A Declaration of Love to the Rainforest
Hardly anybody likes humid heat. If they can’t avoid it, they try to escape it and the sweat that comes with it as quickly as possible. The idea of ‘rainforest’ is associated with green hell. For me, it has the opposite connotation: In over 45 years of exploring our planet, I have never felt the same euphoria in the mountains, no matter how high and spectacular their peaks, nor in the deserts, no matter how rolling the dunes or bizarre the rock formations, as I do in the jungles of Africa, New Guinea or the Amazon basin.
The daylight in the jungle is never harsh. The sun’s rays are filtered through the tall, sometimes gigantic trees and the dense foliage. Only at midday do individual patches of light dance on the damp ground covered in fallen, brown-colored leaves.
If you have the stamina and strength for treks of several days, you can experience different vegetation zones within a few days, whether in the Andes or in the highlands of West New Guinea and on the ascent of Kilimanjaro or the Rwenzori. Here I am most fascinated by the cloud forest. The ground is covered with huge cushions of moss and above all, the clouds accumulate and rain down regularly. The higher we climb, the more gnarled the trees become. The forest becomes thinner and the trees lower until it is replaced by a moor landscape with giant lobelia and senecia.
Hiking through the rainforest and being wet from head to toe – from the rain, from the soaked plants, from crossing creeks and from sweat – is a wonderful way for me to escape our overstimulated world. My instincts and perceptions are sensitized, my senses sharpened and my mind relaxed, as if I were in a ‘floating tank’.
