Publication

The day I got lost in the Javari basin forest, it rained hard all night and I feared no one would ever find me. Would my footprints be erased by the rain? Nevertheless, my Matis friends had no trouble finding me the next day and, as we followed the long trail back to the village, they showed me an impressive number of tracks left by my erratic wandering. Only once, they told me, did they hesitate just for a moment, trying to determine whether I had gone around a particular tree to the left or to the right. Which way had I gone? To their great disappointment, I was unable to enlighten them on that point. Indeed, had I been able to I would likely never have gotten lost in the first place! The Matis can read the forest like an open book and the multi-sensorial art of tracking has no secrets for them. The jungle is their backyard and they know how to interpret its smallest clues, whether by sight, hearing, touch, or smell.