Dory practically lived at Nina's slightly decrepit but wonderful Prisengracht house with the five stories you had to climb to get to the living area as houses in the seventeenth century were built tall rather than wide to avoid property taxes based on width and that wonderful rope contraption which sprung the door open from the top floor when you rang the buzzer to let you in. This was Dory's real home. Not the small middle class grey cement flat where her mother lived ,surrounded by black and white embarrassingly posed photos of her in younger years at the height of her dance career.
So most evenings would find Dory at the Gans dinner table and she would try to bring a bottle of Bols gin as her price of admission but nobody expected anything from her-she was treated as family by Rogier Gans a fiercely leftist newspaper columnist for De Volkskrant who never brought his work home and Joost , Nina's older brother who also worked for De VolksKrant as a photographer and Margaret who would as often as not cook Indonesian food, a gift brought back by the Dutch from colonial times with its Rijstafels, Rice tables, nasi and bami and goreng dishes.
And the kind parents of humble means, humble by the standards of Dory's childhood when her Orchestra Conductor father was in the picture ,would make conversation in the sense that they would introduce subjects or anecdotes for the university students to address with their minds. To stimulate them. Never judgemental and never idealistically charged because as Rogier always said if you wanted to know his politics read the fishwrappings - and not in his house.Then there was Nina who she loved as a sister, who they had taught the gift of tolerance and the right of all peoples to human dignity. Dory worshipped Nina her natural communion with all mankind and though it frustrated her sometimes that she could see both sides in even the most barbaric civil or intrapersonal disputes-it was her gift, dory recognized, and came to worship at that altar as often as she could.
Besides the biology of Nina's condition Dory felt that the Amazon had cast some spell on Nina and she felt it too. Emeralds or no. Nate was a weather beaten man who had traveled down many roads and the weight of his intellect, besides his charm and passion made him something...well... something not to forget about.He had a brilliant mind, it seemed, something that always attracted her, scarce as they were.
There were some horned screamers, a bird with a loud whooping call, out of sight at the stream end of the lake, perhaps two juveniles and their parents who broke the afternoon calm at odd intervals. A ring necked kingfisher darted by, and the trees cracked and thrashed startling the girls several times with their undisclosed secrets. Parakeets, Parolets, and Military macaws all passed overhead in large numbers as if escaping something and Nina remarked as much.
The lake water nearby thrashed and bubbled. The water hyacinth, unrooted, moved noticeably on gusts of wind and the sky darkened like impending doom.
Inexplicably from behind them, Nate appeared laughing and relaxed.
The girls demanded an explanation and Nate sat beside them. He signed first to Dolores who after getting what must have been an abbreviated version of what happened breathed a deep sigh of relief and removed the arms of the two girls who had obviously been holding her so tight that she was in pain.
"Nothing to worry about,"said Nate, laughing, unless you believe in chupacabra."
"Chupa-
"Chupacabra. Goatsuckers in English. Its this legendary beast that every latino campesino knows. It has supposedly surfaced in Florida too. That kills all the animals in its path with surgical kills and the animal doesn't even have time to struggle. This story drifts periodically all over Latin America and some people claim to have seen it and others claim to have shot it and what do you know nobody has a specimen to show. There are those who say it is supernatural.Well Gustavo all alone out there waiting for Benecio who could be the chupacabra incarnate after all, got it in his head that a chupacabra was circling in on him. He was sure of it in fact."
"So this is not true?" asked Dory.
"Not true," said Nate, but I respect other peoples' beliefs.Remember I was raised an evangelist and I know the power of good old fashion faith healing and the Catholics, Hell, 6 million people a year go to Lourdes to drink the water and you know how many documented cases of miracles they have? 67. You could find 67 miracles in any group of that size multiplied by the number of years since what's her name saw the first vision there. So I respect Gustavo's belief in the chupacabra.
Anyway I have a very very righteous patch of cannabis that Terra Preta works wonders on and I have never invoked my faith healing on anybody but this poor fellow needed to be healed so I rolled up a number and I told Gustavo that the herb that he was about to smoke uses the spirits of the dead to ward off all chupacabras and that if he inhaled this herb three times he would never see or hear chupacabras again.Well he took the three hits, as did I in sympathy to his loss of critical judgment and I must say it was a miracle ! We gathered up some more provisions for old Gustavito and he went away very happy. I would say he went away silly in fact."
The girls laughed nervously and Nate joined them. He did not tell them that through all of his silliness he could not break Gustavo of the feeling of impendimg doom. Gustavo had indeed forgotten about the Chupacabra but kept repeating as he laughed: "Flores. Flores para los Muertos!"
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
It took only two days for the work to become routine for them, only rarely impressed now by a stone whose beauty or size caught their attention. They worked the stream bed by first gathering with hand trowels in their five gallon buckets almost indiscriminately ore that lay in and at the edges of the shallow stream, then heaving the buckets into the sluice where Dolores, a well-trained miner without auditory distractions would pick out the stones, smiling slyly to herself when she found nuggets of ore with their bounty well-embedded. . Bucket after bucket of ore was dumped into the sluice and not so much as a millimeter chip would escape Dolores hawklike eyes. There were many cabuchons just lying about, the oval uncut beauties that Nate had shown them as being the loot Virginia Wiggins had taken for her son , just lying along the stream bed like luxurious sleeping beryl beetles ,scarab amulets glistening in the sun. So easy was the accumulation of this wealth.There had to be a consequence somewhere down the line .
Nate's jackhammer, powered by a generator, could be heard booming intermitently from inside the cave that now barely flowed water from its depths.There had not been rain in several days. But the waterfall that did cascade had enough force to bring down the rock, dust and pebbles he dislodged -and sometimes chunks of ore, as he hammered away at what he had told the girls was a vein, a particularly rich deposit.Dolores would get up from her command post behind the sluice every time there was a significant fall of rock and scrutinize it closely, sometimes picking up a bucketful and running it through the sluice where upon she would choose several samples and take them back up to the cave presumably to confer with Nate.
As if dropped from the sky, Gustavo appeared, passed the girls without speaking to them, looking very alarmed . Nate sat on a ledge outside the waterfall resting and upon seeing Gustavo jumped to his feet to try to look past him for signs of trouble then quickly climbed down from his vantage point warmly greeting Gustavo while telling Dolores and then the girls to hide. Dolores set the girls in motion with convincing shoves and they followed her to a canal. One of the canals Nate had spoken of that this large civilization had created , no doubt, and there was a canoe waiting and she motioned the girls in and began to paddle. An electric blue Morpho butterfly played above their heads as Dolores with strong unbroken paddle strokes lead them through the canal that opened onto Mandicocha lake a mile later.Mandi meant water hyacinth in Kich-Wa and this cocha was choked with it.She skillfully threaded her way through the plants, the water was shallow and she used her paddle in places as a pushing tool heading steadily toward what must have been a predetermined destination; the shady cover of a stand of bamboo on the far side Lake.
Dolores was stoic but the girls spoke rapidly in their mother tongue trying to think of all the wicked scenarios that could have transpired and what they would do, what could they do to extricate themselves from this prison without walls. Somehow they decided Dolores would know what to do for she had shown true allegiance to Nate since Benicio's departure and they each grabbed one of her arms and held on tightly.
It was during this conversation that some startling news from Nina came to light as well. She was late. She was late and she was never late and she thought she was truly in love with Gustavo. Dory chastised her at first: Why had she not been more cautious ? If she had known why had she not asked Dory for the Morning-after-pill that she knew Dory always carried ? Had Nina forgotten that her whole life was ahead of her and what would she do with a baby so young- at the same time trying to calculate how many weeks you could be and still safely terminate a pregnancy. Was it 12 ?
Margaret, Nina's mother,became an angry picture in her mind and her words ,came bellowing back to her. The same words she had used with Dory, taken aside for just an instant ,before leaving on every summer trip the girls had ever taken together and this was the fifth one:"Now you take care of my Nina." The mother knowing full well that although Dory was the more daring of the two she also had more common sense.
Dory and Nina had been friends since kinder and when at the age of 12 Nina contracted Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Dory stayed true to her friend through the infections and chemotherapy astonished by her quiet courage and Nina for her part at the suggestion of her writer father kept a journal of her ordeal that was published when she was cured and though not as poignant as The Diary of Ann Frank, was reviewed with accolades and sold some 6000 copies and was still in print and selling steadily. Nina never spoke of it among her peers and she had instructed Dory to honor her desire not to receive any kind of celebrity from her near fatal childhood illness although she did answer the letters from children and parents, a few a month, that her publisher forwarded to her offering hope and strength to all of them- and the royalty money conveniently helped her to fund her summer travels.
Dory practically lived at Nina's slightly decrepit but wonderful Prisengracht house with the five stories you had to climb to get to the living area as houses in the seventeenth century were built tall rather than wide to avoid property taxes based on width and that wonderful rope contraption which sprung the door open from the top floor when you rang the buzzer to let you in. This was Dory's real home. Not the small middle class grey cement flat where her mother lived ,surrounded by black and white embarrassingly posed photos of her in younger years at the height of her dance career.
So most evenings would find Dory at the Gans dinner table and she would try to bring a bottle of Bols gin as her price of admission but nobody expected anything from her-she was treated as family by Rogier Gans a fiercely leftist newspaper columnist for De Volkskrant who never brought his work home and Joost , Nina's older brother who also worked for De VolksKrant as a photographer and Margaret who would as often as not cook Indonesian food, a gift brought back by the Dutch from colonial times with its Rijstafels, Rice tables, nasi and bami and goreng dishes.
And the kind parents of humble means, humble by the standards of Dory's childhood when her Orchestra Conductor father was in the picture ,would make conversation in the sense that they would introduce subjects or anecdotes for the university students to address with their minds. To stimulate them. Never judgemental and never idealistically charged because as Rogier always said if you wanted to know his politics read the fishwrappings - and not in his house.Then there was Nina who she loved as a sister, who they had taught the gift of tolerance and the right of all peoples to human dignity. Dory worshipped Nina her natural communion with all mankind and though it frustrated her sometimes that she could see both sides in even the most barbaric civil or intrapersonal disputes-it was her gift, dory recognized, and came to worship at that altar as often as she could.
Besides the biology of Nina's condition Dory felt that the Amazon had cast some spell on Nina and she felt it too. Emeralds or no. Nate was a weather beaten man who had traveled down many roads and the weight of his intellect, besides his charm and passion made him something...well... something not to forget about.He had a brilliant mind, it seemed, something that always attracted her, scarce as they were.
There were some horned screamers, a bird with a loud whooping call, out of sight at the stream end of the lake, perhaps two juveniles and their parents who broke the afternoon calm at odd intervals. A ring necked kingfisher darted by, and the trees cracked and thrashed startling the girls several times with their undisclosed secrets. Parakeets, Parolets, and Military macaws all passed overhead in large numbers as if escaping something and Nina remarked as much.
The lake water nearby thrashed and bubbled. The water hyacinth, unrooted, moved noticeably on gusts of wind and the sky darkened like impending doom.
Inexplicably from behind them, Nate appeared laughing and relaxed.
The girls demanded an explanation and Nate sat beside them. He signed first to Dolores who after getting what must have been an abbreviated version of what happened breathed a deep sigh of relief and removed the arms of the two girls who had obviously been holding her so tight that she was in pain.
"Nothing to worry about,"said Nate, laughing, unless you believe in chupacabra."
"Chupa-
"Chupacabra. Goatsuckers in English. Its this legendary beast that every latino campesino knows. It has supposedly surfaced in Florida too. That kills all the animals in its path with surgical kills and the animal doesn't even have time to struggle. This story drifts periodically all over Latin America and some people claim to have seen it and others claim to have shot it and what do you know nobody has a specimen to show. There are those who say it is supernatural.Well Gustavo all alone out there waiting for Benecio who could be the chupacabra incarnate after all, got it in his head that a chupacabra was circling in on him. He was sure of it in fact."
"So this is not true?" asked Dory.
"Not true," said Nate, but I respect other peoples' beliefs.Remember I was raised an evangelist and I know the power of good old fashion faith healing and the Catholics, Hell, 6 million people a year go to Lourdes to drink the water and you know how many documented cases of miracles they have? 67. You could find 67 miracles in any group of that size multiplied by the number of years since what's her name saw the first vision there. So I respect Gustavo's belief in the chupacabra.
Anyway I have a very very righteous patch of cannabis that Terra Preta works wonders on and I have never invoked my faith healing on anybody but this poor fellow needed to be healed so I rolled up a number and I told Gustavo that the herb that he was about to smoke uses the spirits of the dead to ward off all chupacabras and that if he inhaled this herb three times he would never see or hear chupacabras again.Well he took the three hits, as did I in sympathy to his loss of critical judgment and I must say it was a miracle ! We gathered up some more provisions for old Gustavito and he went away very happy. I would say he went away silly in fact."
The girls laughed nervously and Nate joined them. He did not tell them that through all of his silliness he could not break Gustavo of the feeling of impendimg doom. Gustavo had indeed forgotten about the Chupacabra but kept repeating as he laughed: "Flores. Flores para los Muertos!"
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Saturday, January 3, 2009
#17 Terra Preta
Nate was sweating profusely and finally sought shade under the umbrella. Dolores reappeared with a pitcher of lemonade, clear glass with slices of lemon floating in it and poured cool drinks for everyone. Nate hugged her with such familial affection closing his eyes and letting his face adore her with a brotherly caress that Dory was taken anew by this complicated man.So smart but somehow so tragic. Dolores held his cool glass to his head and he signed something to her.
She signed something to Dory and Nina and its meaning seemed obvious: this was a good man.
And Dory was beginning to know this to be true for she had made love to him and he had given all of himself in a way she never knew men could love. He was so focused on the love of their love-making that it was almost too intense for her. What would happen next ? She was certainly going to stay along for the ride as the Americans said.
He drank the glass of lemonade down and Dolores filled it up again.
"You can imagine Virginia Wiggins' surprise and dismay when she returned to her digging spot here ... And saw the tomato plants flourishing everywhere. It ran counter to everything she believed: that a non tropical fruit could thrive in the Amazon. Her dismay was compounded by the fact that the civilisation that she mentions in her notes as "SR will fucking ruin me" became known as the Sacha Runa Culture. Sacha Runa is Kich-wa, the oldest living Indian language for Jungle Man. She named it and slowly she had to make concessions that would destroy her own theory. That the pottery they made was too big to be carried from place to place. That she found a whole system of roads that connected villages and cities to an (Undisclosed) capital. That there were terraced dwellings within the cities which meant hierarchical living with the priests and politicians living on the highest terrace and the worst part which was coming to light in Brazil by farmers who had penetrated the forest and then archaeologists who would just blow apart her theory was this black dirt you see all around you which is called terra preta and maybe the real El Dorado worth more than all the emeralds on earth to anyone who can divine its secret.
Scientists now believe that there is Terra Preta in 10% of the Amazon. Most of it is 6 feet deep and it is made of organic materials,charred vegetable material which is why some people call in black earth, human feces, fish bones,heavily loaded with potsherds and a dozen other naturally occurring substances. It is as fertile now as it was 1000 years ago when it was created and as you can see when you look around you the plants are resistant to disease and insects. It is the best soil ever invented and man invented it. Now here's the really spooky thing. It regenerates itself. If you dig up a pile of this earth and wait some years the hole will again fill with Terra Preta and modern science does not have a clue which of the tens of thousands of species of bacteria and fungi, which unique microorganisms allow Terra Preta to reproduce. The soil is 880% more fertile than normal soil. God knows how much more fertile it is than the red acidic soil that supports the rainforest. The rainforest is an ecosystem that works without using nutrients in the soil for the most part. The black earth is man made.It will not be washed away by rain. It will not die and if it could be synthesized imagine how it would change the planet. That is the real El Dorado waiting for some big agro consortium which will rule the world if they ever figure it out. Or maybe they don't want to figure it out because like a vaccine it would become a gift to all mankind and nobody would make any money out of it.It could be cosmic.
But anyway it was the tomato plants , the black earth and other people finding it other places in the Amazon that ultimately shot Virginia's bigfire theory out of the textbooks.
But for me there was more of a thread of possibility that I could locate her emeralds. I'd been up and down this river 20 times before I met Benicio. Sooner or later everybody shows up at the Hotel Auca . Its the center of the universe for quakers and quackers and a fair share of miners who go upriver to the Rio Payamino to mine placer gold. That's where Benecio was headed.
But he had quite a collection, he said, of Sacha Runa Pottery that he found when he built a camp for Texaco in the 60's, and a funeral urn with the bones of a stillborne baby inside, he conjectured, so exquisite was the piece in the shape of a woman whose arms plastered to her body as if in an offering and -I"ll show you one of these later- she has the most delicate design of head and body and a prominently displayed clitoris which could no way be construed as for arousal and the most amazing thing of all was when he cracked off the bottom where the bones had been sealed he had found an emerald.
He was so busy flying in lobster tail and other delicacies to the Sacha Campaign (as The Oil Company. so enlightened, called their Amazon putsch) heads and other high ranking drill people that all he could do was put it in his kit and when at 110 feet the well was determined dry and the fact that Texaco was paying even back then 50,000 dollars a day with barges brought up all the way from Brazil, they yanked him to build the next camp and he never found the place again. And oh yes he had seen the black earth.
So over his sinchicara I asked him if there was a stream or a waterfall nearby and yes he said he thought there was and we looked at maps and I plotted the progress of Virginia's digs according to her field notes and her published accounts although I found evidence that she tried to cover her tracks and it was presisely that unfinished dig across the lake that led me here because by character she was sone of those leave no stone unturned people,and I narrowed it down to 15,000 hectares from there. All the land I could afford to buy.
And the urgency to buy the land was not Benecio's it was mine.The news in the wind was that the socialist President of Ecuador ,Umbato, was about to give all the amazon lands to the indigenous, mostly Kich-was, but, Cofanes, and Shuars and Secoyas as well ,and I had one chance to zero in on my 15,000 hectares where my research from Virginia's work had convinced me I would find this place, and I bought it: ten thousand for the land and ten thousand for the bribe. And I cut Benicio in because he said he was connected to the emerald business in Columbia, because he knew everything about the rain forest and because without knowing it he had , I thought, actually been to the place where Virgina had found the stones in the stream. So he and I drank Sinchicara and took Ayahuasca which gives you an out of body experience and slowly we divined-call it horsehit- that it had to be on a lake and far from the Napo River to have gone undiscovered and first at the mouth of the stream we found the Oil Company Sign , Rusted but legible, the way we came in with remnants of the camp Benicio had built, then we found Wiggins unfinished dig site just offf the lake with the all the tomatoes and When I saw the huge mound that we are sitting on which looks so obviously man made: I TOLD BENECIO THAT THIS WAS IT ! And the rest as they say, is history.
Now as to my personal theory about this specific place, I found a narrow trench that covers the whole backside perimeter and I believe it held palisades-like a pointy fence to keep people out.They probably used pambil the same fence and posting palm people down here use now with sharp points. I figure A small number of people lived here and lived well, perhaps they were priests who controlled the wealth. There is evidence maybe of soldiers quarters on one edge to your left and we've unearthed very fine burial urns perhaps for the aristocracy of this society that would be buried on the hill down near the lake. So while it's not important it is my theory that this was the fucking Fort Knox of this civilization meant like in all societies for a small percentage of the population to get very wealthy while the rest of the population was either poor or maybe they had it a middle class. These people were as sophisticated as the Egyptians in engineering and could easily have built a pyramid if that had been a goal, but they liked wide avenues and canals to paddle tranquilly from place to place and the unit of monetary engagement was the emerald. Hell I can see emerald barons speculating on land that they know will soon be populated. And what provided the intense labor needed to produce Terra Preta- green stones ! Can You imagine? A full fledged cynical capitalist system like our own a thousand years ago in the Amazon.
"What is this Fort Knox? " asked Dory.
"That's where the Americans keep most of their Gold in an underground vault and nobody has ever been able to steal it from there!"
"So the world will one day have the real El Dorado..."She said Hopefully,"Terra Preta."
"Hell, yes ,and we've got esmeraldas up the yinyang!"
"When can we see this place?"
"Right now young lady."
And they all stood up and began to walk out of the garden by a different path than they came in by.And Nate stopped them. He seemed to Dory almost Messianic:
"So ultimately,this guy Francisco de Orellana, the Conquistador who discovered the Amazon, did find El Dorado. He told everyone in Spain about the abundant crops and the large cities and the highways and canals and he was the first and last European to see the great cities of the Amazon with the exception of Solis de Holguin in 1617 who made it to the Bolivian amazon and brought with him the same gifts that Orellana had: Measles, and influenza and small pox and these great civilizations ,over a period of perhaps two hundred years , millions of people died out in their Amazon Paradise like dry straw in a wildfire ...never to return.
But as fast as the native peoples died out so fast, so slow was the notion of El Dorado to loose its fascination on the Spaniards. What had begun as a search for gold,somehow changed-not to emeralds- but to something abstract and many years after Orellana they came from the north of the continent still searching for El Dorado.For Conquistadors like Berrio and Albujar in what is now Colombia and along the Orinoco river, it became something much more. It was the search, to borrow from another culture ,for shangri-la that they desperately wanted, the unviolated paradise which by their presence they violated and destroyed...for such worlds had existed. But we are destroying nothing and have found everything."
"But Benecio?" asked Dory.
"Benecio,"said Nate," Benecio is a violacion."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
She signed something to Dory and Nina and its meaning seemed obvious: this was a good man.
And Dory was beginning to know this to be true for she had made love to him and he had given all of himself in a way she never knew men could love. He was so focused on the love of their love-making that it was almost too intense for her. What would happen next ? She was certainly going to stay along for the ride as the Americans said.
He drank the glass of lemonade down and Dolores filled it up again.
"You can imagine Virginia Wiggins' surprise and dismay when she returned to her digging spot here ... And saw the tomato plants flourishing everywhere. It ran counter to everything she believed: that a non tropical fruit could thrive in the Amazon. Her dismay was compounded by the fact that the civilisation that she mentions in her notes as "SR will fucking ruin me" became known as the Sacha Runa Culture. Sacha Runa is Kich-wa, the oldest living Indian language for Jungle Man. She named it and slowly she had to make concessions that would destroy her own theory. That the pottery they made was too big to be carried from place to place. That she found a whole system of roads that connected villages and cities to an (Undisclosed) capital. That there were terraced dwellings within the cities which meant hierarchical living with the priests and politicians living on the highest terrace and the worst part which was coming to light in Brazil by farmers who had penetrated the forest and then archaeologists who would just blow apart her theory was this black dirt you see all around you which is called terra preta and maybe the real El Dorado worth more than all the emeralds on earth to anyone who can divine its secret.
Scientists now believe that there is Terra Preta in 10% of the Amazon. Most of it is 6 feet deep and it is made of organic materials,charred vegetable material which is why some people call in black earth, human feces, fish bones,heavily loaded with potsherds and a dozen other naturally occurring substances. It is as fertile now as it was 1000 years ago when it was created and as you can see when you look around you the plants are resistant to disease and insects. It is the best soil ever invented and man invented it. Now here's the really spooky thing. It regenerates itself. If you dig up a pile of this earth and wait some years the hole will again fill with Terra Preta and modern science does not have a clue which of the tens of thousands of species of bacteria and fungi, which unique microorganisms allow Terra Preta to reproduce. The soil is 880% more fertile than normal soil. God knows how much more fertile it is than the red acidic soil that supports the rainforest. The rainforest is an ecosystem that works without using nutrients in the soil for the most part. The black earth is man made.It will not be washed away by rain. It will not die and if it could be synthesized imagine how it would change the planet. That is the real El Dorado waiting for some big agro consortium which will rule the world if they ever figure it out. Or maybe they don't want to figure it out because like a vaccine it would become a gift to all mankind and nobody would make any money out of it.It could be cosmic.
But anyway it was the tomato plants , the black earth and other people finding it other places in the Amazon that ultimately shot Virginia's bigfire theory out of the textbooks.
But for me there was more of a thread of possibility that I could locate her emeralds. I'd been up and down this river 20 times before I met Benicio. Sooner or later everybody shows up at the Hotel Auca . Its the center of the universe for quakers and quackers and a fair share of miners who go upriver to the Rio Payamino to mine placer gold. That's where Benecio was headed.
But he had quite a collection, he said, of Sacha Runa Pottery that he found when he built a camp for Texaco in the 60's, and a funeral urn with the bones of a stillborne baby inside, he conjectured, so exquisite was the piece in the shape of a woman whose arms plastered to her body as if in an offering and -I"ll show you one of these later- she has the most delicate design of head and body and a prominently displayed clitoris which could no way be construed as for arousal and the most amazing thing of all was when he cracked off the bottom where the bones had been sealed he had found an emerald.
He was so busy flying in lobster tail and other delicacies to the Sacha Campaign (as The Oil Company. so enlightened, called their Amazon putsch) heads and other high ranking drill people that all he could do was put it in his kit and when at 110 feet the well was determined dry and the fact that Texaco was paying even back then 50,000 dollars a day with barges brought up all the way from Brazil, they yanked him to build the next camp and he never found the place again. And oh yes he had seen the black earth.
So over his sinchicara I asked him if there was a stream or a waterfall nearby and yes he said he thought there was and we looked at maps and I plotted the progress of Virginia's digs according to her field notes and her published accounts although I found evidence that she tried to cover her tracks and it was presisely that unfinished dig across the lake that led me here because by character she was sone of those leave no stone unturned people,and I narrowed it down to 15,000 hectares from there. All the land I could afford to buy.
And the urgency to buy the land was not Benecio's it was mine.The news in the wind was that the socialist President of Ecuador ,Umbato, was about to give all the amazon lands to the indigenous, mostly Kich-was, but, Cofanes, and Shuars and Secoyas as well ,and I had one chance to zero in on my 15,000 hectares where my research from Virginia's work had convinced me I would find this place, and I bought it: ten thousand for the land and ten thousand for the bribe. And I cut Benicio in because he said he was connected to the emerald business in Columbia, because he knew everything about the rain forest and because without knowing it he had , I thought, actually been to the place where Virgina had found the stones in the stream. So he and I drank Sinchicara and took Ayahuasca which gives you an out of body experience and slowly we divined-call it horsehit- that it had to be on a lake and far from the Napo River to have gone undiscovered and first at the mouth of the stream we found the Oil Company Sign , Rusted but legible, the way we came in with remnants of the camp Benicio had built, then we found Wiggins unfinished dig site just offf the lake with the all the tomatoes and When I saw the huge mound that we are sitting on which looks so obviously man made: I TOLD BENECIO THAT THIS WAS IT ! And the rest as they say, is history.
Now as to my personal theory about this specific place, I found a narrow trench that covers the whole backside perimeter and I believe it held palisades-like a pointy fence to keep people out.They probably used pambil the same fence and posting palm people down here use now with sharp points. I figure A small number of people lived here and lived well, perhaps they were priests who controlled the wealth. There is evidence maybe of soldiers quarters on one edge to your left and we've unearthed very fine burial urns perhaps for the aristocracy of this society that would be buried on the hill down near the lake. So while it's not important it is my theory that this was the fucking Fort Knox of this civilization meant like in all societies for a small percentage of the population to get very wealthy while the rest of the population was either poor or maybe they had it a middle class. These people were as sophisticated as the Egyptians in engineering and could easily have built a pyramid if that had been a goal, but they liked wide avenues and canals to paddle tranquilly from place to place and the unit of monetary engagement was the emerald. Hell I can see emerald barons speculating on land that they know will soon be populated. And what provided the intense labor needed to produce Terra Preta- green stones ! Can You imagine? A full fledged cynical capitalist system like our own a thousand years ago in the Amazon.
"What is this Fort Knox? " asked Dory.
"That's where the Americans keep most of their Gold in an underground vault and nobody has ever been able to steal it from there!"
"So the world will one day have the real El Dorado..."She said Hopefully,"Terra Preta."
"Hell, yes ,and we've got esmeraldas up the yinyang!"
"When can we see this place?"
"Right now young lady."
And they all stood up and began to walk out of the garden by a different path than they came in by.And Nate stopped them. He seemed to Dory almost Messianic:
"So ultimately,this guy Francisco de Orellana, the Conquistador who discovered the Amazon, did find El Dorado. He told everyone in Spain about the abundant crops and the large cities and the highways and canals and he was the first and last European to see the great cities of the Amazon with the exception of Solis de Holguin in 1617 who made it to the Bolivian amazon and brought with him the same gifts that Orellana had: Measles, and influenza and small pox and these great civilizations ,over a period of perhaps two hundred years , millions of people died out in their Amazon Paradise like dry straw in a wildfire ...never to return.
But as fast as the native peoples died out so fast, so slow was the notion of El Dorado to loose its fascination on the Spaniards. What had begun as a search for gold,somehow changed-not to emeralds- but to something abstract and many years after Orellana they came from the north of the continent still searching for El Dorado.For Conquistadors like Berrio and Albujar in what is now Colombia and along the Orinoco river, it became something much more. It was the search, to borrow from another culture ,for shangri-la that they desperately wanted, the unviolated paradise which by their presence they violated and destroyed...for such worlds had existed. But we are destroying nothing and have found everything."
"But Benecio?" asked Dory.
"Benecio,"said Nate," Benecio is a violacion."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Thursday, January 1, 2009
#15 The Trap Is Set
The noonday sun beat down hard on the girls who sat on the dock that ran out into the lake. They had been sitting there since breakfast and had no desire to swim although Dory ran her toe in circles in the water as tiny fish chased after it and Nina, so fair skinned, had accepted Dory's lightweight jacket and now wore it over her head like a tent, adjusting it restlessly to block out the sun that would appear with each movement of her body as a burning welt instantly reddening her skin.
Just when they thought they could no longer stand it, Nate and Gustavo appeared at the door. Gustavo was carrying a shotgun and a backpack as well as one of the tents they had used before their arrival. He shuffled down to the dock and greeted the girls all in such a commotion of thought and feeling that he had to busy himself with the chore of bailing out the dugout that had been stored beneath the dock to avoid a welling up of emotion he did not want the girls to see. He loaded his gear into the the canoe and greeted the girls weakly: "Senoritas..."
"Que le vaya bien," said Dory.
Nina stuck out her hand instinctually and he grabbed it, nearly falling into the water despite his acrobatic sense of balance. He let her go and chuckled half-heartedly.
"Hasta Luego," he waved.
The girls waved back but no one smiled.
He sat down and began to paddle across the lake. In the middle of the lake he stopped to comb his hair.
They could feel the dock shake as Nate arrived. He was jubilant.
"Well," he said, "Gustavo hates Benecio even more than I thought."
"Where's he going ?" asked Dory.
"He's going to paddle down the yacu, the stream, we came in on and camp out out til Benecio comes back."
"Is he going to kill him ?" Dory asked, frightened.
"Not if he doesn't have to," said Nate, "I know ,I know that sounds crude, but the idea is to scare the living crap out of him. To take him to the settlement of the Basque Separtist Priests who he knows and dump him their without transport. Meanwhile you all. Meaning you, and you, are going to help me get whatever we can out of this mine before he figures out what to do. Whats he going to do at the settlement? Tell the priest that he has a fortune in emeralds and someone is trying to overthrow him? Who can he trust to share in this business with him? First the ugly part of overthrowing us- and if they will overthrow us why won't they over throw him- As greedy as he is he'll never find anyone to help him. I know of only one guy that he has mentioned, a stone buyer from the Chivor mine in Columbia, his compadre, who he thought he would lay off the stones on- a certain quantity a month- like a fence ,so no one would get suspicious about a flood of emeralds into the market and Chivor is privately owned ... he had some subterfuge planned which he never clearly explained to me that we could pass these stones off as chivor stones because some of them have this special wagon wheel design in the stone that only comes from chivor- not a wagon wheel... its the wheel they use to press the juice out of sugar cane to make pure rum..its called a trapiche, a trapiche emerald...here" he pulled a perfect emerald that was quite enormous out of his pocket, "you see its like a star pattern six points radiate out like spokes because of dark carbon impurities and look at the transparency and fire of this baby...It hasn't even been cut yet.
Anyway the way I figure it, If we keep our wits about us with Fernando to help us we've got a good long time before Benecio figures out what to do. Maybe even a month."
And then what will he do?" asked Dory.
"I don't know but we'll all be rich and long gone and while the old fellow will pout a little,it will be hard going,but there might be plenty left for him and whoever he chooses to trust."
"But he looks like a man who will take his...venganza."Said Dory Unable to come up with the word in English.
His revenge? He has to catch us first."
"I don't like this man."
"You have no choice now. If at some point a new direction becomes availble for you and Nina that is safer or more desirable, by all means I will encourage you to take it. I'm cutting you and Nina in for a sixteenth part"
"So you are going to make us slaves?"
"Very rich slaves. Probably higher than you can count. You and Nina get a sixteenth share as does Fernando. Gustavo gets 4/16th and I get 9/16ths and out of my 9/16ths comes 1/16 for dolores. I say it that way because I am going to manage the money for her because among other things Benecio did not teach her is any concept of money.
Youll be able to do whatever you want with the money. Give it away if that turns you on!"
"No, I have a use for it," said Dory Dreamily
"There that wasn't so difficult."
"I am not so very strong,"said Dory.
"What?"
"I said I am not so very strong."
"Iheard you the first time. Believe me a good part of this will be like picking strawberries."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Just when they thought they could no longer stand it, Nate and Gustavo appeared at the door. Gustavo was carrying a shotgun and a backpack as well as one of the tents they had used before their arrival. He shuffled down to the dock and greeted the girls all in such a commotion of thought and feeling that he had to busy himself with the chore of bailing out the dugout that had been stored beneath the dock to avoid a welling up of emotion he did not want the girls to see. He loaded his gear into the the canoe and greeted the girls weakly: "Senoritas..."
"Que le vaya bien," said Dory.
Nina stuck out her hand instinctually and he grabbed it, nearly falling into the water despite his acrobatic sense of balance. He let her go and chuckled half-heartedly.
"Hasta Luego," he waved.
The girls waved back but no one smiled.
He sat down and began to paddle across the lake. In the middle of the lake he stopped to comb his hair.
They could feel the dock shake as Nate arrived. He was jubilant.
"Well," he said, "Gustavo hates Benecio even more than I thought."
"Where's he going ?" asked Dory.
"He's going to paddle down the yacu, the stream, we came in on and camp out out til Benecio comes back."
"Is he going to kill him ?" Dory asked, frightened.
"Not if he doesn't have to," said Nate, "I know ,I know that sounds crude, but the idea is to scare the living crap out of him. To take him to the settlement of the Basque Separtist Priests who he knows and dump him their without transport. Meanwhile you all. Meaning you, and you, are going to help me get whatever we can out of this mine before he figures out what to do. Whats he going to do at the settlement? Tell the priest that he has a fortune in emeralds and someone is trying to overthrow him? Who can he trust to share in this business with him? First the ugly part of overthrowing us- and if they will overthrow us why won't they over throw him- As greedy as he is he'll never find anyone to help him. I know of only one guy that he has mentioned, a stone buyer from the Chivor mine in Columbia, his compadre, who he thought he would lay off the stones on- a certain quantity a month- like a fence ,so no one would get suspicious about a flood of emeralds into the market and Chivor is privately owned ... he had some subterfuge planned which he never clearly explained to me that we could pass these stones off as chivor stones because some of them have this special wagon wheel design in the stone that only comes from chivor- not a wagon wheel... its the wheel they use to press the juice out of sugar cane to make pure rum..its called a trapiche, a trapiche emerald...here" he pulled a perfect emerald that was quite enormous out of his pocket, "you see its like a star pattern six points radiate out like spokes because of dark carbon impurities and look at the transparency and fire of this baby...It hasn't even been cut yet.
Anyway the way I figure it, If we keep our wits about us with Fernando to help us we've got a good long time before Benecio figures out what to do. Maybe even a month."
And then what will he do?" asked Dory.
"I don't know but we'll all be rich and long gone and while the old fellow will pout a little,it will be hard going,but there might be plenty left for him and whoever he chooses to trust."
"But he looks like a man who will take his...venganza."Said Dory Unable to come up with the word in English.
His revenge? He has to catch us first.""I don't like this man."
"You have no choice now. If at some point a new direction becomes availble for you and Nina that is safer or more desirable, by all means I will encourage you to take it. I'm cutting you and Nina in for a sixteenth part"
"So you are going to make us slaves?"
"Very rich slaves. Probably higher than you can count. You and Nina get a sixteenth share as does Fernando. Gustavo gets 4/16th and I get 9/16ths and out of my 9/16ths comes 1/16 for dolores. I say it that way because I am going to manage the money for her because among other things Benecio did not teach her is any concept of money.
Youll be able to do whatever you want with the money. Give it away if that turns you on!"
"No, I have a use for it," said Dory Dreamily
"There that wasn't so difficult."
"I am not so very strong,"said Dory.
"What?"
"I said I am not so very strong."
"Iheard you the first time. Believe me a good part of this will be like picking strawberries."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)