|
[mp=400,100]http://bbs.englishvod.net/down/mp3/cr/cr31/mp3/wait.mp3[/mp]
We put ashore at Tagus Cove in the bronze light of late afternoon, scraping the bow of our Zodiac onto the hard black sand beach. A few yards inland, a mountain rises up from the sand, 1)buttressed with thick ridges. It looks raw, freshly created from the earth.
I have studied local maps and know I will need a steady uphill climb to give me a perspective on the landscape that I couldn't realize at sea level. The 2)spine of one ridge is 3)fluted, and there is a narrow trail hidden inside of it. I follow it up atop a thin 4)patina of red soil, iron and 5)magnesium and 6)sulfur once spit out of the volcano as ash and smoke and fire, now finely ground to dust. The path, which is at first a steep heart-pumping natural stairway of small 7)boulders, becomes more of a gentle incline as it goes higher.
It leads me above a thousand feet, up to where finely woven nests of ground 8)finches hang from the bare limbs of the ghostly palo santo trees. Looking down, I see that the cove, in the shape of a perfect half moon, is what remains of a volcanic 9)crater. Time and tide collapsed its seaward wall long ago, and now the ocean fills the geological bowl where 10)magma once roiled. I have walked up the rim of the other half of the crater that still remains.
I'm in the Galapagos, 600 miles offshore South America in the Pacific, the lone writer aboard a research ship full of marine scientists. These islands 11)straddle the 12)Equator, and common sense would have them tropical and warm. But they are also washed with 13)bewildering 14)crosscurrents, which transports ice-cold water up from the Antarctic. 15)Wayward penguins once rode this current northward, and today they have become part of a 16)menagerie of animals and plants, which after drifting, flying or swimming here, have been singularly molded by the isolation of the place. They include giant land tortoises with shells shaped by how they feed on the individual islands where they live; 17)iguanas that have learned to swim underwater and 18)graze 19)algae from boulders; a finch that hunts insects like a 20)woodpecker, except that it holds a 21)twig in its beak and uses it as a tool. Entire families and classes seem to have changed 22)anatomically, just by the act of being in a place my shipmates call the "cradle of evolution." The scientists are here hoping for new discoveries, ways of describing a genus or a species that has never been examined before. I am here for discovery, too, except my logic is more 23)inexact, a childlike sense of anticipation rooted somewhere deeply in my gut.
In some vague way, this place is a reflection of how we are all fashioned by our own realities. Here in the Galapagos, without the nonsense of civilization to muddle up the point, it is just more evident.
This is an odd piece of geography, where cold water meets warm sky and mist sometimes rises up unexpectedly, clouding everything in a pale blur. I have been on the deck of our research ship at dawn by myself, and could not see more than a few yards in any direction. Once, a whale surfaced and 24)splashed, maybe fifty feet away from me, fully hidden in a vacuum that was white, cool. As I stood there alone on the 25)stern, I heard it release the air from its massive lungs in one extended monstrous breath. It sounded as if the entire sea itself was 26)exhaling, expelling a million years worth of memory in a single giant burst of spray and power and light. The mist gradually parted, perhaps from the force of the whale's exhalation, and I could see a portion of its immense body, dark and 27)barnacled like the bottom of a ship, moving deliberately through the water. The moment seemed vaguely 28)hallucinogenic, and I felt as if I were there but also somewhere else, my lonely soul like the 29)disembodied 30)spindrift of the whale's breath. And then as suddenly as it had surfaced, the great 31)cetacean had vanished, dissolving back into the water without a sound. I was still alone on the deck, and with me in the white were only the sounds of the gulls, shrieking at each other, and then, even that was too gone. No wonder the early Spanish, not sure if these islands were real or imagined, first mapped them as "Encantada," enchanted.
And now, up here on the edge of this collapsed volcano, I realize the ridge I've been hiking has taken me to the top of the rim shared by Tagus and the wholly intact bowl of an adjacent 32)caldera, one that sprawls out for a few hundred meters inland. A young naturalist named Charles Darwin made this same hike after putting ashore here at Isla Isabella in the HMS Beagle in 1835. For Darwin, these islands offered a rare glimpse into the beginning of the world itself. The experience was so powerful that it changed him from a 33)creationist; but the 34)dissonance was 35)palatable—it took him the rest of his life to work up the courage to finally admit that animals and plants alter to adapt to their place on earth.
The inland volcano cradles a small, 36)sullen lake at the bottom of its bowl. It is a steep walk-crawl down the sides, and I have no reason to go there. But Darwin was here in the heat of the midday sun and, without a canteen, hoped the lake might quench his thirst. He scrambled down to the bottom of the caldera with no hesitation. But when he cupped his hands to drink, he was 37)startled to find the water was saltier than the ocean itself. All was not lost: Mapmakers named the crater "Volcan Darwin" in his honor.
Seaward, I look down on the broken and submerged crater of Tagus through my 38)binoculars and see a half dozen green turtles 39)mounting the shells of each other, 40)frothing the 41)turquoise sea in their passion. As I watch, each raises its ancient, 42)armored head up out of the water, 43)gulping air in sheer turtle bliss. I have seen other sea turtles underwater during my month here in this isolated 44)archipelago. And each time I have been struck by their primitive grace, the way they glide like huge 45)stout hawks through the water, the 46)glint of another millennium shining in their eyes.
They tell me reptiles don't dream, having evolved long before the rest of us earned the genetic right to that sweet luxury. But I wonder: Do they even need to, out here in an enchanted place that is still part dream itself? Isn't it enough to fly underwater like 47)colossal thick-bodied birds, tiny wings of scales moving them as fast as they ever need to go?
I am waiting for the whale now. I think I hear her sweet night voice, calling from somewhere deep inside the black sea. |
|
