Rainforest Along the Beach of Cape Tribulation

A fruit-eating bird eats the fig, and defecates the seeds high in the fork of a tree where they germinate. A new seedling sends roots downward, wrapped around the trunk of its host and through the air to the ground. The roots rapidly grow thick and become well established in the soil. Soon the host tree is encased in a latticework of strong woody roots, some as fine as my fingers and others as large as my thigh. I’ve seen Strangler’s roots that looked like human arms wrapped around their lover, one tree embraced by another. It’s a deceptively loving embrace, one that brings eventual death to the host. The crown of the fig grows rapidly to keep pace with its roots and eventually overshadows its victim’s crown. With its light cut off and strangled by a web of roots the once healthy host-tree slowly dies and rots away to become fodder for other life.

CLICK PHOTO
Imagine; underneath all
the roots on this tree trunk
is another whole tree.

A World In Love With Itself

The magnitude of life in the rainforest is incomprehensible. I couldn’t take it all in. Everywhere life stacked upon more life. Clinging orchids. Feathery tree ferns. Climbing lawyer vines. Tiny, delicate, creeping plants with green crinkled leaves. I felt the forest growing, heard it growing, inching forward as cells rapidly multiplied and crept across the ground, up the trees and through the leaves to golden sunlight. Life shooting straight for the heavens.

I closed my eyes for several minutes and tried to imagine that I’d been blind all my life. That suddenly science found a way, after twenty-five years of darkness, to heal my eyes and allow me to see. That when they unwrapped the bandages, the rainforest in front of me was the first thing I saw.

As I slowly removed my hands from the front of my face and opened my eyes, brilliant green jumped from its source and shot through my body. It vibrated every cell in my being. Massive brown tree trunks sprang from the Earth and surged skyward with magnificent power, their arms raised to praise the stars. Maybe I didn’t just leave Maine; maybe somewhere along the road I died and passed into another time, a forgotten world of exquisite peace. A world in love with itself.

~ (Excerpts Naked in Eden)

Strangler Fig.

"The trees were magnificent.
Their sheer size took my
breath away. Enormous leafy arms reached out with compassion and grace. Such huge gentle giants with buttressed roots smooth and rippled like
carved works of art."

"Who are you?" I asked.

~ (excerpt Naked in Eden)

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~ Albert Einstein