There was something about these forests. Something she didn’t yet understand at the tender age of nine. Her father warned her many a time about the terrible dangers the rainforest possessed. It drove people mad with greed, made them lust for more product and land, he said. Yet, the forest looked like any other forest- dense foliage, large roots poking out from the unfertile soil, patches of blue sky peaking through the canopy of leaves.
Her father told her that men took the forest for granted. He believed that these men saw dollar signs and long mahogany tables that fit twenty people. He said that these men pushed out her people that had been in the forest for as long as time itself. Her father’s face was full of wrinkles from stress, and his eyes were sad.
The small family paddled through the river, watching the shoreline. The elders of their tribe talked about a better future and generations to come as if they would never survive. It frightened her.
The sun floated high in the sky. It beat down on their exposed necks, burning their flesh and making them sweat. The water was musky beneath their canoe as she washed her hot face in it. Her father continued to say men couldn’t care about animals and trees like her family.
He said that their tribe can see the real value of the trees other than the people wanting furniture for their grand houses. He said that the loggers could not see how someone could live off the forest like their tribe did. The tribe used the wood for their fuel. They cooked and cleaned and hunted with the wood. They sculpted and celebrated the wood.
Yet, as the girl grew older, she found it hard to agree with her father. These men who had families. They breathed the same air. They had the same skin. They used the trees to support their families. Her father was from another generation. He was fixed with old opinions about outsiders. He only saw the lumber piling up and disappearing. He only saw the hostile men who hauled it away forever.
However, while she understood the men’s perspective did not mean she approved. Their homeland was being destroyed to use as lumber and farmland. Fire and smoke ruined their air and water. Her tribe was displaced from their homes, pushing them deeper and deeper into the rainforest. Animals ran to the edges of the forests, clinging to their last hopes of survival.
As she thought about her life changing because of the loggers, she realized that maybe she didn’t understand the logger’s perspective. Maybe, she never would.