Missing the (Bornean) Forest

Ever since I left the (Bornean) Forest in 2010 to return permanently to the states, I have missed living in it. Although I love living so close to the wonderfully wild Rock Creek Park forest that makes me happy mostly due to its old beautiful trees and lack of biting insects, I do often miss living with wild apes and other amazing creatures in a remote jungle, far from modern civilization. I don't miss the fire ants or centipedes or infectious diseases, but I miss waking up with the rest of the forest while waiting at a nest for an orangutan to wake up and start its day. I would say that I miss waking up to the sound of wild gibbons singing on my day off, but I do get to see them every day at work and on my days off sometimes wake up to the sound of them singing since I live next door to the Zoo.

As much as I missed having some form of connection to the world outside of the forest while I was living in it, missing this made me enjoy email and phones every several months when I left the forest and had a chance to catch up on emails from home and call the states. Now I find that I spend so much time just barely keeping up with work emails, I rarely even have an opportunity to check personal email and I am tired of spending so much of my life staring at a computer. People don't live inside computers and I think that people in the last few years have forgotten that. While I have no problem using computers and phones as mechanisms for communication especially when that is the only means possible of communication for long stretches of time with loved ones, I miss spending more quality time with people in ways that are not dependent on technology. And I miss the culture of snail mail--there is something about hand-written letters that just can't be replaced for me by email or the internet. So much communication now comes in the form of brief sound bites that are soon forgotten. And phone conversations, which I still have with a handful of people, but now so rarely. But I digress…

A friend of mine sucked me into watching "Naked and Afraid" in its first season and I haven't been able to stop watching ever since. While I have no urge to live in a forest naked for 21 days with a stranger and would certainly not be afraid if I were to participate in the show having lived for so many years in a forest, whenever I watch the show I am mentally transported back to the forest of Borneo and get homesick for it. Then a few days ago my first supervisor from my last job and another friend from their conservation department visited while in DC on business. They brought me the big orangutan conservation graphic that had once hung in one of my primate buildings and now lives in my office - makes me smile to remember but also makes me miss the forest every time I walk into my office!