The rainforest - beautiful, complex and mysterious

Four days in the jungle complete. My lungs are cleared, my skin is fresh and my spirits are high. There is something about the jungle air that makes a person glow.

Our days were spent hiking through thick jungle brush, swimming in beautiful, crystal clear, aqua blue water, visiting ancient ruins, being reborn through an ancient Mayan temescal and visiting numerous excavated, and undiscovered, ruins.

During our hike our guide, Victor, described the history of the jungle and taught us the meanings and purposes of each plant. Some for healing headaches, clearing cuts, removing colds soar, cleansing tea, insect repellents, making furniture, creating natural dies and some for spiritual rituals. He taught us of the different flowers and when they bloom, identified birds by their sounds and explained the paths of the rivers, when they were highest and when they would run dry.

He introduced us to a 600-year-old Ceiba tree, known to the native Mayans as the Tree of Life, it’s branches reaching to the Gods in the sky and it’s roots seeping below the earth towards the Gods of the underworld. We explored the undiscovered ruins of the Laconja people, who were conquered by the Mayan people of Bonampak over some1000 years ago, their city secrets lost beneath the depth of the forest.

In the nights we would fall asleep under our bug nets to the sounds of the crickets and flowing rivers beside our open cabins, often waking to the sounds of the howler monkeys and their packs near by. We would take day trips to the nearby ruins that are run by the original native peoples of the land and listen to the tales of their past as told to them by their grandfathers. Of the bird who was struck by lighting and the serpent nearby who gained his feathers and was recognized as the reincarnation of a God. On our return stopping to photograph the miles of ants carrying leafs to their Queen and greeting the women and young ladies who line the paths selling handmade jewelry of different seeds.

In the mornings we’d wake early and walk along the roads that have been traveled by so many and meet with the young set of cousins, ages 7 and 9, who live nearby and travel to the small store, ‘tienda’ each and every day. They were beautiful, strong and fearless.

It is no wonder so many people from around the world want access to these lands. They are rich in resources and it is shameful these lands and their people can be exploited and sold for capital gain. They are purchased for profit and are now nearly extinct. Once being the home and life support of millions of civilizations, these treasures are running thin and the devastation that has occurred within them is at the point of irreversible.

The Mayan people, so eager to share and so eager to teach, have had their lands captured by greed of individuals and corporations. It has destroyed parts of their heritage and continues to strip them of their cultural lifestyle and identity. As forests continue to be destroyed for resources, logging, cattle farming and foreign profit, an entire civilization of people will suffer the effects. It is inhuman and it should be so widely accepted. I have learned the fate of people lay in the hands of each and every one of us. It is the responsibility of all people to defend those who are being exploited, manipulated and taken advantage of. I hope for these people, for they are amazing and how shared with me a part of our world I would never have known, never have understood without them. To the blind eye it may appear as a gathering of trees, nothing more. But within lies an entire existence that is beautiful, complex and mysterious. As each of us is unique, each tree, each bird and each bug places it’s role in the cycle of life that has been present on this planet much longer than we as humans.

It was the plants and the trees that welcomed us to life, and not the other way around. They breathe life for us and yet we are so quick to take it from them.

It is sad that we, as people, have missed the mark on this one and it is time we repay the forest for all it has given us.