Life

Every day, 365 days a year, at 6 p.m., rain strikes. Nature’s curfew forced me out of the pool and into a shower before eating a snack. During the flood period, when lightning and thunder predominated at nightfall, my father and I would run to unplug everything from the electrical outlets. With 2 or 3 candles, we’d sit on our home’s balcony surrounded by tripods set with cameras, microphones, and every photography accessory laid out on the floor so that I, the 6-year-old assistant, could reach my father. Every time lightning struck, my father would bend over our balcony and scream, “It’s alive!” as if the immense cumulus nimbus ahead of us were Frankenstein.

The concept that we humans are part of nature was never unknown to me, unlike religion, which I only encountered around the age of 8 or 9. The names of gods had, of course, crossed my path when studying at a progressive British academy, but none resonated with faith for me. The famous Encantados were the entities I hoped to meet whenever I went to our “beach house” on the Tapajós, as they seemed to be the ones who would allow me to explore the wild alone at night. The symphony of mice squeaks, panthers growling, crickets singing, and mosquitoes buzzing around my ears formed my lullaby. The forest seemed never to sleep; it rotated shifts, its metabolism never slowed down. Neon venomous amphibians were replaced by fluorescent insects, and the clouds in the sky shifted into treetop outlines as the sun set. The constant change in the forest left me no room to doubt my father’s assertion that the Earth is alive. The truth I saw, and the temple where I laid my faith, was in the forest. My beliefs about life were built around naturalism and science.

It took me a few years to recognize the different approach I had been given toward life and its purpose. I am unsure how to end this note, but I think what prompted it was the return of those lessons in my life as I picked up a book from my father’s retired library. Understanding the forest and its evolution into the great life form it is makes me nostalgic, as if tiny details from my childhood have clicked into place.