Rumble in the Jungle

I'm a privileged kid from the suburbs, no way around it. Physical safety smothered my youth like a codependent mother. It wasn't just me, my friends and family all lived in the same low-risk environment. In one sense, this was nice, because pain hurts and we rarely experienced blunt and sharp force trauma.

But on the other hand, humans are more or less constructed, like any other species, to fit the shape of their environment. Even the 17th-century Irish Archbishop¹ who calculated Earth's age as 6,000 years would have to admit we didn't come from a cul-de-sac. Let's just all agree that at some point, people lived in harmony with nature, and felt at ease navigating the greenery.

I was always intensely jealous of that lifestyle, ever since listening to the song "Apeman" by the Kinks. So I was always trying to find my way into a jungle, where I assumed I'd find some awesome magical experience that modern comfort living had denied me.

As a 22-year old recent college graduate, I got an opportunity to live in the Amazon. I flew to South America, then over the Andes, then took a longboat three hours up the Madre de Dios river, where I was dropped off at the bottom of a 300-foot flight of rickety wooden stairs.

It was the farthest I've ever been from home, psychologically if not geographically; living in a remote field station with a dozen or so people, most of them field assistants whose primary language was Quechua, surrounded by (mostly) untouched lowland rainforest. I heard rumors of uncontacted tribes just a few days walk from the station.

On my down to Peru, the most common question I got from people was if I thought I would die down there.

True, there are dangerous animals: jaguars, anacondas, 16-foot crocodiles known as black caimans, venomous snakes and spiders, and terrifying diseases like Chagas and Chikungunya, not to mention the Hollywood-instilled fear of poison-tipped arrows blow-darted from ornery locals.

But I assumed that somehow my degree in ecology would help me. Which was not the case, and very quickly I had to learn that the local guys who I worked with were vastly more knowledgeable about their surroundings than I was, despite my formal education.

Those guys were great. Technically, we had the same job position: field assistant. But our backgrounds could not have been more different. They grew up in the jungle, often earning a living as hunters, before transitioning into a more lucrative careers supporting university researches who needed help getting around. They knew every plant and animal, knew when to relax and when to pay close attention to something dangerous, and did everything with perfect comfort and ease.

After a couple of weeks I got used to the climate, the mosquitos, and the strange and exotic diseases invading my body. I even started to dream about jungle things, possibly induced by one of those exotic diseases, which included the coolest dream I've ever had in my life: I was a jaguar hunting an alpaca through the forest. This makes no ecological sense and may have suggested subconscious young adult male aggression, but hey–dreams.

It was so impressive and I was so grateful to those guys that I much preferred to hang out in their hut, compared to the one with the stuffy researchers. Most of the local fields assistants were about my age, and interested in the same things: making fun of each other, bragging about our toughness, sports, partying, and rumors about potential opportunities for mate selection.

We got along great.

We'd play soccer every afternoon in a field cleared straight out of the jungle. When the ball was kicked out of bounds, you literally had to bushwhack to find it. The locals played barefoot, which always impressed me. I was too much of a wuss, and wore my hiking boots in case I had to shag balls.

Despite our quick and easy friendship, there were some differences between us: height disparities, for one.

The ethnic group these guys belonged to, Peruvian Quecha, are some of the world's shortest people. There must be some biological reason, although it's not totally clear what. I will say this–it's much easier to navigate somewhere as dense as the Amazon jungle with a smaller body size. I constantly struggled to get around and would often whack my head into variously-thorned vegetation.

That was particularly rough one night when I tagged along with a group going on a tapir "hunt". My friends (at this point) and I crawled through the pitch-back jungle for several hours tracking down a 700lb. species of animal with documented human fatalities. It took three darts full of ultrapotent sedatives to finally have it sit still enough to attach the radio collar.

Yes, I was scared. But my buddies helped me figure out how to be helpful. It was one of the most exhilarating nights of my life.

It turned out they were thrilled, too. Tapir captures are pretty rare events at field stations like this, and the fellas wanted to celebrate.

We took one of the boats down to the nearest "village", a collection of about four thatch roof huts a mile or so downriver. I doubt that anyone asked for approval from the station director, because it seemed like we were awfully sneaky while motoring away from the dock, and the mood only relaxed when we got to town and cracked our first warm beers.

Now, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I'm proud of all of the following. I'm only sharing because I promised to tell truthful stories, and this is exactly what happened. In the off chance that one of these old friends comes across this story, I'd be willing to bet they'd get a laugh, too. Young men, even from very different circumstances, are often so damn similar. We all liked to party. And by party I mean drink beer and talk shit.

We wanted to party together.

Of course, when you're drinking beer after a sleepless night, and you're probably still nursing a strange viral fever, and there's a visiting wildlife trapper from Wyoming who hunts grizzly bears for a living, and you're trying to keep up with him– well memories are bound to get a little fuzzy.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but suddenly there was a heated dispute with one of my closest companions, a guy nicknamed "Chaparro" on account of him being one of the absolute shortest people in the entire Amazon jungle. But it seemed clear that the entire group of drunk young men was now insisting that the two of us go settle our differences "the old way" outside the bar, which was just a two-walled hut near a muddy cliff.

Chaparro was a lovely guy when sober, much stronger than me despite his size. He regularly carried heavy packs up from the loading dock each time a new boat arrived, openly taunting me that he could do it faster and longer than me. I played soccer with him every day, and would occasionally using my size and weight to steal the ball or prevent an impending goal.²

But on this fateful evening we were just two stupefied men in their 20s heading into fisticuffs.

Which–I mean, I didn't grow up fighting. I'm from the Burbs, I'm a wuss! I never expected to find myself on the banks of an Amazon tributary, in a battle of honor with a close friend, late in the evening after downing half a dozen warm jungle beers.

But we did, we got into a fight. The whole village watched. But because most of what I then considered "fighting" I now realize is slap-battling, I was able to use my extensive advantage in reach to keep Chaparro at bay. That is until he figured out a way around my lanky slaps and gave me a black eye.

I think people were betting on it because at that point, I saw money exchange hands. That must have been enough for everybody, because when the laughter died down the rest of our tapireros gathered us two inglorious belligerants into the boat and headed back to the field station.

At breakfast the next morning I met eyes with Chaparro, he laughed at my black eye, and we were quickly back to being friends. We didn't even know what we had been fighting about anyway. That same day I recorded the (contemporaneously embarrassing) story in my notebook, along with this sketch:

Looking back now, as a father and (mostly) respectable adult, I cringe at some of my youthful decisions. But I can’t deny that night taught me something universal: young men, no matter their origin, share a knack for finding camaraderie and chaos in equal measure.

And if you’re going to pick a fight with a friend, it helps if they’re under five feet tall.

1. Ironically, since he's referenced so often in debate about the impossibility of human evolution from apes, his official title was the Primate of Ireland.
2. Jungle ball is dirty. I didn't invent the rough physicality of it, that's how the play down there, and after plenty of elbows to the ribs I decided to use my size as an advantage. They respected the hell out of that.