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40 days
No doubt you've heard the story of the four children--oldest only 13, youngest only 11 months at the start of the ordeal--who survived in the Amazon rain forest for 40 days after the small plane they were in crashed. The oldest, a girl named Lesly, was able to take care of her younger siblings, including the baby, until rescuers eventually found them.
The children were indigenous, and family members say that they were familiar with the forest, and Lesly had knowledge of which fruits and roots were edible and which were not. And apparently they started out with a supply of cassava flour. Colombian TV had images of a shelter Lesley built for the others to keep the rain off.
When I messaged my guides R & L about the story, they said the kurupira, the spirit of the forest who can either lead people astray or save them, must have been watching over them.
Here is a statue of the kurupira from Reserva Flor de Loto. She's got one foot facing forward and one backward (some representations of her have both feet facing backward), which confuses trackers. She can change her appearance to look like someone you know, but her feet are always the giveaway.
My guides also talked about the rescue dog, Wilson, whose tracks led rescuers to the kids--they talked about him because Wilson vanished. Like a trade: Wilson agreed to stay in the forest, and so the forest released the children.
... which is something that feels more comfortable to think about as a story than in reality. In reality, when a real flesh-and-blood dog is involved, you want him to come back as well. Here's a picture of Wilson that Lesly drew (from the paper El Tiempo)
And here is some art from CNN Español
There was a team of indigenous rescuers with the military rescuers, and when they found the children, they sang a song to welcome them back to the human world. The song was to encourage them to leave behind the heat of the forest and take up the heat of humanity.
Quite a story.
The children were indigenous, and family members say that they were familiar with the forest, and Lesly had knowledge of which fruits and roots were edible and which were not. And apparently they started out with a supply of cassava flour. Colombian TV had images of a shelter Lesley built for the others to keep the rain off.
When I messaged my guides R & L about the story, they said the kurupira, the spirit of the forest who can either lead people astray or save them, must have been watching over them.
Here is a statue of the kurupira from Reserva Flor de Loto. She's got one foot facing forward and one backward (some representations of her have both feet facing backward), which confuses trackers. She can change her appearance to look like someone you know, but her feet are always the giveaway.
My guides also talked about the rescue dog, Wilson, whose tracks led rescuers to the kids--they talked about him because Wilson vanished. Like a trade: Wilson agreed to stay in the forest, and so the forest released the children.
... which is something that feels more comfortable to think about as a story than in reality. In reality, when a real flesh-and-blood dog is involved, you want him to come back as well. Here's a picture of Wilson that Lesly drew (from the paper El Tiempo)
And here is some art from CNN Español
There was a team of indigenous rescuers with the military rescuers, and when they found the children, they sang a song to welcome them back to the human world. The song was to encourage them to leave behind the heat of the forest and take up the heat of humanity.
Quite a story.
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I hadn't heard any of this story, including the trade with the kurupira. I am glad the children knew the forest.
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I love that greeting-and-restoration song.
Thank you!
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It's REal-life "Baby Island"!Well done, Lesley and Wilson. Well done.
There is poetry in Wilson returning to the forest after getting the children rescued. I hope he's enjoying it there.
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I hope they are able to feel safe and loved for the foreseeable future.
One part of the story that I didn't put in the entry was that they were fleeing violence in their home area, and that the dad had sent the mother and kids ahead on a plane, and the mom died shortly after the crash. So that's just an incredible amount of trauma to have started your wilderness survival with, you know? So I hope they're really able to recover.
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It's like... even human people don't always act the way one oneself would act. It's surprising and unsettling, but there it is. We share a whole lot of ways of looking at things but SURE ARE DIFFERENT in other ways. And animals share a whole lot with people buuuuut SURE ARE DIFFERENT--MORE DIFFERENT in other ways. And spirits and things, even more so.
--This may seem like one huge non sequitur, but it came into my head because I was thinking how it's part of our sense of faithfulness to Wilson that we want him back safely. But that's not--putting aside spirits and things, even--how things work, necessarily.
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Again and again throughout my life, when I've been on the verge of some great transition, the animals who acted as a kind of touchpoint for the last phase, and whom I'd despaired over bringing into the next phase (logistics) have died—and I always knew it was a sacrifice they were making for me.
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I saw this art:
(ignore the fact that the artist drew the baby as like... the oldest-looking kid...)
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