Shadows in the Sun: Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire - Softcover

Davis, Wade

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0767904028 ISBN 13: 9780767904025

Publisher: Broadway, 1999

Synopsis

"One of the intense pleasures of travel is the opportunity to live among people who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, recognize its taste in the bitter leaves of plants."

In this riveting collection of stories and essays, gifted scientist, anthropologist, and writer Wade Davis offers a captivating look at indigenous cultures around the world--from the nomadic Penan of Malaysia to the Vodoun practitioners of Haiti--and a poetic, timely examination of the rapport between humans and the natural world. Traveling from the mountains of Tibet to the jungles of the Amazon, Davis delves into the mysteries of shamanic healing, experiences first-hand hallucinogenic plants, explores the vanishing Borneo rain forests, and describes the ingenuity of the Inuit as they hunt narwhale on the Arctic ice.

A compelling and utterly unique celebration of the beauty and diversity of our planet, Shadows in the Sun is about landscape and character, the wisdom of lives drawn directly from the land, and the hunger of those who seek to rediscover such understanding. Davis shows that preserving the diversity of the world's cultures and spiritual beliefs is as important as preserving endangered plants and animals--and vital to our understanding of who we are.

About this title

About the Author

Wade Davis is a scientist, anthropologist, and writer who received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany from Harvard University and has spent twenty-five years studying the plants, psychotropic drugs, and ceremonial rituals of indigenous cultures around the world. He is the author of the international bestseller The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was later released as a feature motion picture, as well as six other books including One River. Davis's writing has appeared in Outside, National Geographic, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler.

From the Back Cover

"The wonders of the diversity of various cultures are hunted, gathered, and appreciated here--Davis's lovely, cubist, rich landscape portraits are topographies of spirit, conveying a sense of the music of place."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Delightful. . . . [Shadows in the Sun] is an educational, entertaining miscellany of hard science and weird science."
--Outside

"Essays so sensitively written their pristine language reflects the spectacular beauty of the landscapes they describe. . . . Davis deftly illuminates the little understood connection between biodiversity and cultural diversity, and strongly suggests that more be done to preserve what's left of wilderness."
--Booklist

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Angelita was not happy to learn that I intended to visit the Laguna Negra. Her concern was not that my presence might violate the sanctity of the lakes. She just didn't want the responsibility of explaining my disappearance to the police. What possible protection did I carry? What would keep me from becoming encantada, enchanted by the wind songs and turned into stone? The very thought of exposing oneself without the guidance of a maestro appalled her. I showed her my seguro, the small bottle of herbs and red perfume that her father-in-law had given me the morning after the ceremony. She was not impressed. Neither was Jorge Eduardo. But after a brief argument, he at least offered to go, provided I did not expect him to enter the lake. I agreed, and the two of us headed off.

The trail from Angelita's house at Talaneo passed for an hour over the open grasslands and through a series of moist fens and marshes before coming down on a small alpine lake, jet black and sunk in a depression at the base of a rocky escarpment. Clouds moved low over the water. The wind was picking up, and rain blew in great gusts over the lake. It was very cold, our clothes were wet, and the ground underfoot was sodden. Jorge Eduardo wrapped himself in a magenta poncho and sought shelter in the lee of a large boulder. I moved closer to the lakeshore. To please Angelita I held my seguro in my hand, but felt rather silly doing so. The lake in its solitude seemed utterly ordinary. The shoreline covered by brown tuits of ichu grass, the stones luminescent with lichens. Patches of Polylepis running up the creeks that drained into the far shore. The mountain spurs soaring above. Gentians, madders, violets, and heathers here below. In between the windswept surface of a simple lake.

The water was freezing. I tried to imagine pilgrims from the jungle and coast approaching such a place, stripping to their underwear, and standing in the cold drizzle as the maestro poured perfume and alcohol into the palms of their hands. A long invocation, the potion inhaled through the nose, their movement into the water, the ritual tossing into the lake of silver coins and sweet limes sprinkled with sugar. Plump matrons and young children, shaking with cold, drying off with damp rags, waiting for the blessing of the maestro before getting back into wet clothes. A spray of white powder. A cleansing with the maestro's swords. A ritual purification with amulets. A madman kneeling alone by the water, perhaps in the very spot where I stood, blowing sweet wine and perfume over the lagoon. The maestro ending the ceremony by again invoking the power of the lake, calling its protection down upon the patients, and blessing each one with a final libation, an herbal tincture poured from his seguro, and made from the plants that grew at his feet.

There was a yell, and I turned to see Jorge Eduardo, exposed amid the tussocks, waving for me to get away from the shore. I walked over and found him huddled behind the boulder. He said it was time to leave. I told him to wait a few more minutes, then returned to the lake, stripped off my clothes, and entered the water, for no other reason than to wash. It was very cold, and I was soon back on shore, shivering in the wind. Jorge Eduardo was horrified that I had entered the waters without proper protection, and I tried to make it up to him by walking directly back to Talaneo, not pausing in the rain to collect any plants. I recognized the gulf that lay between us. For me the Laguna Negra was a mountain lake. For him it was a repository of spiritual power of a decidedly ambivalent nature. Neither one of us was more correct than the other. We just came from different worlds.

pegapega mixed with honey was a strong remedy for respiratory ailments. A decoction of chagapa morada in aguardiente was taken specifically for yellow fever. For more general treatment of fever, they used its cousin chagapa roja, a different species of the same genus. There were scores of such medicines, employed in various combinations.

But for Angelita the boundary between the material world and that of the spirit was imprecise. A delicate member of the rush family, hierba de dominacion, the "herb of domination," lay a shroud of protection over the living, insulating the forces of white magic from the power of evil. Other plants of the lakes were employed magically as admixtures to San Pedro. The most important of these was hornamo, a powerful purgative taken when the power of the cactus ran wild and brought turmoil to the dreams of the pilgrim. There were dozens of plants known by this name, each with a specific epithet--the purple hornamo, the white form, the hornamo of the horse, the hornamo of the fox. All, it turned out, were species of Valeriana, a natural sedative. Taken in excessive dosage they bring on hallucinations and blind spasms of excitation. -->

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadway
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0767904028
• ISBN 13: 9780767904025
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304