They never thought to think that a striped anachronism, one of the old gods, walked unseen among them. The old ones had forgotten; the children had never known. A great thing from an age almost passed, searching for a last place where the deer were plenty and the rivers ran clean.

You can't stop them. Some people don't care if a girl cries, or a tiger dies. They have rules. I did what I had to and we survived.

How humans love plundering a forest, like spoiled children with their parents' ATM cards and no concept of moderation

The jungle at night is the greatest freak show on earth. When the sun goes down the landscape welcomes a churning nightshift of murdering, slithering, creeping, fornicating, stalking, swimming, glowing life. To walk the Amazon by night is to enter a world where you are gravely disadvantaged compared to millions of sensory savants.

In the most savage and dizzyingly vast wilderness on earth, the rule is simple: Never go out alone. Yet there are those among us who have difficulty accepting what we have not found out for ourselves, who pass a WET PAINT sign and cannot help touching the wall. We simply have to know.

I needed adventure: not a vacation, not a distraction, but true, meaningful adventure.