To be lost and Found, Eye to Eye

I want to invite every one of you to look into an animal's eyes and realize: the survival of nature and every endangered habitat truly is at the mercy of our daily consumption choices.

My purpose is not to speak as a scientist or an expert. What I want to share with you are personal stories. I was lucky enough to live among native communities, interact with them as an equal and actively participate in their daily lives. My husband worked as a physician, I was a teacher and my every morsel of experience was deemed valuable. Crafts, cooking, dancing, English, they all were skills that were cherished and eagerly learned. I have never since or ever before felt so useful! I was just 20 years old, and yet, I had so much to offer to these grateful people.  I, in turn, fell in love with this magical, intensely demanding place, and learned so much from the natives. They might appear lacking in material possessions, but they were the happiest people I have ever met.

I am headed back to the Amazon with my teenagers and my husband this year, eager to report the changes we will observe and to learn more and share our experiences through my books, my stories and my art. What I cherished most about what I learned in my first adventure in the Amazon was an intensity of presence in the way the people I met there inhabited every single day, solving one problem at a time, enjoying one delight at a time. Part of my heart stayed behind, in the Amazon, and this is why I want to share my tales and show you the deceivingly simple way of life I witnessed, hoping to inspire you to share some of my passion and realize we all have a role to play in this unfolding challenge. I know that among you, many will be stirred to action so that together, we can save this place of wild creatures and limitless possibilities, still to be explored. If that exploration is coupled with care and compassion, I am convinced that the Rainforest can be saved, and the lessons learned in this effort will prove crucial when aiming to restore and save other sacred habitats.

The question that has been formulated as the topic for the 2012 World Environment day is: The Green Economy, how can you be part of it? To me, the real answer is: how on earth can we NOT feel summoned to be active parts of it, in every choice we make. I have chosen to be part of the solution by sharing my stories about the habitat I know and love best, the Amazon Rainforest. Stories are powerful tools that inspire and invite action, so listen and then use the resources that abound to seek ways to Green your life. Every little action we decide to develop into a habit has a direct impact on the well-being of our environment and contributes towards the odds of survival of humanity and our Mother Earth, especially if we share our passion with the young ones in our lives, since they hold the real keys to an evolution in our relationship to Nature.

Keep coming back to my blog to read more stories and meet more beautiful creatures, and I promise you will never be the same once we have creeped into your heart.

With love, 

Lina Cuartas.

The Ceiba, Sacred Tree of Life

This is the magnificent ceiba. It is the sacred tree of the Amazon. It was one of the first things I learned about when I started doing my research into the Amazon, I learned that for many of its inhabitants the Ceiba represented the axis of their world, the tree at the center of their world. They believed that it had the power to connect the planes where their ancestors lived, the sphere where their daily lives of hunting and taking care of their needs took place and the world beyond, found in the sky above. Because it hovers over the forest canopy, thanks to its very thick, buttressed roots it was usually left standing when wood was cut for primal sustenance, though that is no longer true when commercial logging takes place.
I learned to love the ceiba long before I saw one. I fell in love with its mystical meaning, its towering presence, like a beacon of hope and protection over the other vegetation, seeming to be keeping a lookout and stand ready to defend the well-being of the forest. I dreamed about it often, and sometimes it was populated with little children climbing on its branches and playing on them like monkeys, something practically impossible in reality due to the ceiba's lack of low branches and challenging slender trunk. I dreamed that it was covered with butterflies too, and whenever I remembered such dreams I felt that the vision had a message for me, but I never could quite figure it out when I was a teenager.
As I grew up, I learned about the tree of life and then I wondered if that was my dreams were trying to help me understand the true significance of the ceiba. Once life finally allowed me to arrive at the Emerald Forest I was already twenty years old, and I will never forget what I felt when I read the words that welcomed me to Tarapacá, a little caserío on the Putumayo River, which was were I first lived in the Amazon. The letters were written by Jorge, my life partner, as he described Tarapacá and prepared me for my eventual arrival there. "You will know you have arrived when you see the Ceiba of Tarapacá".
Sure enough, it truly was my first sight as the pilot excitedly told us to get ready for a rough landing, I saw the magnificent Ceiba and I knew I had arrived to the place I had longed to see for so long, and to learn so much from the sacred tree of life and the people who so wisely had divined it to be their chosen guardian.

With love,

Lina Cuartas.

A Lifelong Thirst for the Green

I grew up in Colombia, the doorway to South America,  a country blessed by coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and gifted with an unbelievably diverse range of habitats. I remember being in third grade Social Studies class and half-listening to the teacher's speech about our desert to the north, our very different beaches, the Pacific, rimmed by rainforest and the Atlantic, idyllic and punctuated by sun kissed white sand. Then she talked about our mountain ranges, three rugged daughters of the Andes and how they enter our country, dotted with volcanoes and snow here and there, and among which our main cities are nestled. Then she mentioned, casually, how almost half of our territory was split between fertile, seemingly endless plains perfect for cattle herding, that suddenly end as the dense vegetation of the Amazon takes over, and she punctuated, "less than five percent of our population lives in this wilderness"...
That was like a golden key to unlock my imagination. I started dreaming about finding the way to move there, to learn about the macaws, the jaguars, the monkeys, the flowers, all the magnificent creatures I read about and all the others the books hinted at, many of which, especially fish and insects, had not even been seen or classified by scientists. A magical being started visiting my dreams. She introduced herself as Penelope, the spirit of simplicity, and promised to guide me as I learned more and more about this place that tantalized my heart. I remember how everything I had to do at school I tried to channel into a project that would allow me to learn more about the Amazon.
I wished with every fiber of my being to find a way to actually see the wilderness. I dreamed about finding a life project that would allow me to combine my passion and make a living. I had no idea about the tortuous path that it would turn out to be. How by following my heart, I would in fact, find my way to the Emerald Forest, where I would leave a piece of my heart and in return, I would keep memories that became intrinsic to who I am. I dreamed about flying high, but I did not know this desire would bring me so far away, thousands of miles away, and now back, twenty-two years later, an eager explorer hoping to share the stories of the changes I will witness and feed the urgency of my message: we need to learn more about the Emerald Rainforest and fall in love with it, so that together, we can save it.

with love,
Lina Cuartas, Jungleeyes.