Sympatico
It’s nightfall in "Santillanilla", a 8,000 hectare plot of land in the Ecuadorian cloud forest. The usual murmurs of the babbling brook, of wind blown trees whispering amongst themselves is broken by the heavy footsteps of intruders. There is none of the hesitancy of a possible wayward traveller only the brute force of revenge. Paul reaches for his double bit axe and turns down the Coleman lanterns. There’s not much he can do but wait; a lone “gringo” on a mountain top, at the mercy of the laws of this outlying land. He knew this was coming. He understood that extreme measures evoked extreme responses.
Throughout his life, Paul did his part. He voted to protect natural resources. He donated to organizations, boycotted depletive businesses. He spread the word as far and wide as he could. But in the end, his actions seemed futile so he took direct action. Paul found an endangered place and purchased it, installing himself as the ultimate protector.
Paul was once a successful stock broker. With a sharp mind and a gift of persuasion, he steadily rose the ranks of the investment world. But unlike his peers, his moral compass superseded his drive for riches. He broke away from the firm and started his own that responsibly enacted “conscientious” trading. As society in the early 70s, shifted towards environmental awareness and civil rights, Edgar’s business boomed. He lived in an updated Craftsman style home in the quaint progressive town of South Pasadena with his wife, Naomi, a woman whose outspokenness only added to her stark beauty. Together they nobly set out to battle the evils of the world. They were doing good, receiving accolades and awards for their efforts and on occasion for actual results.
A decade into their partnership, Naomi was diagnosed with a cancer that had spread to every part of her body. She shunned hospitals and chose to live out her last days in their home. Edgar, never one to capitulate, set out in search of a cure. He believed that water which makes up 60% of the human body was the answer. He quickly travelled to and from the most remote regions of the planet, collecting jugs of the purest water he could find. But his wife refused to invest faith in a lost cause and never drank from his well of hope. Naomi’s last battle was to walk a straight path on the road to death with no distractions.
After months of violent tremors and cries of pain she slipped away in her home as wished, leaving behind a broken man. Watching his wife die crushed the walls of the charmed life they built up around themselves and left in its wake a haunting echo chamber of futility. Everything lost meaning. Trapped in the emptiness of the remains, Edgar rid himself of his worldly possessions, his social standing, selling, donating, disconnecting. Lost and in dire need of restoration he set out in search of sanctuary.
A few months later, he arrived into the thick of the Ecuadorian cloud forest with a single large trunk and an instinct for survival. During his wife’s illness he brought samples of the water he collected to a friend at Caltech, who determined that this region had tested the purest of the batch. So he bought the land, 8,000 hectares of an untouched forest.
“Santillanilla: The Sanctuary For All Living Things” he called it. Edgar started by rebuilding his home, a simple log cabin. With his horses, he dragged felled trees to the road where millworkers would collect them, mill the lumber, then return them in long planks. Edgar planed and sanded the wood, therapeutically removing every rough edge, every splinter, leaving a smooth surface he liked to run his fingers along.
He drank, washed, submerged himself fully in the unadulterated waters left behind each morning by the dispersing clouds. As the toxins of past internalized pain washed away, and the purest of waters flowed through his body, he reached an almost sacred level of restoration.
Sometimes in the still moments of our haphazard lives, we stumble upon a recognition. It’s impalpable but strong, like a memory from long past. Its remnants lie under mounds of daily routines and outward facing preoccupations. As soon as we acknowledge its subtle presence, it takes hold pulling us back to a place long forgotten. An ether region, that newborns and the dying inhabit caught between the state of being and unbeing. Its foreign, but so familiar. Quiet, yet saturated. It bombards us dismantling the veil of distractions, leaving in its wake a clarity. Unlike the original man and woman, we are not suddenly aware of our nakedness, because there is no us, no I. There is only the awesome force that we fall into. It envelops us and we become a part of something greater.
After 2 years in the interminable solitude, Edgar began to hear things. The forest moaned and whispered their deepest secrets to their new friend and he understood. They revealed to him their history, their purpose, and the slight tremors of change deeply felt in their roots. Over an eight year span, he fell in love again and like a knight in shining armor, he swore to defend his love at all costs.
So when cattle ranchers moved in to the adjacent plot on the far side of the mountain, Edgar’s defense mechanism kicked in. When they set fire to the trees in order to clear the land for grazing their stock, Edgar felt the sting of his wife’s illness all over again. He inquired, beseeched, threatened. But they dismissed him as a crazy “gringo” doing what they thought “gringos” did best, telling other people what to do with their land. With each burn, Edgar’s sanctuary lost its light. In a last ditch effort, he reported the atrocities to the authorities, fully aware of the consequences of “snitching” in a gangster world. He subsequently filed a lawsuit against the cattle ranchers and won a bittersweet victory.
And now, they were here, upon him. The last thing Edgar remembers is the heel of the boot continually coming down on his face, breaking his nose, cracking every tooth. His ears were ringing from the pressure. Through it he could hear a chorus of cries; his own, his wife’s, and the trees.
The men stopped only because they thought he was dead. Hours later Edgar crawled out of his cabin to the road, and painstakingly pulled his damaged body to a Belgian science station a mile away. The ecologists initially horrified at the sight of pulpish disfigurement quickly fell into action and saved his life.
Edgar now lives in the expat community of Vilcabamba, the “South Pasadena” of Ecuador. For the past 3 years, he has been looking to sell Santillanilla, but has not found a suitable buyer.