After a time, my body seemed to adapt to this new form of daily exercise. I grew stronger, the muscles in my arms and legs developing and becoming sinewy, while the skin on my hands and feet, elbows, knees and ankles grew progressively more dry and leathery and so was better able to grip the bark.
There was also another plus. Dry skin was always flaking, and picking at the flakes was one of my favourite things to do. I would sit and worry away at it for hours.
And I needed my rest, too, because strength, of course, was vital. With the first boughs of the Brazil nut trees being so high up, I needed to be strong enough to cling on vertically for some considerable time, with only meagre hand- and footholds, which was extremely tiring. Some trees were a little easier to manage than others, because they’d acquired a thick covering of the stringy, strangling vines. But these trees were always dying, so their usefulness would be temporary. Not long after, they’d be nothing but hollow dead shells and would sink back down into the soil from which they’d sprung.
Coming down was much quicker and a great deal more straightforward. Once my palms and the soles of my feet had become sufficiently hard and leathery, it was simply a question of letting them do the work, allowing me to slide back down to a soft landing on the composty floor. After which, of course, I’d often climb straight back up again. For up was where I wanted to be.
*
The day I reached the canopy will be another of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life. You might find it simple to imagine what sort of sight greeted me, but then, as a very young child, I had never seen anything quite like it. I had no store of television images to prepare me, no past experience to compare. I was seeing what I was seeing for the very first time, and I couldn’t quite believe the evidence of my eyes.
The view was breathtaking – literally. The rush of cool air up there was such a shock to me that it made me gasp. And in my disbelief and awe, I think I probably did forget to breathe. There was just so much sky above the green giants that had formed the ceiling of my world for so long that I found it difficult to adjust to the fierce light. And when I did manage to open my eyes fully, I still couldn’t take it in. It seemed there were only trees and clear sky for as far as I could see. And I could see for what looked like many miles.
I had no idea how high up I was. A hundred feet? Two hundred? I have no idea. Just so high up in the sky that I felt dizzy looking down, particularly when the trees began swaying. So high that it was as if I was in a strange and different world now; one where nothing existed but the colours and shapes I was squinting at – the dazzling blue of the sky up above me, the lush green of the broccoli treetops below. There was nothing else to see whatsoever.
The monkey troop, of course, was indifferent. The monkeys seemed to be going about their usual business with no apparent interest in the fact that I was suddenly up here with them. But I couldn’t have been more excited. So here was where they most liked to be, I thought, as I tentatively began to explore this new territory. And I could see why. What a wonderful place it seemed to be. All around me, the pillowy surface of the canopy rose and fell as it faded into the far and hazy distance, the treetops undulating and in some cases rising in steps: cushiony emerald terraces that looked so soft and beguiling compared to the thorny tangled mass of vegetation below.
Sufficiently confident that the vast web of branches below would support me, I began to clamber across the springy boughs, with little White-Tip close behind me, and could see that the canopy in the near distance seemed more yellow-green than green. I wondered if the trees were all covered in flowers, tilting their happy faces to the unbroken sky. It was a bright, intense yellow that seemed to reflect the sunshine and made everything seem even more dazzling.
It was no less hot up here, but drier – the breeze a constant welcome friend, as if it had hurried along specifically to counteract the relentless rays of the sun. And the monkeys clearly loved it, for they had even set up little homes here with what looked like beds, or seating areas – some of the troop were certainly sitting in them – where they could bask and groom each other far from the damp and steamy forest floor. Closer inspection revealed that they seemed to have made these by collecting bits of branches they’d snapped off while playing ‘look who’s the strongest’ (which was something they did often) and had brought up to the canopy to use. These had then been laid crosswise over bigger branches that were still attached to the trees.
For softness, Mother Nature had helped them out, it seemed, because the ‘nests’ would naturally collect any fallen or drifting leaves. They had also added strips of bark – something that was always in plentiful supply, because one of their favourite things to do was to pull off long strips of tree bark in order to get to the tastiest, juiciest bugs.
I sat and watched my monkey family for some time, contentedly taking in the excitement of it all. Compared to what was below, it just felt like such a lovely place to be. And I soon realised that they didn’t just use the structures they’d made for sitting and sleeping on. They also seemed to use them as places to play: jumping up and down on them, whooping and shrieking, making a great deal of noise and giving off bursts of an intense odour, the air becoming even more hazy than it usually did with the sharp, acrid smell of their excrement.
Not that I minded. By now I was immune to such odours. I was just so happy to be up there and joining in. It felt as if I’d at last escaped my prison and properly become one of them, which, physically, was happening, even though I probably wasn’t consciously aware of it. I was growing a new, muscular body, strong in ways a child’s body normally isn’t. I had harder heels and palms, and an appetite for strange jungle foods. I was also beginning to move around like a monkey, and one of the reasons, perhaps, that I wasn’t aware of how I was growing, was that I almost always walked on all fours now. There was just the one skill I lacked and that I’d struggled to master – flying. How I longed now to sail through the treetops as they did, via their expressway, à la Tarzan, on the vines.
As the vines were thick and plentiful, especially high in the treetops, it seemed that it was yet another skill I could master if I tried. So, after the first few days of being able to climb to the canopy, I would spend time trying to do what my monkey family did: get from tree to tree, bough to bough, by means of these stringy curtains, feeling the euphoria and wind-rush, the giddy sensation of being airborne, and then landing – in my case, mostly messily and indecorously – on whichever bed of branches had been my goal.
But again and again, something was telling me I shouldn’t. No sooner would I launch myself than I’d feel a sudden crunch and the unmistakeable sinking feeling that the vine I was holding onto was coming loose from its anchor. I’d then be sure of one thing only. That I was about to get my back, arms and legs thoroughly grated. The first couple of times this happened, my fall was mercifully short, because the vine tangled in another and I jerked to a stop. I also had the consolation, once I’d got over the painful bit, of a fresh crop of scabs to sit and pick.
But one day my run of luck ran out. I had clung on and launched myself on what had seemed a sturdy line, when only a second later I felt the snap of the vine breaking free. This was closely followed, inevitably, by a stomach-churning plunge and the feeling of pure terror that only the sight of the ground rushing up to meet you can provoke. Thankfully, I was spared by the embrace of a spray of branches which slowed my fall sufficiently that I was able to grab them as I hit them and get enough purchase to stop me plunging straight on down to my death.
Hanging there with the forest floor dizzyingly far below me, I perhaps should have felt some sort of powerful instinct. That I wasn’t