Smoke over the Amazon

A few moments ago I was browsing the news in an effort to reaquaint myself with the happenings of the world after trekking the southern Amazon Basin with the National Outdoor Leadership School for the past 3 months. I came across a short piece on Al Jazeera which hit home - Smoke over the Amazon.

Over the past few months, I have often seen the same smoke Mr. Elizondo saw through the window of his plane, and occasionally from a much closer vantage point. I can recall seeing plumes of white or brownish-black smoke rising into the air and patches of blackened earth and trees where the fires had been. Once, while our bus was driving on the Trans-Amazonican Highway, we drove through a place where there were fires on both sides of the road. There was zero visibility within the haze. Neither we nor the driver could see the reddish ribbon of the highway for a few long moments. When we finally exited the cloud, the heavy scent of smoke remained with us.

Photo: looking back on a fire
over the Trans-Amazonica.
Nov. 2009

A few of the fires which occur in the Amazon Basin are natural, started by lightning. In the serrado (or savanna) environments, fires are part of the natural cycle. Most of the fires, however, are man-made. They serve as the first step in clear-cutting the rainforest for agricultural use or farmland. According to data from the late 1990's (I'll update with more recent data when I have a chance to find it), over 20,000 km2 (7,722 square miles) of rainforest are cleared per year.

Until the rains come, this is still the Burning Season in the Amazon.

Expect more on my Amazon expedition, and more about rainforest ecology and deforestation, once I'm back in the US.

Amazon Expedition - the first 40 days

29 September, 2009 - Day 23, 6:28am - The morning dawned bright and orange. At first, as I peered out of my hammock and through my bug net, all that was visible was a bright, vibrant orange ball, silhouetts of trees, brush and hills on the opposite shore, and the intensely orange reflection of the water. Slowly the sun rose into the sky and the world became visible - lively greeen leaves and sprigs pushing up from the brown dirt and dead leaves on the ground... rocks, trees, moving water - the rapid we descended yesterday directly across on the opposite shore. From somewhere, I seem to smell yeast bread - it must be coming from the instructor's campsite. It smells good. I could go back to sleep, but I think I'll get up and enjoy the morning.

I am currently writing from a small internet cafe in the city of Apui - smack in the middle of the Amazon Basin, on the Trans-Amazonian Highway. Today begins the second of three days of travel to reach a small, remote community on the Madera River, where we will spend the following 5 days. I don't have much time to write, but I will give you a taste of what has been going on.

During the first 30 days of our expedition, we (15 students, 4 instructors, and the director of the Juruena National Park) traveled 600 kilometers in open canoes down the Juruena and Tapajos rivers. We camped on rock ledges and sandy island beaches in the middle of the river; we ran Class 2 rapids, lined our canoes through shallow water, and portaged around massive waterfalls. We saw hundreds of birds of every shape, color, and size, and hundreds of thousands of insects. There were nights where the sky was so clear it seemed one could see every star in the sky, and nights when the mosquitoes were so thick you cold grab a hundred simply by waving your hand before your face. We've woken up to exquisite sunrises and to ants eating our tents in the middle of the night; to extreme thunder storms and calm, placid mornings.

After our river section, we traveled for about a day and a half further down the Tapajos River and then spent 7 days hiking along the river. Sometimes we were walking through relatively open forest under the canopy, and at other times fighting through unbelieveably dense tangles of vines and undergrowth in areas where the canopy had been disturbed and sunlight found its way to the forest floor, allowing green things to grow up in a dense tangle.

That is all I have time to write now... but I shall recount stories of stingrays and river dolphins, giant Suma Uma trees and armies of leafcutter ants, capering monkeys and all manner of other forms of life and nature once I have completed this Amazon Expedition.

Oh, and one last thought: "The Amazon" is everything you ever heard it was, and more.