In the rainforest

  If "love can be born from a single metaphor," as Milan Kundera says, adventure can be born from a single photo, glimpsed in the corner of a page of a book casually leafed through in the travel guide section of the bookstore, on a worn magazine in the doctor's waiting room, on a friend's shelf, at a party lacking alcohol and music. A photo that, among many others, captures our attention, without us knowing why, and lights deep within us that small, flickering flame, which sometimes goes out a few minutes later, blown out by a sad thought, but sometimes also survives and grows until one day, we board a plane to Salvador de Bahia, to get on an old rusty ferry, then a bus with groaning suspensions, launched across the immense hilly pastures of Brazil.

The photo I came across that day was of a plant with elegant, round, shiny leaves, reminiscent of a large, incredibly exotic-looking water lily. When it flowered, it launched a large, very airy stem from its center, at the end of which burst a pompom of small white or red flowers, like a firework above the uniformly green carpet of forest plants. The photo's caption simply read: "Begonia Itaguassuensis, a rare begonia, endemic to the rainforests of the mountains of Brazil." But do I needed more ?

In the area delimited by the two lines of the tropics, there is a third, also invisible, located at around a thousand meters above sea level. This is where the lowland forest ends and above which begins the high-altitude forest, also called rainforest because of the heavy, humidity-laden clouds that constantly envelop it in a thick, soaking mist, creating the perfect conditions for the flourishing of a luxuriant flora of exceptional diversity, and in which the most astonishing specimens of the plant world are hidden. So many multicolored species and improbable shapes that are still patiently waiting for someone to finally deign to come and discover them.

At least, it was with these thoughts in mind that I left the paved road to take a track climbing into the forest with my Fiat "Uno Way" (which I still hoped would also make a comeback...), out of date, found a few days earlier from a careless rental company in Itacaré. Pleasantly surprised by the quality of the track at first, a paved track, a great luxury in the jungle, I who was expecting mud and deep ruts in this rainy season. However, I was to be disappointed as I climbed. Indeed, the leaves and the rain made the cobblestones extremely slippery, and my tires being, as I had noticed a few hours earlier on an unmarked speed bump, extremely smooth, my Fiat began to skid on the ever steeper slopes. With difficulty I still reached the edge of the clouds, where the road, after a last pasture, traced a very tight hairpin bend before disappearing into the forest.

It was too much for my Fiat, which, with a final, plaintive skid, let me know that it would not go any higher, that I only had to take my backpack and continue on foot while it waited quietly for me here on the edge of the track. Which I did.

The air was fresh, but the arduous climb in an atmosphere saturated with humidity quickly made me sweat. And the cover of the thick canopy was enough to make the climb bearable. On both sides of the track, the dense, impenetrable forest seemed like the two edges of a wound, just waiting for my passage to heal again. Strangely, there was a silence I would not have expected in this place, which was nevertheless exuberant with life, and only the rustling of leaves sometimes answered the sound of my footsteps on the cobblestones, without me ever being able to see or identify the animal at its origin. I stopped from time to time to listen and scan the forest as far as I could, that is to say, a few meters beyond the track at most. But to see only the usual motionless interlacing of leaves of all shapes and shades of green, through which, without a doubt, every creature of the forest must have been watching me crouching, waiting for my departure to resume their secret business.

Locked in my head, calculating the time I had left before nightfall, which comes particularly early in this part of the world, worrying about being able to turn the car around and get back down safely, regretting having left on the back seat that large, very convenient umbrella, which I had specially bought in Itacaré to avoid getting stuck at the top of a mountain like this in the rain that was now threatening, I had not noticed the subtle changes to the untrained eye in the vegetation around me. Now blending in with the common plants, new plants that the enlightened amateur that I am, although unable to identify them, knew nevertheless that they only existed in this preserved ecosystem.

I can't really explain precisely what differentiates them from the others, apart from this strange impression one has when admiring them, of being in the presence of surviving plants from a time when the plant world reigned supreme on the surface of the Earth, and could display all the majesty of its finery without fear of being grazed, nibbled or mown down. And while reason was about to convince me to turn around, suddenly, on a huge rock bordering the track, large round leaves appeared, unmistakable, shiny as if they had just been waxed, immediately identifiable as belonging to the large and very singular family of begonias. Begonia Itaguassuensis, in its natural environment, colonizing the vertical rock face, which no other plant was able to dispute.

Did I start to cry with joy? Did I feel overwhelmed with immense satisfaction at having found this plant? Like those scientists in the documentaries? No, and I never understood, with a certain jealousy, how this could arouse so much emotion. This plant could disappear from the face of the earth, its natural habitat destroyed to make way for beefsteak pastures, and it wouldn't have kept me awake, to tell the truth. Some people travel to achieve something, others to escape something. I never really knew why I traveled, perhaps a bit for both. Perhaps simply to be on the move. The rain began to fall, I was told that my allotted time was up, and that I was now invited to leave to let the forest return to its tranquility. I had reached the edge of the pool table, all I had to do was bounce off and go back the other way.