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La gran ceiba
The kapok tree--Ceiba pentandra, ceiba in Spanish, is one of the three tallest types of tree in the rainforest. I have always dreamed of meeting one because...
When my kids were little, we were given The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry. Gorgeously illustrated, it's the story of a woodcutter in the Amazon who falls asleep by a huge kapok tree he's been asked to cut down. While he's asleep, all the creatures (including a human child) who depend on the tree visit him and whisper in his ear about what its loss will mean.
He is about to lie down ...
The boa constrictor speaks first:
"This tree is a tree of miracles.
It is my home, where generations of my ancestors have lived"
Later, some tree porcupines speak:
"Do you know what we animals and humans need in order to live? Oxygen.
And, Senhor, do you know what trees produce? Oxygen!
If you cut down the forests you will destroy that which gives us all life"
Later still, the sloth: "How much is beauty worth? Can you live without it?"
Here's the picture of him finally waking up.
I love how his posture is exactly that of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Adam at the moment of awakening
I loved that book so much that I apparently translated it into Japanese--something I forgot I'd done until Wakanomori discovered my manuscript, prior to our trip:
(I don't know if it had been translated at the time I did that--which would have been in the mid 1990s--but it's probably been professionally translated since.)
During our one day-long excursion, we spent some time on Lake Tarapoto (an offshoot of the Amazon--it's connected), and as we came near a massive strangler fig, I thought I saw a kapok behind it--the tree I saw had the same buttressed roots. "Is that a kapok?" I asked in my halting Spanish. "No, not that," the guide replied. "You want to see a kapok?" I said yes please, and we headed off to a different stretch of shore, where we scrambled up the mud and into the Actual Forest. We hopped from more-solid patch of ground to more-solid patch of ground, and after about 10 minutes, came to la gran ceiba.
Here's our guide by one of the buttress roots:
Those roots! In Aventura en el Amazonas, I learned that you can hit them to make a loud, carrying sound, and that's a way of communicating in the forest. Better than smoke signals, the mother of the main characters says, because smoke can't make it through the canopy, but the sound will travel.
Me, so happy
As it turns out, the supermarket that I went to every morning to buy yogurt drinks to take our malaria pills with was called "La gran ceiba." Like a fool, I failed to take a picture of it, and the only one on the internet (taken by Jerson Santiago Ramos, so I'm told) shows it all closed up:
Do you see, though, how the central pillar is the trunk and the crown of the tree has been painted overspreading the store? When I would go there, there would always be a woman sitting to the left of the store as you face it, selling bananas and other fruits and vegetables. The little panaderia to the right as you face it was great too; I got empanadas there a couple of times.
La gran ceiba es un verdadero árbol de milagros, a thing of beauty, sustaining multitudes.
When my kids were little, we were given The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry. Gorgeously illustrated, it's the story of a woodcutter in the Amazon who falls asleep by a huge kapok tree he's been asked to cut down. While he's asleep, all the creatures (including a human child) who depend on the tree visit him and whisper in his ear about what its loss will mean.
The boa constrictor speaks first:
"This tree is a tree of miracles.
It is my home, where generations of my ancestors have lived"
Later, some tree porcupines speak:
"Do you know what we animals and humans need in order to live? Oxygen.
And, Senhor, do you know what trees produce? Oxygen!
If you cut down the forests you will destroy that which gives us all life"
Later still, the sloth: "How much is beauty worth? Can you live without it?"
Here's the picture of him finally waking up.
I love how his posture is exactly that of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Adam at the moment of awakening
I loved that book so much that I apparently translated it into Japanese--something I forgot I'd done until Wakanomori discovered my manuscript, prior to our trip:
(I don't know if it had been translated at the time I did that--which would have been in the mid 1990s--but it's probably been professionally translated since.)
During our one day-long excursion, we spent some time on Lake Tarapoto (an offshoot of the Amazon--it's connected), and as we came near a massive strangler fig, I thought I saw a kapok behind it--the tree I saw had the same buttressed roots. "Is that a kapok?" I asked in my halting Spanish. "No, not that," the guide replied. "You want to see a kapok?" I said yes please, and we headed off to a different stretch of shore, where we scrambled up the mud and into the Actual Forest. We hopped from more-solid patch of ground to more-solid patch of ground, and after about 10 minutes, came to la gran ceiba.
Those roots! In Aventura en el Amazonas, I learned that you can hit them to make a loud, carrying sound, and that's a way of communicating in the forest. Better than smoke signals, the mother of the main characters says, because smoke can't make it through the canopy, but the sound will travel.
Me, so happy
As it turns out, the supermarket that I went to every morning to buy yogurt drinks to take our malaria pills with was called "La gran ceiba." Like a fool, I failed to take a picture of it, and the only one on the internet (taken by Jerson Santiago Ramos, so I'm told) shows it all closed up:
Do you see, though, how the central pillar is the trunk and the crown of the tree has been painted overspreading the store? When I would go there, there would always be a woman sitting to the left of the store as you face it, selling bananas and other fruits and vegetables. The little panaderia to the right as you face it was great too; I got empanadas there a couple of times.
La gran ceiba es un verdadero árbol de milagros, a thing of beauty, sustaining multitudes.
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"Strangler fig" is a pretty generic name--like "banyan." There are **so many** fig species! Our guide called the tree we saw "renaco"--(also known as árbol caminante [!]), and looking that up, I find it's Ficus trigona... which is one of the strangler figs.
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you're totally welcome!
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What a beauty that tree is. And you look beautifully radiant next to it. :D
The day before yesterday, I was doing some thinking about art, my art inspirations, etc., and I wrote down a list, upon which figured "trees." I contented myself with the word, but in my mind I saw kapok-style trees amongst many others. <3
ETA: "buttress roots" - I love that term, so apt. Thank you for teaching it to me.
And thank you to for the tidbit about signaling by striking the roots. *files that away for story and the pure joy of knowing things!*
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Ahem. I love that tree. I'm glad you got to see it.
I mean.
P.
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Kapok was the standard stuffing for cushions when I was young, until it was overtaken by foam, which had the advantages of lasting longer, not attracting vermin, and being washable. You have to order it specially now. Thailand still produces it.
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And how terribly rare are children's books about systems, networks, or communities, in the United States. All those lone lone lone wolves writing books about rugged individualism. Six for a penny.
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And that is so cool, the translation.
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And I'm proud of making the translation, even though generally it turns out better if you translate into your own language from languages you learn, not the other way around.
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