It is dark beneath the green, beside the green, above the green-spattered creamy brown. The river is the color of canned Nescafé, cream superseding the dark of grinds. My feet sink satisfyingly into the mud, wrapped against the leeches and the earth by polka dot low-top Vans whose lines of circles seem a foil to the entropic leech mottle in the ground. My thick navy Dickies tuck into black socks, a makeshift tent against sneaky little vampires. Still, two break through the fortifications, and I drip red down my leg.
Light here, here, soft and sweet against my skin, gentle as it pushes open my eyes. The air breathes like a cloud, full of clean, warm water. My ears buzz with the call of sakatas. The sound is piercing but begins to flow and fade after a few minutes of trekking.
I bite into the pale green tube our guide pulls from the center of the broadleaf evergreen, the name of which I hear repeated, but which won't stick in my mind. It is light and aqueous, like the white tip of celery but more homogenous in texture—no vertical strings to crunch through—and crisp like a green bean. It refreshes the mouth, reminding me of something Americans would pay too much for in an overly air-conditioned health foods shop. I peel back the outermost layer to find it is structured like a newspaper rolled for swatting, layer upon layer, tighter at the bottom, hollow at the top. An edible straw growing in the rainforest. A food of the orangutans.
The guide (age 36, married 7 years ago, a wife and children aged 2 and 6 at home, living in the rainforest 10 days at a time) stops, reverses, unsheathes his machete, swings his right arm toward a hanging, brown-trunked vine. "Root water." He remembers my request to learn about edible elements of the rainforest. He demonstrates. I let the liquid drip onto my tongue. It is light and sweet, like the sun, like the air, like the food of the orangutan.
We come upon the first half of our group staring at a nest positioned halfway up a tree. The lowest one yet. This time the orangutan is preparing for sleep, and she is alone. No child to feed or watch. Her elasticity does not show, now. There is no moving orange to follow far below on the rainforest floor, neck strained back in an impossible C. There are no vibrations to feel when I place my hands against the trunk that reaches to where she is. She is barely visible by the time I arrive, and she is immobile.
The next morning we see her counterpart, a mother and two small replicas swinging from branch to branch. I lean into the trees despite our guide's warnings against getting too close. "Very danger. She might throw things." I can't resist wanting to feel again the movements of the orangutan. I remember yesterday morning. I remember the chase through the thick underbrush after another mother and her child both made eye contact, then turned to live away from our gaze. I remember that first increase of the pulse, the thrill of the morning air, the heart and eyes and everything reaching up to touch the fascinating creature above. I feel this now, too. I interlock my hands to support my leaning head. She sups on leaves and unseen fruit. Her child swings, and swings, and swings. Orange and elastic.
The orangutans. They are like us, except that the function of their bodies as a medium for feeling and navigating the world has not been disrupted by conscious self-aestheticization. People of the forest. They use their limbs fully and without thought. This, this is clear. They are naught but shadows against the sun, blended into the tree branches and leaves, until they move in this pre-conscious way. Their movement is what draws the eye, makes visible their orange tint and hairy bodies. They feel. They feel like long-lost cousins. Contact being made for the first time. Images coming to life from my fourth-grade books. They move and I move too, following, watching, climbing, trekking, straining to see.
The mother and child are closer to the sun than we are. We stare up from the shadows.
The dappled light begins to wane, now. We turn, heading back through the mottle of the forest floor.
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