I love how a good book, conversation or podcast can bring memories flooding back and transport you to a 1000 miles away.
I’ve really been enjoying Terra Incognita’s Adventure Podcast of late. If you haven’t heard of it, you should stop reading this now and go and check out episode 9, “Poisonous Arrows.” It’s outstanding.
Or if you don’t have an hour right now to while away listening to George Monbiot’s crazy adventures as a clandestine journalist in West Papua during the 1980s, then spend 9 minutes listening to Waldo Etherington waxing lyrical about the joys and perils of climbing through rainforest canopies instead.
His words took me straight back to my short time rooting through the canopy in Ranomafana, Madagascar, looking for tree frogs and encountering sleeping lemurs.
His tale of a run-in with a hornets nest also did something very funny and unexpected to me. Lying in the warmth and safety of my bed in South Gloucestershire, it brought an ice cold fear into the pit of my belly.
Memories came torrenting back of standing in a red ants nest in the fork of a tree, twenty metres up, with my rope unattached, a knife in one shaking hand trying to cut a vine, a branch in the other, my heart racing at a million miles an hour, and my far more experienced friend, Giles, shouting instructions up to me from the forest floor, urging me to stay calm.
All I can say is that I could have done back then with the sort of composure that a real tree climber like Waldo Etherington can bring to the party.
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