"Rousseau`s prescription for us, who have
drifted so far from our origins, was to make two journeys, one to a
place where life is still uncorrupted, and another into the self." In
The Follow, novelist Linda Spalding travels to Borneo, first with her
two daughters and later alone, in search of the famed orangutan
scientist Birute Galdikas. What she
finds instead is an unholy mix of foreign scientists, government
workers, tourists, loggers, descendants of Dayak headhunters, Javanese
gold miners, captive and wild orangutans. Her journey is the equivalent
of a "follow," during which a tracker watches, over a course of time, an
orangutan`s movements and the effect of the animal on the surrounding
environment. Spalding`s follow takes her from Galdikas`s Orangutan
Foundation International offices in Los Angeles to her subject`s
original research station on the crocodile-infested Sekonyer River in
Kalimantan. What unravels along the way is a story of relationships
among women, people and animals, and natives and eco-tourists. Woven
through these reflections is Spalding`s own incredible story of her
journey up the Sekonyer River and what she learns along the way.
150
Hardbound
Like New
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment