The jungle bristled with life. There were sloths, pumas, snakes, crocodiles; there were basilisk lizards that could run across the surface of water without sinking. In just a few hectares there lived as many woody plant species as in the whole of Europe. The diversity of the forest was reflected in the rich variety of field biologists who came there to study it.
The field station was an astonishing place to live. The spectrum of ordinary to extraordinary warped in often hilarious ways. I remember one night as I left my lab I ran into a colleague who had been having a hard day. “My samples were singed in the drying oven,” she despaired, “my clothes are filthy because someone put their muddy jungle boots in the washing machine, and a box full of bottles of tree sap fell off a shelf and bruised my ankle.” I always wanted to write an opera or a sitcom set at a jungle field station. It hasn’t happened yet.
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