After we unpacked at camp, Indy took us deeper into the jungle. "There's a snake in the jungle called the bushmaster," he said as we walked. "It's about fifteen feet long. It kills its prey with a venom that drops blood pressure to zero. Scientists studying this snake invented a medication that regulates high blood pressure for people. It saves millions of lives." The National Cancer Institute estimates that 70 percent of plants identified as effective in treating cancer are found only in rain forests.

We hiked further, as Indy explained. "The soil in the jungle is actually poor in nutrients. It supports such lush growth because of an incredible recycling system: Leaves fall to the jungle floor, moisture helps them grow close to or on the surface of the ground. That's why you are stepping over so many roots. The problem is when you take away the trees, the entire system fails. The soil is no longer nourished. Farming or cattle grazing won't last more than a few years because the soil dries up and dies. When the trees are cut and burned, the rainfall is less. The trees actually help create the rains."

We ate Brazil nuts off trees. For centuries native Amazonians have eaten this delicacy. When plantation owners tried to grow these trees on farms, the crops failed. It turns out that the tree only grows in the jungle because it's the only place where a special bee lives that pollinates the tree. It was fantastic. An entire world, each part different, yet symbiotic.

This forest had a Utopian perfection to it. It worked together, and was self-sufficient. Had we lost something, missed a communication, forgotten a lesson, in the "civilized" world? Later we went ot an area of the Amazon that had been destroyed for cattle grazing. As we drove up a long road, it was like death was suddenly all around us. There were no sounds. It was not moist. On both sides of the road we saw only miles of dried up fields. It was a wasteland. Indy told us how a large corporation had cleared this area for cattle grazing, but after a few years, the land would not support the cattle, so it was just left. In the distance, we saw more jungle burning. We were standing in a cemetery looking at a crematorium. It was astounding how man could dwindle this far out of communication with nature. Communication had been reduced to only a torch.

The rain forests are burning at the rate of a football field a second. We are losing up to a hundred species a week from this destruction. Countries like Brazil have such large debts to world banks they cannot easily afford social or environmental programs. Ranchers, mining and logging concerns, and oil companies, exploit the Amazon without control. Small farmers are trying to eke out a better life for their families by cutting out small farms in the jungle rather than living in crowded city ghettos. What a debacle! How did it get so upside down, so backwards? Was this an overt failure to communicate with an environment, the absence of all ecology. Prospects seem only worse if we remain oblivious to the destruction.

Night In The Jungle
It was dark--black. The camp was dead calm at three in the morning. I asked Indy if we could go into the jungle to see and hear the animal life at night. Four of us trekked about a mile in. We came to a small clearing and stood very quietly. Indy whispered, "If you are very quiet you will hear birds fly under the jungle's canopy." We did. We saw glimpses of grey-dot blurs as they flew in the night through trees. "They have to have radar." I thought.

"Shhh," Indy said in still a lower whisper, "listen and you can hear the cries of the howler monkeys." We did. The cries grew from a soft, background murmur, louder and louder until it seemed like we were surrounded by shrill screams. The howls somehow had an add harmony to them. Just as suddenly as their volume would go up, the howls would pause--dead silence. It was fantastic. I had never seen or heard anything like this.

As we stood in this cathedral of nature, this forest, we could not help but understand it was dying. I looked through the tops of the trees at the stars, and felt life all around me. I knew that this had to survive, that I must do all I could to save this forest, these life forms, from destruction. This was a personal commitment that went beyond the color of my skin, my politics, my profession as an actor. It was the responsibility of a being who makes his home on planet Earth.