amazonas - a fine balance

this is the natural amazon - vivid colours, natural materials, raw, difficult, honest, magical co-existance with nature. i took this photo from the boat, heading up from belem to manaus. the trip took 7 days and 6 nights. it was the richest travel experience i have ever had. the river is majestic, immense, yet fragile. the forest is the same, except bigger and even more fragile. all the elements - the water, the vegetation, the animals - co-exist in a fine balance. humans, where they live natural lives, fit in with minimal intrusion and can seem to be a seamless member of this biosystem. humans more often impose their ways on the system, build cement and consume plastic, demolish vast areas of natural habitat and in its wake build what can only be described as depressing, ugly, vulgar, squalid and poor outposts.

the most striking example of this was the approach to any significant village along the shore of the river: just before reaching the village one crosses the outer boundaries of the village - the rubbish depot. so the scenery from the boat would progress something like this: for long stretches its lush and vivid nature sometimes punctuated by simple wooden frames built on stilts above the water along the banks; then the vegetation begins to sparse, giving way to blank dry land dotted with vultures and perfumed with the stench of rotting compounds; then the mountains of rubbish appear - rust, plastic, rotten lumber, shattered and baked bricks, bottles, diapers, ... -; then the red dirt gives way to gray cement, and the dusty villages appear.

what strikes me the most about humans in this landscape is how so many choose to live in modern poverty, in squalid and dirty cemented garrisons, most toiling in relative misery, consuming coca colas, fake plastic trainers and cheap jeans, watching numbing television, all the while rejecting a simpler, but potentially more plentiful, healthy and peaceful natural co-existance within nature.

i live in london, and i know many successful people who once wealthy enough dream of nothing more than a country cottage somewhere green, rural, unspoiled. having destroyed so much of nature to build monstrous megapolis, the wealthy now rush back to the natural setting. its ironic, and depressing how we seem to need to destroy everything before we value any of it. but these photos are not about that, they are about the beauty that exists there now, and the Amazon basin is the most beautiful and rich environment i have ever had the fortune to visit.