What can you do when a flanged orangutan is sitting in the middle of the Jalan Lintas (the path from camp to the nearby village, Pasir Putih or Trapon) but sit down yourself from where the point you saw him and check him out as he checks you out. It was a beautiful day and I didn’t blame him for coming out into the open, the warmth. As a fellow primate I understood and respected him. And there I was, sitting, being, observing, a butterfly fluttering around me and then he stood up like a man, looking at me, walking ahead some, looking back, a beautiful rusty red fur against the green ferns of the path. This is his home and I imagine he comes to this spot in rememberance of the forest that used to extend beyond, now vanished from the fires of 09. A lone roamer, always on the move with wanderlust.
I continue to see and experience how life comes and goes so fast. Whether with object or action. Already 6 months in Indonesia, it feels like a lifetime has passed as much as it feels like just a split second.
My heart ached once again for the loss of another feline friend, our dear Mamma Mia. But the 3 wild kittens live on, thriving, exploring, making camp even more into a home. And other life is soon on the way. Our young cook Jubai is expecting any day and Nicole sometime in February.
I have been having so much fun in the forest. Jungle Boogie. It has been a party. That is, there have been may parties, orangutan parties, ie whenever there is more than one orangutan within 50m. And so it has been exciting and exhilarating, sometimes with up to 6 individuals in the same area, trying to keep track of who’s who and who’s where. And then there have been very unique or still very unknown, unhabituated orangutans. Well first there was Dayak, who is a habituated flanged male, but is very special indeed. Most of his upper lip is gone, looks as if it was bitten off (he must of pissed off a very large flanged male) and so it looks like he is always snarling at you. Quite comical and pitiful at the same time. But I like Dayak, we bonded.
And it has been wet. The rainy season is a coming, turning some transects into rivers.
It is quite interesting…in theory, our assistants the local dayak people in all the river villages are living in poverty, but when you compare that to poverty of the city, it doesn’t seem so, having the bare essentials food, shelter, not living in human created filth (except for the whole Kapuas river paradox of shitting where you bathe..)
Orange.
The color, the fruit, the state of mind, the desire, satisfying, quenching some unknown but felt need. Like the rainjacket in a sheet of wet; sturdy clipboard; worn in canteen; official data log. Scrawny piece of tagging serving as a keychain, weathered dictionary. Orange gives light, it is brightness; exciting, energizing, enlightening peace, calling for respect, admiration, like an Orangutan's coat and the robes of Buddhist monks, so gentle it brings tears to the eyes to think of their destruction, loss of freedom, home and life.
Realizations made in the forest are released to join the surrounding life and every glance up into the canopy makes you feel a little bit higher and higher.
The waking life has been has become full of Indonesian and Dayak words and eating wild fruit off the forest floor.
While in dreams I see places I have yet to known.
