If you have ever been to a rain forest, a real tropical rain forest, untouched and undisturbed, you can more easily relate to this piece. For those who haven’t or those who have and want to check my facts look at the picture on my blog to see a typical view. The forest is green, green, green in every shade and texture of green imaginable. Every piece of ground has plants, algae or moss growing on it and every plant has plants growing on them. Almost every plant in a field of view (10 to 30 meters distance in any direction) is a different species. All these green thing take a different forms from tiny sprouting plant to small flowering plant to bush, vine, understory tree, emergent tree, saprophyte, algae, moss, or green insect crawling or flying around. Every plant has a different size and shape leaf, a different stem size, a different shape and texture, a different branching system, various heights, and silhouette. It’s green and leafy in all directions but it is all different. The forest is a living light catching machine with every conceivable kind of organic light trapping organ on display and vying for that uncaught ray of light. Needless to say the forest floor is rather dim, not dark in the daytime, just dim like wearing dark sunglasses on an overcast day and very, very green.
Many plants grow from the ground up like we are use to. Little trees, some decades old sit on the forest floor inches tall waiting for a light gap so they can shoot up and replace the emergent tree that fell in a violent and sudden wind which produced the light gap by crushing all the vegetation in a swath of 20m wide and 120m long. The little trees that don’t get crushed themselves and grow quickly enough will win the race to reach the canopy before the gap fills in. Small forest floor plants that will never rise above the leaves and sticks that surround them, the annuals, perennials, mosses, and algae that gather any filtered light, never seeing the sun directly, growing slowly, content with just having a space to collect nutrients directly from the soil, the rotting leaves, sticks and debris using the low diffuse light found at the floor, take up what available space they can find. Other plant spring up to head high or higher, fan out and snap up stray rays of direct sunlight that come once or twice a day for a few minutes and content themselves with the filtered light for the rest of the day. These bushes, ferns, palms and other undergrowth rip at a persons arms and legs as they try to push through the rainforest off the trail. These small ferns, palms, bushes, and other minor underbrush obscure the tree trunks of the forest giants, and blend into the vines descending from the top of the trees and the lower plants and debris on the forest floor forming an almost solid curtain of green. Understory trees grow up to plug any hole between the canopy trees catching the best of the light that escapes the giants who control the forest sun. These smaller trees grow fast and straight often aided by insect guards that help protect them from vines and predators thus giving them a real edge in rapid growth. The canopy trees, and even taller emergent trees stand with huge trunks attached to the Earth supported by giant buttress that fan out in all directions like the enormous elephant ears, oversized supports, propping up the 130m tree. Vines grow from the top branches of the tall trees hanging down until they find the ground and sometimes link with roots that fuel their growth up and down the tree. Many kinds of vines, lianas, and other plants crawl up the trunk of the large trees covering the green algae covered trunk with strange leaves laying flat or sticking out, the twisted stems clinging tightly to the trunk looking like the green veins in a weight lifter’s arm. Covering any exposed bark green algae or moss takes advantage of the space and chance to steal some nutrients from the space it gets to live on. In the trees a whole other forest of saprophytes, plants that do not grow on the ground, but in the crotches or on the branches of another tree, takes root and accepts the nutrients, water and light this prime location offers. Bromeliads sprout from every crook, crouch, and cranny on the trees.
With all this growing life, there is death too. Plants live and die. Trees blow over in the wind because of shallow roots and despite the huge buttresses that try to support the height that exceeds the limits of support. Trees or parts of trees die because of insects, fungus, or disease. Branches break off trees because of the weight of vines and bromeliads. When huge branches fall they crush the plants below them sending more litter to the forest floor. Leaves fall all year long because there is only one season, grow season. Leaves live out their life cycle, die fall to the forest floor at random times leaving the tree fully green and the floor always with leaf litter. Insects gain an upper hand on some smaller plants and the plants dies, and crumbles to the forest floor, to be replaced by the seedlings waiting on the ground for the light and nutrients given up by the mother plant. Most of the seedlings lose the battle of light collecting and succumb to the lack of light, nutrients, disease, or insect infestation depositing their bodies with the litter on the forest floor to rot releasing their nutrients which are taken up by the winners of the competition for light and life.
This is what the rainforest looks like on first blush before entering and really examining the ecosystem closely. Once into the forest it is clear there are insects of all sizes, shapes, colors, and kinds crawling, slithering, hopping, dangling, or flying on, in, and around every living thing. Ants on the ground, in the leaf litter, on the dead trees and sticks, on the trunks of the live trees, on the leaves of the bushes, on your boot, up your pant leg, scurrying randomly looking for food or marching in lines to and fro retrieving what they have claimed as their food. Caterpillars of all sizes, shapes and colors crawl on the green leaves munching, waiting to turn into one of the many butterflies or moths that are flitting around looking for a flower of the right kind and a member of the opposite sex of the same species. Flies, big black ones that bite, little annoying ones that get behind your glasses, mosquitoes and their kin buzz around the fresh meat entering their kitchen begin to form clouds around you. Crickets, cicada, locus and other insects of unknown species cry out with clicks, riffs, screeches, and shrill chirps hidden from view, but their polyphonic racket fill the soundscape with a philharmonic cacophony. Lilliputian frogs, some brightly colored, some debris colored, camouflaged and indistinct, hop about on the ground, on the bromeliads, on the huge buttresses, on the trunks of the large trees, or on the large leaves chirping, croaking, squeaking, singing, adding to the cacophonous din. Occasionally a small lizard or gecko darts from leaf to leaf or scurries up a trunk of a tree out of reach and sight of some unseen predator. Spiders crawl, dangle and sit in wait on the webs they weave that seem to be everywhere. Predatory wasps from microscopic to the size of a small bird buzz around in search of prey be it animal or vegetable. Birds chirp, twitter, trill, screech and call to each other from all levels of the forest through the understory while they rest hidden from sight or flit about like their world was a giant play ground. Monkeys, squirrels, mice, rats, agouti, anteaters, and other strange mammals in the trees and on the ground make appearances to see what alien has invaded their world. Of course one doesn’t see them often, but snakes lurk about on the forest floor lying next to the fallen logs, curled up in the protection of the buttress, sliding under the leaves and sticks, blending in slithering silently on their way to find a meal.
With this picture of the forest in mind imagine your task is to walk one hundred meters off the trail into the forest, find a pink ribbon tied to a tree and survey a ten square meter plot of forest floor. The first challenge is to walk into the forest, pushing the knee high to head high plants away with the feet, legs, and arms, pulling the vines and hanging branches away from the face with hands when they intrude on your progress. It is not too long before there is either a large tree in the line of travel off the trail to the objective or there is a fallen tree or other impediment to straight line traverse. Going around obstacles changes orientation, moves the line of travel and confuses the direction of travel. Looking back to sight on where the trail was gives little usable data since the forest looks pretty much the same in all directions. With no sun to be seen through many layers of thick foliage from the trees and tall bushes that stand between you and the sun. Often the sun is further obscured by clouds and/or falling rain. Gauging the direction of travel by dead reckoning is difficult to impossible. A compass is needed to keep the direction steady, but the zigs and zags around obstacles mean the line of travel is very much distorted. Fifty meters into the forest is “lost”, every direction the same, no easy way out, nothing recognizable in any direction so just keep following the compass and press on.
What about the snakes lurking on the other sides of the logs, and fallen trees that require crawling over? Better have a stick to poke around before stepping down and pissing off a fer-de-lance or bushmaster and getting bit back here in the bush
And then comes the problem of how to judge 100m into the forest. Pacing off the distance is not possible with all the flips and trips of stepping over and around the forest litter. Looking back to judge the distance is impossible because only about 10m can be seen at any time. Time stands still around 50m off the trail. There is a sense of maybe being lost: check the compass to make sure it works. There is the sense that the creatures of the forest have you in their sights and they are now closing in for the kill. The next 50m is slow and tentative and how is the next 50m measured anyway? Start looking for the pink ribbon on the tree. Right! Wander randomly getting hopelessly lost and confused knowing that if the ribbon is found there is at least a starting point for getting back to the trail is a tense way to spend a couple of hours or so in the forest. At least the snakes on the ground are not foremost in my mind while feeling this lost.
Finally finding the ribbon my heart slows and my breath calms from a pant to a relaxed rhythm. The fear of snakes on the ground comes back to my mind as I more gingerly step around. Eventually I found that the plots I needed to survey, eleven in all, some of them were in a place where there has been a recent tree fall so the vegetation is different. Here in the light gap there are Heliconia, large plants with beautiful large red, and yellow flowers that humming birds love to get a drink from. This is also the home of the eyelash viper that hangs from the vines or the twelve foot high Heliconia themselves waiting for the humming bird to flit by so it can strike it injecting it with deadly poison to stop its violent fight to escape the snake’s grip. Great! More things to worry about: Hanging poisonous vipers ready to bite me in the face. And Bullet ants too, lot of them, an inch or longer insect ready to inject painful poison from a stinger while biting and injecting digestive juices. Oh, Joy!
The fastest I found one of the plots was an hour of searching. One plot I spent four hours out in the weeds before I stopped looking and went back to the trail which took another two hours. I thought I would be stuck in the forest at night. I had to go back to that place and search again for a couple more hours the next day before finding the pink ribbon. Looking for these ribbons was not a cake walk.
At one of the ribbons I gathered my samples and fended off the insects bent on having my blood. When I got the compass out to line up the course back to the trail, I saw that the compass was spinning around and around in the broken case. No direction to the trail. A bag of leaf litter in hand and no way to get back to the trail. Great. After spending an hour or more traipsing about looking for the ribbon on the tree and then a half an hour gathering my samples and documenting the sight, I was so turned around I had no idea which direction was back to the trail. After a period of panic, no screaming that attracts snakes, I was able to figure out a direction to walk. I had gone perpendicular to the course off the trail to look for the ribbon when I walked in. I walked in one direction for a bit, then advanced ten meters and came back in the opposite direction sweeping about a ten meters in a traverse each turn. By taking note of the crushed vegetation I was able to figure out a perpendicular to that line. Flip a coin and I had a 50/50 chance of heading in the right direction. To keep a straight and steady course, I tied streamer of toilet paper to trees and bushes so I could look back and see where I had been. (I figured that the first rain would wash the T.P. into the soil and it would decompose rapidly.) Eventually I emerged from the forest onto the trail and then set about finding the bicycle I rode on the trail and stashed in the bushes. I walked ten minutes in one direction and didn’t find it so I walked 20 minutes in the other direction and didn’t recognize anything nor did I find my bike. So, I walked 30 minutes back in the original direction thinking I recognized things (duhhh I had just walked this part of the trail, some of it twice) and then found the bike where I left it.
A bike in the rainforest? The bike was just a fast way to get ten kilometers out the trail so it didn’t take all day to get there and back. The bikes were rented to researchers by the lab for fifty cents a day. Some of the mountain bikes were in decent shape, but most of them were real junkers. Imagine a bike in a rainforest where it rains basically every day a good part of the year and the bike is out in the rain and humidity all the time either sitting outside or being ridden on dirty muddy trails. My bike shifted the front sprocket ok, but only had three gears on the rear out of the six or seven available because the cables were so rusted and the derailleur was so bent up. The brakes had very rusty cables, levers, and calipers and were not adjusted because everything rusted in place day to day. These brakes would slow me down but not stop me so much. It didn’t much matter because on the trail the speed was not too fast and except for going down a couple of little hills the bike never got going fast enough that I couldn’t just leap off. On the bike I could zip way out into the forest, ten of fifteen k in a half hour and then go on foot on smaller trails or into the forest to find my study plots.
One day coming back on the bike after some harrowing experience trying to keep from getting lost looking for the pink ribbons, I was cruisin’ along at a good clip hoping to get back by lunch time. I crested a small hill shifted the front sprocket into high and cranked on the pedals to get some speed on the down hill. When my speed was at its maximum I saw a pack of peccary on the trail spread out eating stuff on the ground. A peccary is a wild pig that weighs about 30 to 60 lbs stand about two feet at the top of the head and are about three feet long. Usually a person can smell a pack of peccary long before they see them, but they had been at the bottom of a hill. This pack had about 7 or 8 adults and about 10 little piglets. Here I was speeding along at break neck speed (12mph) with useless brakes so I started screaming to get them out of the way. Mama pig was not about to be moved out of her feeding area and was not going to just let this thing swoop down on her babies so she squared off on the path facing me, tipping her head up and down and snorting loudly. Now packs of peccary have been known to kill people then eat them. I did not want to end my life in such a disgusting manner, killed and eaten by pigs, but I had no choice in my speed so I just plowed onward hoping mama pig was bluffing. I braced myself for the impact with this beast, but just at the last minute mama squealed loudly and ran into the bushes beside the trail. The rest of the pack that had frozen on the path to watch the confrontation also squealed and scattered this way and that, narrowly missing my front wheel.
A week or so later on a different trail there was a herd of coati. Coati are like a raccoon where you have grabbed the coon’s nose and tail and stretched it out to a longer, leaner, somewhat lower animal. Coati are related to raccoons, they are cleaver and pesky. These animals go around in groups of four or five female adults and all the babies. When they prowl around the forest their long tail stands straight up so they can see each other at a distance and know it is safe. The adults mostly stay on the ground, but the babies go up trees and bushes looking for insects and fruit. This group of coati saw me coming after I round a curve again coming down a hill. I was on them before they knew I was even in the area. Since I couldn’t stop, I again braced for the thump, thump of hitting one or two of the adults or the slide from slipping on one or more of the babies. The adults let out a little screech, tails went down and the adults dove for cover. At the same time the babies started leaping out of the trees and bushes and running after the adults in blind panic not even noticing the bike baring down trail, not slowing or stopping. There must have been twenty of those little guys, tails up, screeching for help, running hither, thither and yon. That I didn’t hit one or have one jump on me from a tree was something I wondered about for a long time. It seemed like there was fur flying in all directions and somehow the path opened up and my bike slipped through to safety.
On another trek on the bike I encountered a large snake crossing the trail. The snake hadn’t seen me and was in no hurry to get across. It stretched out from side to side on the trail and of course I could not stop. I was afraid that if I slowed too much I would hit the snake and it would turn and fang me a good one in the leg before I could get away, so I sped up. Just as I got to the snake I pulled up on the bike and bunny hopped over hoping mostly to get the front wheel over so if the snake did turn back and bite I would be down the road. I must have made it over the beast with both wheels because the snake was still across the road when I looked back.
Riding the bike had its draw backs, but it got me to parts of the rainforest I could not have walked to and back before dark. Being out after dark, especially without a working light, was a sentence to staying out all night because it is so dark there is no seeing in this kind of dark. Even trying to follow a trail in the dark was a mistake. And the forest I was in had a strange tree, a member of the peanut family, Pentaclethra, which grows 75 to 100 meters tall and was a predominate tree in the forest. As night approached the forest got darker and darker and if you were out you sped up to get back to the light in the lab clearing before the sun set. There was very little twilight, when the sun went down it was dark. These trees had tiny little leaves on them which folded up about 15 minutes before the sun went down. As you speeded up to get back to the lab clearing in the encroaching dark, suddenly it got noticeably lighters as the leaves of 50% of the huge trees folded up and allowed the evening light to flood in. Some people slowed down thinking they still had lots of time before it got dark, but seasoned researchers started to run because they knew they had about 15 minutes until dark.
Some of the trails that left the lab clearing were concrete for a kilometer or so before turning to dirt/mud. The main trails were well maintained so riding was easy and fast, sometimes too fast. By maintained I mean that big limbs and trees that fell on the trails were quickly cleared and the trail was pack hard enough so water tended to drain off to the sides creating mud puddles and streams to the sides of the path. Not all the trails were bikable and so either extra time had to be made or the ride was done to the smaller trail and then I went on foot from there. On the bike I could sometimes go out in the morning and get back by lunch and then go to a different place in the afternoon and get back before dark. The bike allowed me to double up on sample collections so I could take some days off occasionally. The jungle bike really expanded my knowledge, enjoyment and understanding of the forest.
Being way out in the forest on the trails one might think it would be lonely and while that was often the case there were always surprises. Sometimes there were researchers busting through the brush onto the trail with their bags of samples or equipment. Occasionally there might be a bike heading the other way, or a bike in the bushes and the researcher somewhere in the thick of things. What was really mind blowing was when I was back in the bush, and another researcher would walk through and say, “Hi.” What are the chances of finding another human being off the trail pretty much randomly in the forest? There were courageous souls who would take a line through the forest off the beaten track either looking for ants, or frogs, or violets, and the traverse the forest to survey what is going on. I couldn’t believe that some of these people would walk for many kilometers through the forest following a line, or an easier trek, following animal trails and end up where I got on a bike and a short bushwhack randomly off the main trail. I don’t know how many of these researchers actually made it back to the lab clearing before being bit by snakes and eaten by ants, but I saw more than just a couple of these intrepid researchers.
Being in the forest is an excellent experience. Being lost in the forest is terrifying. A person can not really appreciate the beauty of the rainforest unless they leave the trail and enter the world of green. Back in the weeds is where a human is just another organism, nothing special. That feeling is worth having on the edge of being lost, and wondering just what organisms there are to compete with for your own life.
