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One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest
The story of two generations of scientific explorers in South America—Richard Evans Schultes and his protégé Wade Davis—an epic tale of adventure and a compelling work of natural history.
In 1941, Professor Richard Evan Schultes took a leave from Harvard and disappeared into the Amazon, where he spent the next twelve years mapping uncharted rivers and living among dozens of Indian tribes. In the 1970s, he sent two prize students, Tim Plowman and Wade Davis, to follow in his footsteps and unveil the botanical secrets of coca, the notorious source of cocaine, a sacred plant known to the Inca as the Divine Leaf of Immortality.
A stunning account of adventure and discovery, betrayal and destruction, One River is a story of two generations of explorers drawn together by the transcendent knowledge of Indian peoples, the visionary realms of the shaman, and the extraordinary plants that sustain all life in a forest that once stood immense and inviolable.
In 1941, Professor Richard Evan Schultes took a leave from Harvard and disappeared into the Amazon, where he spent the next twelve years mapping uncharted rivers and living among dozens of Indian tribes. In the 1970s, he sent two prize students, Tim Plowman and Wade Davis, to follow in his footsteps and unveil the botanical secrets of coca, the notorious source of cocaine, a sacred plant known to the Inca as the Divine Leaf of Immortality.
A stunning account of adventure and discovery, betrayal and destruction, One River is a story of two generations of explorers drawn together by the transcendent knowledge of Indian peoples, the visionary realms of the shaman, and the extraordinary plants that sustain all life in a forest that once stood immense and inviolable.
544 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 1996
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6913 people want to read
About the author
Wade Davis
85 books827 followersEdmund Wade Davis has been described as "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life's diversity."
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 269 reviews
February 3, 2017
This book makes me want to study ethnobotany, try a whole whack of obscure hallucinogens, and leave all my worldly possessions behind to explore the Amazon river basin. Surprisingly captivating and dense with wonders. I really ought to read more nonfiction.
February 1, 2024
One River is a dual biography, an ethnobotanical study of a region and its people, and a snapshot in time. The book combines Davis' own fieldwork in Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia in the late 1970s, while retracing the groundbreaking work of his mentor, Richard Evans Schultes, in the 1940-1950s within the same region.
The field of ethnobotany fuses a deeply technical knowledge of plants and taxonomy, with an applied knowledge and "felt sense" of how these plants have been used for millenia by the Indigenous peoples - as food, as medicine, as ritual and sacred, as materials.
Chapters alternate between Schultes and his extensive travel in the forest - plant collecting / studying with shamans and guides in the forest, his WWII era commission by the US government to identify natural sources of rubber - to Davis and his colleague Tim Plowman continuing their study 30 years later. Davis and Plowman are charged with collecting and researching coca specifically, the different species, and varied preparation techniques and uses throughout the Amazon and Andean highlands. Their research sends them on a few (hallucinogenic) journeys, combining adventure along with the scientific field work.
I've had the opportunity to see Wade Davis speak twice at National Geographic over the years. Both times were fantastic, hearing his stories and seeing his photographs of his ethnobotany field work in South America, Borneo, Haiti, and more. I saw him there prior to my own trip to the Amazon in 2007, and he happened to share several anecdotes about Iquitos, Peru, where I spent some time.
I've written a novella here, and barely scratched the surface of this book. It is a remarkable read and now a forever favorite.
READ SEPTEMBER 2019.
The field of ethnobotany fuses a deeply technical knowledge of plants and taxonomy, with an applied knowledge and "felt sense" of how these plants have been used for millenia by the Indigenous peoples - as food, as medicine, as ritual and sacred, as materials.
Chapters alternate between Schultes and his extensive travel in the forest - plant collecting / studying with shamans and guides in the forest, his WWII era commission by the US government to identify natural sources of rubber - to Davis and his colleague Tim Plowman continuing their study 30 years later. Davis and Plowman are charged with collecting and researching coca specifically, the different species, and varied preparation techniques and uses throughout the Amazon and Andean highlands. Their research sends them on a few (hallucinogenic) journeys, combining adventure along with the scientific field work.
I've had the opportunity to see Wade Davis speak twice at National Geographic over the years. Both times were fantastic, hearing his stories and seeing his photographs of his ethnobotany field work in South America, Borneo, Haiti, and more. I saw him there prior to my own trip to the Amazon in 2007, and he happened to share several anecdotes about Iquitos, Peru, where I spent some time.
I've written a novella here, and barely scratched the surface of this book. It is a remarkable read and now a forever favorite.
READ SEPTEMBER 2019.
October 8, 2020
Oct 2020 - Will be adding quotes as I re-read --
page 68 :
"There was a perfect logic to his choice of subject matter. Ames had no interest in the mundane plant products already established in the world economy. His concerns lay with the unknown, the obscure ethnobotanical mysteries that were to be found amid the remnants of ancient traditions. In this regard his instincts verged on the clairvoyant. His emphasis on arrow poisons came years before the isolation of d-tubocurarine, the muscle relaxant that would revolutionize modern surgery. He directed his students to study fish poisons ...
"As a man Ames was firmly rooted in the past, yet as a botanist he was curiously ahead of his time. A profoundly original thinker, Ames was one of the few scholars in the country seriously concerned about the origins of cultivated plants. At a time when anthropologists maintained that man was a relatively recent arrival in the New World. Ames published a book that, on the basis of botanical evidence alone, shattered the dogma. Ames noted that in the five thousand years of recorded history not a single major crop had been added to the list of cultivated plants. With the origins of maize and beans, peanuts and tobacco lost in the shadows of prehistory, it was simply unrealistic to assume that agriculture had emerged in the New World within the past ten thousand years. The antiquity of agriculture alone suggested that humans had reached the New World far earlier than anthropologists then believed. He was right, but it would be twenty years or more before his ideas became generally accepted."
***
page 98 :
"The first thing Schultes discovered about travel in Mexico in the thirties had to do with timing. The best way to get to Oaxaca from the capital was to take the train; there was no road ...
"The second thing Schultes learned was that the track, which ran south from Mexico City through Puebla and into the dry intermontane valley of Oaxaca, had been repaired--quite often, as it turned out--with the wooden ties replaced by lengths of cactus. Anticipating problems, the crew carried massive hydraulic jacks ...
***
page 119 -
"In the stillness of the night, with the rain falling softly on the thatch roof, this humbled New York
banker struggled to find words to describe his 'soul-shattering experience.' They did not exist. Months later he would write, 'We are all confined within the prison walls of our everyday vocabulary. How can you tell a man who has been born blind what it is like to see?' For the Mazatac, too, the experience was impossible to describe. They called the mushrooms the 'Little Ones That Leap Forth' because, as Wasson's muleteer informed him, 'the little mushroom comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes we know not whence or why.'"
***
(Can you imagine being among the first humans to see the shores of western N American?)
***
Original review
"Highly Recommend"
Cataloging-in-Publication subjects :
Ethnobotanists ...
Ethnobotany
Hallucinogenic plants
Medicinal plants
Subject Entries I would have added by page 67 :
Amazon River Region
Andes Mountains
Colombia - Description and Travel
Colombia - History
Indians of South America - Tairona
Kiowa Tribe Culture
Tairona Civilization
***
A fascinating cast features Harvard University scholars seeking organic gems of the deserts and jungles, like the Kogi and the frogs.
***
page 68 :
"There was a perfect logic to his choice of subject matter. Ames had no interest in the mundane plant products already established in the world economy. His concerns lay with the unknown, the obscure ethnobotanical mysteries that were to be found amid the remnants of ancient traditions. In this regard his instincts verged on the clairvoyant. His emphasis on arrow poisons came years before the isolation of d-tubocurarine, the muscle relaxant that would revolutionize modern surgery. He directed his students to study fish poisons ...
"As a man Ames was firmly rooted in the past, yet as a botanist he was curiously ahead of his time. A profoundly original thinker, Ames was one of the few scholars in the country seriously concerned about the origins of cultivated plants. At a time when anthropologists maintained that man was a relatively recent arrival in the New World. Ames published a book that, on the basis of botanical evidence alone, shattered the dogma. Ames noted that in the five thousand years of recorded history not a single major crop had been added to the list of cultivated plants. With the origins of maize and beans, peanuts and tobacco lost in the shadows of prehistory, it was simply unrealistic to assume that agriculture had emerged in the New World within the past ten thousand years. The antiquity of agriculture alone suggested that humans had reached the New World far earlier than anthropologists then believed. He was right, but it would be twenty years or more before his ideas became generally accepted."
***
page 98 :
"The first thing Schultes discovered about travel in Mexico in the thirties had to do with timing. The best way to get to Oaxaca from the capital was to take the train; there was no road ...
"The second thing Schultes learned was that the track, which ran south from Mexico City through Puebla and into the dry intermontane valley of Oaxaca, had been repaired--quite often, as it turned out--with the wooden ties replaced by lengths of cactus. Anticipating problems, the crew carried massive hydraulic jacks ...
***
page 119 -
"In the stillness of the night, with the rain falling softly on the thatch roof, this humbled New York
banker struggled to find words to describe his 'soul-shattering experience.' They did not exist. Months later he would write, 'We are all confined within the prison walls of our everyday vocabulary. How can you tell a man who has been born blind what it is like to see?' For the Mazatac, too, the experience was impossible to describe. They called the mushrooms the 'Little Ones That Leap Forth' because, as Wasson's muleteer informed him, 'the little mushroom comes of itself, no one knows whence, like the wind that comes we know not whence or why.'"
***
(Can you imagine being among the first humans to see the shores of western N American?)
***
Original review
"Highly Recommend"
Cataloging-in-Publication subjects :
Ethnobotanists ...
Ethnobotany
Hallucinogenic plants
Medicinal plants
Subject Entries I would have added by page 67 :
Amazon River Region
Andes Mountains
Colombia - Description and Travel
Colombia - History
Indians of South America - Tairona
Kiowa Tribe Culture
Tairona Civilization
***
A fascinating cast features Harvard University scholars seeking organic gems of the deserts and jungles, like the Kogi and the frogs.
***
March 31, 2016
Telling the names of gods through plants, rivers, hallucinogenics, industries and languages: what a discovery was reading One River! My wife has read it like ten years ago, and it was only now when I got the time and the motivation to read it, mainly because it inspired the Colombian film "El Abrazo de la Serpiente", nominated for the Oscars, 2016.
The film got no Oscar, but the 529 pages told me a story that we have never learned in schools or in the universities in Colombia, Ecuador, Perú or Brazil. People in the Latin American cities know very little about the indigenous cultures living in the forests. One River is a story developed in the Amazon basin, reflecting the medicinal and spiritual life of indigenous communities. The story is told with key references to foreigners like La Condamine (French, 1743), Alexander von Humboldt (German, 1801), Richard Spruce (British botanist, 1853), Richard Evans Schultes (American, 1941), Tim Plowman (American, 1974) and Wade Davis (author). Both Tim and Wade were Schultes' students in Harvard, and the three of them play the central role of telling the many stories articulated by One River, the Amazon.
Though the main driver for Schultes' visits to Colombia and the Amazon during 1941-1953 had to do with the need for getting rubber seeds for the USA (war and industry needs), the core of the real story has to do with plants, quinine, hallucinogenics like yagé, coca, yá-kee, yoco, curare, peyote, mushrooms, and the spiritual practices of the many tribes in the region. It tells the story of the Muinane, Bora, Witoto, Miraña, Yukuna, Makuna, Jinogogé, Siona, Waorani, Kofan, Ingá, Karijona, Gwanano and Desano communities, living along the Inírida, Guainía, Kuduyarí, Vaupés, Kananarí, Popeyacá, Miritiparaná, Caquetá, Sucumbíos, Naopo, Orinoco, Putumayo, and many other rivers tributaries of the Amazon. The book is telling the story of an important part of Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia.
The book also reflects how the private sector (important global companies) are interested in using the indigenous ancestral knowledge. It tells us clearly about the interests moved by the Intercontinental Rubber Company, Coca Cola, Parke-Davis, Royal Dutch Shell, Rubber Development Corporation, Rubber Reserve Company, Shell, Shell-Mera, and the United States Rubber Company. It shows how religious influences became important, like the Jesuits or the Capuchin Order during the Colony, or the Summer Institute of Linguistics or the Wycliffe Bible Translators in modern times. They played the role of articulating belief and interests between the visitors (companies) and the indigenous communities, who were not represented by the governments.
All these peoples, all these languages, have developed a deep communication with the plants, with the rivers and the forests. According to Tim Plowman, "when you say the names of the plants, you say the name of the gods". Their Latin names are like koans of lines of verse. The authors tell about their visit to the Kogi and Ika in the Sierra Nevada, and to many other shamans, and how they cultivate "the art of divination, techniques of breathing and meditation that lift one into trance, prayers that give voice to the inner spirit".
The book brings together the best botanists in the world, and after many years of an intense experience and long life in the forest, they come to conclude that we do not know how Indians originally made their discoveries. Spruce, Schultes, Plowman and Davis are some of the best people educated by the most advanced universities at the global level during the last 150 years and they go into the daily practice of learning from 'locals' like Adalberto Villafañe, Pedro Juajibioy, Pacho Lopez, José Antonio Pabón, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff and few research centres.
What I find strange (and to some degree disturbing) is to see that One River is written in English, based on the communication that the Spruce and Schultes managed to develop in the local indigenous languages. There is no Spanish or Portuguese translation, which means that most of Latin Americans are missing a fundamental part of their own reality. Because of the strong link that the Amazon keeps with the many variables of Climate Change, One River is an important book to read.
The film got no Oscar, but the 529 pages told me a story that we have never learned in schools or in the universities in Colombia, Ecuador, Perú or Brazil. People in the Latin American cities know very little about the indigenous cultures living in the forests. One River is a story developed in the Amazon basin, reflecting the medicinal and spiritual life of indigenous communities. The story is told with key references to foreigners like La Condamine (French, 1743), Alexander von Humboldt (German, 1801), Richard Spruce (British botanist, 1853), Richard Evans Schultes (American, 1941), Tim Plowman (American, 1974) and Wade Davis (author). Both Tim and Wade were Schultes' students in Harvard, and the three of them play the central role of telling the many stories articulated by One River, the Amazon.
Though the main driver for Schultes' visits to Colombia and the Amazon during 1941-1953 had to do with the need for getting rubber seeds for the USA (war and industry needs), the core of the real story has to do with plants, quinine, hallucinogenics like yagé, coca, yá-kee, yoco, curare, peyote, mushrooms, and the spiritual practices of the many tribes in the region. It tells the story of the Muinane, Bora, Witoto, Miraña, Yukuna, Makuna, Jinogogé, Siona, Waorani, Kofan, Ingá, Karijona, Gwanano and Desano communities, living along the Inírida, Guainía, Kuduyarí, Vaupés, Kananarí, Popeyacá, Miritiparaná, Caquetá, Sucumbíos, Naopo, Orinoco, Putumayo, and many other rivers tributaries of the Amazon. The book is telling the story of an important part of Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia.
The book also reflects how the private sector (important global companies) are interested in using the indigenous ancestral knowledge. It tells us clearly about the interests moved by the Intercontinental Rubber Company, Coca Cola, Parke-Davis, Royal Dutch Shell, Rubber Development Corporation, Rubber Reserve Company, Shell, Shell-Mera, and the United States Rubber Company. It shows how religious influences became important, like the Jesuits or the Capuchin Order during the Colony, or the Summer Institute of Linguistics or the Wycliffe Bible Translators in modern times. They played the role of articulating belief and interests between the visitors (companies) and the indigenous communities, who were not represented by the governments.
All these peoples, all these languages, have developed a deep communication with the plants, with the rivers and the forests. According to Tim Plowman, "when you say the names of the plants, you say the name of the gods". Their Latin names are like koans of lines of verse. The authors tell about their visit to the Kogi and Ika in the Sierra Nevada, and to many other shamans, and how they cultivate "the art of divination, techniques of breathing and meditation that lift one into trance, prayers that give voice to the inner spirit".
The book brings together the best botanists in the world, and after many years of an intense experience and long life in the forest, they come to conclude that we do not know how Indians originally made their discoveries. Spruce, Schultes, Plowman and Davis are some of the best people educated by the most advanced universities at the global level during the last 150 years and they go into the daily practice of learning from 'locals' like Adalberto Villafañe, Pedro Juajibioy, Pacho Lopez, José Antonio Pabón, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff and few research centres.
What I find strange (and to some degree disturbing) is to see that One River is written in English, based on the communication that the Spruce and Schultes managed to develop in the local indigenous languages. There is no Spanish or Portuguese translation, which means that most of Latin Americans are missing a fundamental part of their own reality. Because of the strong link that the Amazon keeps with the many variables of Climate Change, One River is an important book to read.
October 13, 2019
No sé que admirar más después de leer este fantástico libro.
Si a la botánica y su increíblemente simple sistema taxonómico, capaz de ofrecer un esquema de clasificación para la casi interminable lista de plantas que pueblan la Tierra.
Si a los hombres y mujeres que a lo largo de la historia herborizaron los bosques, montañas y desiertos para descubrir la increíble diversidad vegetal de nuestro planeta.
Si Richard Schultes y su sobrenatural sexto sentido botánico, que le permitía mirar un pedazo de selva y decir "conozco cada árbol que hay ahí", descubridor de miles de especies nuevas, sobreviviente (¡de pura suerte!) a las más increíbles aventuras, al Paludismo, al beriberi y (no menos importante) a la burocracia gubernamental de los Estados Unidos y de Colombia.
Si a Wade Davies por aventurarse, con igual valentía, a reconstruir los pasos de sus maestros Schultes y Tim Plowman, para encontrar el origen de la Ayahuasca o de la Coca silvestre, pero también para escribir un libro como este, la biografía de una de las más fascinantes expediciones botánicas del siglo xx, a partir tan solo de algunas fotografías, anécdotas perdidas en el tiempo y miles de anotaciones botánicas en pequeñas hojitas de las libretas de Schultes.
Si a los indígenas de los andes y el amazonas, que sin laboratorios de química analítica, sin estequiometría, espectrómetros de masa, microscopios o tinciones, han hackeado durante milenios los secretos farmacológicos de la selva.
Si a las plantas mismas, capaces de producir (sin ningún propósito consciente) una infinidad de sustancias químicas benéficas y maléficas (o ambas al mismo tiempo) para nuestra especie y todas las que habitan los bosques.
No sé que pueda merecer más admiración pero no hay duda de que este libro inspirará a cualquier lector una profunda reverencia por todas todas estas cosas.
Oí hablar de "El Río" desde 2009 cuando Wade Davies ofreció una conferencia en El Parque Explora (Medellín, Colombia) con motivo de la segunda Edición del libro. Si bien me causó alguna curiosidad, no me animé a leerlo en ese entonces por considerar que era de un tema ajeno a mis intereses.
Esto cambio cuando vi en 2015 la película de Ciro Guerra "El Abrazo de la Serpiente" (que después de leer el libro quiero volver a ver), donde aparece un joven Schultes adentrándose en la selva con un viejo chamán, como lo hizo tantas veces en la vida real, en busca de una planta alucinógena.
Lo que me impulso finalmente a leer el libro fue el excelente documental "El sendero de la Anaconda" (Alessandro Angulo y Caracol TV, 2019) en el que Davies sigue los pasos de Schultes por la cuenca del Río Apoporis y entre las montañas mágicas del hoy universalmente conocido Parque Nacional del Chiribiquete.
Después de leer "El Río" he descubierto cuan equivocado era mi prejuicio inicial de pensar que el libro no ser de mi interés: ¡por supuesto que lo es! Y debería serlo también para cualquier colombiano, o en general ser humano que quiera aproximarse a los secretos naturales y humanos que todavía esconde el amazonas y que podrían extinguirse por siempre tal vez en unas décadas.
El libro esta muy bien escrito y combina anédoctas de exploradores y viajes a través del amazonas, descripciones científicas de plantas, hongos y animales y algunas increíbles historias relacionadas con la selva y el trabajo de Schultes y todos sus estudiantes: la explotación del caucho en el siglo xix y principios del xx y la esclavitud y barbarie que sufrieron los indígenas mientras duro; el esfuerzo de los norteamericanos por encontrar la mejor especie de caucho para cultivarla y sobrevivir a su necesidad del precioso latex durante los tiempos de la segunda guerra mundial; y la posterior, e increíblemente estúpida, decisión de acabar con la investigación (y los logros obtenidos por el mismo Shcultes) que creo la que fue la más productiva plantación de caucho en las américas.
¡Un libro para todos los gustos!
Si a la botánica y su increíblemente simple sistema taxonómico, capaz de ofrecer un esquema de clasificación para la casi interminable lista de plantas que pueblan la Tierra.
Si a los hombres y mujeres que a lo largo de la historia herborizaron los bosques, montañas y desiertos para descubrir la increíble diversidad vegetal de nuestro planeta.
Si Richard Schultes y su sobrenatural sexto sentido botánico, que le permitía mirar un pedazo de selva y decir "conozco cada árbol que hay ahí", descubridor de miles de especies nuevas, sobreviviente (¡de pura suerte!) a las más increíbles aventuras, al Paludismo, al beriberi y (no menos importante) a la burocracia gubernamental de los Estados Unidos y de Colombia.
Si a Wade Davies por aventurarse, con igual valentía, a reconstruir los pasos de sus maestros Schultes y Tim Plowman, para encontrar el origen de la Ayahuasca o de la Coca silvestre, pero también para escribir un libro como este, la biografía de una de las más fascinantes expediciones botánicas del siglo xx, a partir tan solo de algunas fotografías, anécdotas perdidas en el tiempo y miles de anotaciones botánicas en pequeñas hojitas de las libretas de Schultes.
Si a los indígenas de los andes y el amazonas, que sin laboratorios de química analítica, sin estequiometría, espectrómetros de masa, microscopios o tinciones, han hackeado durante milenios los secretos farmacológicos de la selva.
Si a las plantas mismas, capaces de producir (sin ningún propósito consciente) una infinidad de sustancias químicas benéficas y maléficas (o ambas al mismo tiempo) para nuestra especie y todas las que habitan los bosques.
No sé que pueda merecer más admiración pero no hay duda de que este libro inspirará a cualquier lector una profunda reverencia por todas todas estas cosas.
Oí hablar de "El Río" desde 2009 cuando Wade Davies ofreció una conferencia en El Parque Explora (Medellín, Colombia) con motivo de la segunda Edición del libro. Si bien me causó alguna curiosidad, no me animé a leerlo en ese entonces por considerar que era de un tema ajeno a mis intereses.
Esto cambio cuando vi en 2015 la película de Ciro Guerra "El Abrazo de la Serpiente" (que después de leer el libro quiero volver a ver), donde aparece un joven Schultes adentrándose en la selva con un viejo chamán, como lo hizo tantas veces en la vida real, en busca de una planta alucinógena.
Lo que me impulso finalmente a leer el libro fue el excelente documental "El sendero de la Anaconda" (Alessandro Angulo y Caracol TV, 2019) en el que Davies sigue los pasos de Schultes por la cuenca del Río Apoporis y entre las montañas mágicas del hoy universalmente conocido Parque Nacional del Chiribiquete.
Después de leer "El Río" he descubierto cuan equivocado era mi prejuicio inicial de pensar que el libro no ser de mi interés: ¡por supuesto que lo es! Y debería serlo también para cualquier colombiano, o en general ser humano que quiera aproximarse a los secretos naturales y humanos que todavía esconde el amazonas y que podrían extinguirse por siempre tal vez en unas décadas.
El libro esta muy bien escrito y combina anédoctas de exploradores y viajes a través del amazonas, descripciones científicas de plantas, hongos y animales y algunas increíbles historias relacionadas con la selva y el trabajo de Schultes y todos sus estudiantes: la explotación del caucho en el siglo xix y principios del xx y la esclavitud y barbarie que sufrieron los indígenas mientras duro; el esfuerzo de los norteamericanos por encontrar la mejor especie de caucho para cultivarla y sobrevivir a su necesidad del precioso latex durante los tiempos de la segunda guerra mundial; y la posterior, e increíblemente estúpida, decisión de acabar con la investigación (y los logros obtenidos por el mismo Shcultes) que creo la que fue la más productiva plantación de caucho en las américas.
¡Un libro para todos los gustos!
September 27, 2019
It's far, far more than just about One River. It's non-fiction at a 5 star research and detail level for its subject matter. Not only the exact record biographies but also the tribal and anthropology detail that's beyond just the botany core for study, history, species discovery and naming. But its also beyond just the ethnobotany combination of the two.
The reason for the 3 stars rating is for my interest/ enjoyment and is not because of book lacks. For me it is just too much. Too much else that is outside of the geographic or scientific or personal. It's closer after all to a wider type of Anthropology record for varying areas and tribal groups met and entwined. Not at all just about the plants or the means to study them. And for me, all of that cultural relativism surround of exchange and "eyes" just takes most pleasure for the plant or nature onus away or dissolved. It does for me. Such "nice" guys, even though they bury 3 year old toddlers alive to accompany the dead grandfather etc. That type of value compliance (in a hand's off scientific notation sense) is inherent within this time and time again- and I just don't swallow it for scientific exchange depth "value". Nor all the self-harm and drug use practicing to "test it yourself" kind of reckless hedonism which seems to be recorded with a type of glad handing? Such explained are these levels of going "native" to get native "secrets". Very human -but also at intervals, quite beyond off-putting in the way it is observed here. (Then when it occurred AND much later. BOTH.)
Wade Davis is excellent at true recorded, documented fact and the onus to and of the reality for the lives lived. All geographic locations to present country, river systems, mountains etc. That was absolutely 5 stars. I found it ironic that World Wars were going on in other places while these explorations into plants were done. And that the rubber seeds etc. and his whole base camp for that testing/ growing was left for the other plants of the jungle to take back the way it was!!
As an after thought to reading this- I don't know why anyone would want or suggest ANY human to revert to a hunter/ gatherer lifestyle. Or even an earlier type of scratch and burn farming as a desired living "state"of some type of primitive idealism or purity. Short, brutal lives filled with immense amounts of physical suffering being norm. Not to speak of the constant feuding and killing off of both "friends" and relatives over the very finite levels/ issues/ nature itself of their economies.
It sure made you think about the huge variances of plants and the variety in/to cores of human cognition about the world itself. Schultes sure was a pistol. And probably a genius.
The reason for the 3 stars rating is for my interest/ enjoyment and is not because of book lacks. For me it is just too much. Too much else that is outside of the geographic or scientific or personal. It's closer after all to a wider type of Anthropology record for varying areas and tribal groups met and entwined. Not at all just about the plants or the means to study them. And for me, all of that cultural relativism surround of exchange and "eyes" just takes most pleasure for the plant or nature onus away or dissolved. It does for me. Such "nice" guys, even though they bury 3 year old toddlers alive to accompany the dead grandfather etc. That type of value compliance (in a hand's off scientific notation sense) is inherent within this time and time again- and I just don't swallow it for scientific exchange depth "value". Nor all the self-harm and drug use practicing to "test it yourself" kind of reckless hedonism which seems to be recorded with a type of glad handing? Such explained are these levels of going "native" to get native "secrets". Very human -but also at intervals, quite beyond off-putting in the way it is observed here. (Then when it occurred AND much later. BOTH.)
Wade Davis is excellent at true recorded, documented fact and the onus to and of the reality for the lives lived. All geographic locations to present country, river systems, mountains etc. That was absolutely 5 stars. I found it ironic that World Wars were going on in other places while these explorations into plants were done. And that the rubber seeds etc. and his whole base camp for that testing/ growing was left for the other plants of the jungle to take back the way it was!!
As an after thought to reading this- I don't know why anyone would want or suggest ANY human to revert to a hunter/ gatherer lifestyle. Or even an earlier type of scratch and burn farming as a desired living "state"of some type of primitive idealism or purity. Short, brutal lives filled with immense amounts of physical suffering being norm. Not to speak of the constant feuding and killing off of both "friends" and relatives over the very finite levels/ issues/ nature itself of their economies.
It sure made you think about the huge variances of plants and the variety in/to cores of human cognition about the world itself. Schultes sure was a pistol. And probably a genius.
March 30, 2014
Wade Davis is one of my favorite authors to read. He displays a sensitivity to other cultures that is rare, even to find in an anthropologist and he's a fantastic writer as demonstrated in this paragraph:
"Shamanism is arguably the oldest of spiritual endeavors, born as it was at the dawn of human awareness. For our Paleolithic ancestors, death was the first teacher, the first pain, the edge beyond which life as they knew it ended and wonder began. Religion was nursed by mystery, but it was born of the hunt, from the need on the part of humans to rationalize the fact to live they had to kill what they most revered, the animals that gave them life. Rich and complex rituals and myths evolved as an expression of the covenant between the animals and humans, a means of containing within manageable bounds the fear and violence of the hunt and maintaining a certain essential balance between the consciousness of man and the unreasoning impulses of the natural world."
I appreciate that Davis shared the story of his mentor and teacher, Richard Schultes. Dr. Schultes had an incredible life, spurred by his love of plants, he lived and traveled around the Amazon rain forest for decades. Not only does Dr. Davis share the fascinating story of his mentor, but he intertwines it with his own experiences in the jungles, the history of Europeans in the region and the uses of various plants. One River weaves the stories of the Amazonian people, the plants, the history of European ignorance, and his own experiences in a colorful fabric for an enjoyable experience.
There wasn't much gossip about fellow scientists, but the bit that was there was tedious to read. I still gave the book 5 stars just for the volume of fascinating information contained in this well written book.
"Shamanism is arguably the oldest of spiritual endeavors, born as it was at the dawn of human awareness. For our Paleolithic ancestors, death was the first teacher, the first pain, the edge beyond which life as they knew it ended and wonder began. Religion was nursed by mystery, but it was born of the hunt, from the need on the part of humans to rationalize the fact to live they had to kill what they most revered, the animals that gave them life. Rich and complex rituals and myths evolved as an expression of the covenant between the animals and humans, a means of containing within manageable bounds the fear and violence of the hunt and maintaining a certain essential balance between the consciousness of man and the unreasoning impulses of the natural world."
I appreciate that Davis shared the story of his mentor and teacher, Richard Schultes. Dr. Schultes had an incredible life, spurred by his love of plants, he lived and traveled around the Amazon rain forest for decades. Not only does Dr. Davis share the fascinating story of his mentor, but he intertwines it with his own experiences in the jungles, the history of Europeans in the region and the uses of various plants. One River weaves the stories of the Amazonian people, the plants, the history of European ignorance, and his own experiences in a colorful fabric for an enjoyable experience.
There wasn't much gossip about fellow scientists, but the bit that was there was tedious to read. I still gave the book 5 stars just for the volume of fascinating information contained in this well written book.
May 18, 2020
Aunque es un libro de divulgación de etnobotánica y antropología acerca de las plantas alucinógenas usadas en los ritos de las comunidades indígenas (plantas sagradas para ellos) y cuenta con una impresionante bibliografía, se lee con el entusiasmo de una novela de aventuras (tipo "El corazón en las tinieblas") que se desarrolla en gran parte en la Amazonía de Brasil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Perú, Bolivia y (principalmente) Colombia.
Cuando es el "estudiante" Wade Davis quien narra en los 70's, el relato se me asemejaba a la historia de un mochilero suramericano y su paso por Santa Marta en la Costa Caribe, La Candelaria en Bogotá, San Agustín en Huila, Mocoa en el Putumayo, El Valle Sagrado en Cuzco...
Se me venían a la memoria las imágenes del cine de Werner Herzog ("Aguirre, la ira de Dios", "Fitzcarraldo") cuando aparece el "maestro" Richard E. Shultes en sus legendarias y largas expediciones en los 40's por lugares remotos en la Amazonía que hasta el día de hoy siguen siendo de muy difícil acceso como el místico Río Apaporis en el Vaupés de Colombia.
Así nos presenta Wade Davis a su profesor Richard E. Shultes: "Aunque entrenado en la mejor institución botánica de los Estado Unidos, después de un mes en el Amazonas se sintió cada vez más como un principiante. Los indígenas sabían mucho más. Había ido a América del Sur porque quería encontrar los dones del bosque pluvial: las hojas que curan, las frutas y las semillas que nos proporcionan los alimentos que consumimos, las plantas que podían transportar a una persona a reinos mas allá de la imaginación. Pero también había descubierto que al develar los conocimientos indígenas, su tarea no era solo identificar nuevas fuentes de riqueza, sino comprender una nueva visión de la vida misma, una manera profundamente diferente de vivir en la selva."
En varios pasajes hay poesía en la belleza de la naturaleza envolvente y el camino hacia lo desconocido (sea físicamente a través de la navegación de El Río o mentalmente si el viaje es psicotrópico), ayudado (supongo) en gran parte por la traducción hecha del inglés al español por el poeta Nicolás Suescún.
Es un libro que inspira a viajar largo, por río, en las grandes inmensidades del Amazonas.
Algo muy fuerte seguramente tuvo que experimentar en el viaje Wade Davis, biólogo y antropólogo de la Universidad de Harvard, un occidental racional en todo el sentido de la palabra para escribir:
"Beber yagé es volver al útero y renacer. Es romper la placenta de la percepción normal y entrar en reinos donde se puede conocer la muerte y es posible rastrear la vida, a través de la sensación, hasta la fuente primigenia de la existencia. Cuando los chamanes hablan de enfrentarse al jaguar, es porque realmente lo hacen."
Cuando es el "estudiante" Wade Davis quien narra en los 70's, el relato se me asemejaba a la historia de un mochilero suramericano y su paso por Santa Marta en la Costa Caribe, La Candelaria en Bogotá, San Agustín en Huila, Mocoa en el Putumayo, El Valle Sagrado en Cuzco...
Se me venían a la memoria las imágenes del cine de Werner Herzog ("Aguirre, la ira de Dios", "Fitzcarraldo") cuando aparece el "maestro" Richard E. Shultes en sus legendarias y largas expediciones en los 40's por lugares remotos en la Amazonía que hasta el día de hoy siguen siendo de muy difícil acceso como el místico Río Apaporis en el Vaupés de Colombia.
Así nos presenta Wade Davis a su profesor Richard E. Shultes: "Aunque entrenado en la mejor institución botánica de los Estado Unidos, después de un mes en el Amazonas se sintió cada vez más como un principiante. Los indígenas sabían mucho más. Había ido a América del Sur porque quería encontrar los dones del bosque pluvial: las hojas que curan, las frutas y las semillas que nos proporcionan los alimentos que consumimos, las plantas que podían transportar a una persona a reinos mas allá de la imaginación. Pero también había descubierto que al develar los conocimientos indígenas, su tarea no era solo identificar nuevas fuentes de riqueza, sino comprender una nueva visión de la vida misma, una manera profundamente diferente de vivir en la selva."
En varios pasajes hay poesía en la belleza de la naturaleza envolvente y el camino hacia lo desconocido (sea físicamente a través de la navegación de El Río o mentalmente si el viaje es psicotrópico), ayudado (supongo) en gran parte por la traducción hecha del inglés al español por el poeta Nicolás Suescún.
Es un libro que inspira a viajar largo, por río, en las grandes inmensidades del Amazonas.
Algo muy fuerte seguramente tuvo que experimentar en el viaje Wade Davis, biólogo y antropólogo de la Universidad de Harvard, un occidental racional en todo el sentido de la palabra para escribir:
"Beber yagé es volver al útero y renacer. Es romper la placenta de la percepción normal y entrar en reinos donde se puede conocer la muerte y es posible rastrear la vida, a través de la sensación, hasta la fuente primigenia de la existencia. Cuando los chamanes hablan de enfrentarse al jaguar, es porque realmente lo hacen."
September 1, 2021
Too much detail in this the explorer history of the Amazon. I never fell into a consistent groove while reading this book even though I started at it more than six months ago.
The maps were useful but there were too many place names mentioned and almost all were in Spanish or Quechuan.
3 stars
The maps were useful but there were too many place names mentioned and almost all were in Spanish or Quechuan.
3 stars
September 23, 2017
'One River' is one part botanical adventure story, one part thoughtful exploration of humanity's relationship to nature. The meat of the narrative is two parallel explorations of the northwestern Amazon and western South America: one, Davis and his colleague tracing the earlier discoveries and collecting expeditions of their mentor, Richard Schultes; the other story is Schultes' journeys throughout the region a few decades before.
Although the jumping-about in time can often muddle the flow and make the book as a whole a little meandering, it doesn't detract from the book, though it does leave you feel like there was a lot left untold.
At its base, this is a story of ethnobotanists finding weird new plants, experimenting with wide varieties of hallucinogens, and hanging out with Indian tribes that were then virtually unknown. The sheer magnitude and intensity of these journeys, especially Schultes who spent more than a decade river-hopping and discovering hundreds of new species, is awe-inspiring and Davis does a good job highlighting the overarching theme of indigenous knowledge and their ties to the earth, something we nowadays either ignore or take for granted, often at the earth's expense.
Although the jumping-about in time can often muddle the flow and make the book as a whole a little meandering, it doesn't detract from the book, though it does leave you feel like there was a lot left untold.
At its base, this is a story of ethnobotanists finding weird new plants, experimenting with wide varieties of hallucinogens, and hanging out with Indian tribes that were then virtually unknown. The sheer magnitude and intensity of these journeys, especially Schultes who spent more than a decade river-hopping and discovering hundreds of new species, is awe-inspiring and Davis does a good job highlighting the overarching theme of indigenous knowledge and their ties to the earth, something we nowadays either ignore or take for granted, often at the earth's expense.
January 17, 2023
This book defies simple characterization. About 60% of it is memoir of explorations of a famous botanist (Schultes) in the Amazon rainforests searching for new plant species, researching rubber for US government, and looking for hallucinogenic substances (e.g., psilocybin) in plants or fungi. These trips were made decades ago and Schultes kept no journal. The content is created by the author after 30 hours of interview.
The other 40% contains a motley of essays including explorations of various others (e.g., Schultes’s students), description of the area and the people, missionary’s story, history of rubber, cocaine, and geology. Here are some example chapters:
1. Schultes was dispatched by US government to find a solution for scarcity of rubbers as war started. In Amazon, many species produce latex. He had a painstaking effort recording his survey. In one trip, he was almost considered killed when the boat motor failed and he had to drift down 100s of miles along the entire river.
2. War made rubber expensive and increases the need for botanists. 1M seedlings were planted in America trying to create plight resistance. The project almost succeeded. But war ended, synthetics became popular, and Asian plantations were successful. Together they killed the program, though later radial tires increased need for natural rubber because of its strength.
3. The early story of cocaine: discovered in 1860, used for anesthesia, removed from coca-cola in 1906, pushed for eradication in 1940s, may have been used as early as 2000BC in coastal Peru. Inca’s celebration involves sacrificing victims in capital and those carrying their blood back to village will be killed upon return. Coca plant is easy to plant and 8x more valuable than coffee and 25x cacao.
Overall, it was extremely vivid for botanists’ life and work, but perhaps not a good source for knowledge in general for the lay reader.
The other 40% contains a motley of essays including explorations of various others (e.g., Schultes’s students), description of the area and the people, missionary’s story, history of rubber, cocaine, and geology. Here are some example chapters:
1. Schultes was dispatched by US government to find a solution for scarcity of rubbers as war started. In Amazon, many species produce latex. He had a painstaking effort recording his survey. In one trip, he was almost considered killed when the boat motor failed and he had to drift down 100s of miles along the entire river.
2. War made rubber expensive and increases the need for botanists. 1M seedlings were planted in America trying to create plight resistance. The project almost succeeded. But war ended, synthetics became popular, and Asian plantations were successful. Together they killed the program, though later radial tires increased need for natural rubber because of its strength.
3. The early story of cocaine: discovered in 1860, used for anesthesia, removed from coca-cola in 1906, pushed for eradication in 1940s, may have been used as early as 2000BC in coastal Peru. Inca’s celebration involves sacrificing victims in capital and those carrying their blood back to village will be killed upon return. Coca plant is easy to plant and 8x more valuable than coffee and 25x cacao.
Overall, it was extremely vivid for botanists’ life and work, but perhaps not a good source for knowledge in general for the lay reader.
February 2, 2018
Demoré casi un año leyendo este libro por temor a terminarlo. Definitivamente mi libro favorito. Davis narra las exploraciones de Schultes y Plowman de una forma tan rica que uno mismo se siente viajando por el Amazonas. Los usos de las plantas, la coca, el yagé, todo increíblemente bien explicado y acertado. Un libro que todo colombiano debería leer para ver si empezamos a valorar y respetar nuestras culturas y conocimientos ancestrales.
August 15, 2025
Breathtaking. Every now and then you come across one of those books that makes you glad to be alive. One River is an electrifying, entrancing elegy to two wondrous scientists and to what I fear is an even more diminished world than when it was first published almost 30 years ago. I felt physical pain coming to the end of this one. By far the best book I’ve read so far on the Amazon (a place that is still stuck in my brain long after visiting) and it’s given me a ton of new jumping off points and new rabbit holes.
I would love to hear from people who’ve also read One River what its legacy is like today. Is Davis and, by extension, is Schultes, still proven correct in the analysis of the US cultivated rubber plantation empire as a tremendous missed opportunity? I had mixed feelings about the scheme but was fascinated to see, at least in the 90s just how reliant so much of our industries are still reliant on natural rubber - before reading this book I was sure natural rubber was tossed aside soon after the Second World War, but evidently I was totally ignorant. How has research into indigenous mythology and practice around psychedelics evolved since 1996? A recent guardian long read seemed to call a lot of conventional anthropological research into question (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...) and I wonder how much of Davis, Plowman and Schultes’ findings hold up? And lastly - just how much more knowledge of the plants of this treacherous and wondrous place, has this planet lost, likely without us even realising? That’s the one that keeps me up at night.
One River is one of my favourites this year. I will definitely seek out more books by Davis. A moving tribute to two towering ethnobotanists and to the people and places of Amazonia and the Andes.
I would love to hear from people who’ve also read One River what its legacy is like today. Is Davis and, by extension, is Schultes, still proven correct in the analysis of the US cultivated rubber plantation empire as a tremendous missed opportunity? I had mixed feelings about the scheme but was fascinated to see, at least in the 90s just how reliant so much of our industries are still reliant on natural rubber - before reading this book I was sure natural rubber was tossed aside soon after the Second World War, but evidently I was totally ignorant. How has research into indigenous mythology and practice around psychedelics evolved since 1996? A recent guardian long read seemed to call a lot of conventional anthropological research into question (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...) and I wonder how much of Davis, Plowman and Schultes’ findings hold up? And lastly - just how much more knowledge of the plants of this treacherous and wondrous place, has this planet lost, likely without us even realising? That’s the one that keeps me up at night.
One River is one of my favourites this year. I will definitely seek out more books by Davis. A moving tribute to two towering ethnobotanists and to the people and places of Amazonia and the Andes.
December 20, 2022
This book is the definition of adventure. Going into uncharted Amazon, hanging out with natives, trying random plant medicine. This illustrate the time where mushroom and ayahuasca was a deep mystery and before it was trendy. These people get malaria as often as we get common cold. They go into 1000mile journey in Amazon with food running out but just continue on as the curiously of the plants outweighs the hunger and discomfort. I want to be brave enough to follow my passion like how these people followed theirs. Super interesting and I would love to learn more about plant medicine and indigenous knowledges.
May 11, 2019
What an incredible book. I often try to stay away from reading books for fun that are closely related to my work, but this was a fantastic exception. Early on, Davis presents One River as if it will be two intertwined stories: one focused on the South American travels of Richard Schultes, a famous and influential Harvard ethnobotanist, in the 1940s and 50s, and a second story focused on travels through many of the same locales a few decades later by Davis and his comrade Tim Plowman (both students of Schultes). But this book is so much more than just those two narratives. Woven throughout is an incredible amount of information about the various native tribes and peoples that all three of these main characters (Schultes, Davis, Plowman) interacted with. He describes their languages, cultural practices, use of plants, and daily lives with an amazing amount of detail, and beautiful, evocative, descriptive language. I learned a staggering amount, especially about which plants are used and how, by particular groups of native South Americans. He also discusses the history of these peoples, particularly as their history was impacted by Europeans, in sometimes gruesome detail. There is always a sense that we must remember what was done to them in order to understand both their current cultures and the issues faced in various parts of South America, and particularly how plants (including coca) are intricately tied to traditional ways of life.
Davis mentions in the epilogue that he used Schultes' extensive photograph collection to infer much of the book's content; for example, to determine what people were wearing, what they might have been doing or where they were on a given date, and how they were using plants (e.g., by looking at whether a man was carrying a coca pouch). Reading Davis's comments about the extent to which he relied on these photographs, it clicked for me that this is a primary reason why the book is so fantastic - the level of detail, and Davis's fantastic descriptions, are almost photographic, and create such a vivid image of the people and places that you are completely immersed in the story. And the feel is photographic because, essentially, he is describing and discerning from photographs. Really cool way to approach writing a history like this.
Davis mentions in the epilogue that he used Schultes' extensive photograph collection to infer much of the book's content; for example, to determine what people were wearing, what they might have been doing or where they were on a given date, and how they were using plants (e.g., by looking at whether a man was carrying a coca pouch). Reading Davis's comments about the extent to which he relied on these photographs, it clicked for me that this is a primary reason why the book is so fantastic - the level of detail, and Davis's fantastic descriptions, are almost photographic, and create such a vivid image of the people and places that you are completely immersed in the story. And the feel is photographic because, essentially, he is describing and discerning from photographs. Really cool way to approach writing a history like this.
March 31, 2020
I was given the recommendation to read Davis’s ‘One River’ while I spent 5 days in the Peruvian jungle exploring the plant life, reforestation efforts, and essential oil distillation processes of a nonprofit company a friend of mine does business with for his soap business. A year later I cracked it open.
This undoubtedly was one of the densest books I have read in a long time, yet it was captivating throughout. Many of my goodreads friends know I am a sucker for a good travel journal/travel narrative piece of work, so this scratched that itch (please enjoy my jungle and mosquito joke here).
Set up as a dual biography of Davis’s time in multiple South American regions in the 1970s and his mentors Richard Schultes in the 40s-50s the reader is taken on the many adventures of discovery of plants and fauna and historical background of the regions. I enjoyed the technical writing throughout(dictionary used a few times) albeit it does sometimes detract and get bogged down with a lot of details. This wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but I did find myself skimming at times ahead.
Overall, great read and would recommend to anyone who has an interest in learning more about South America, botany, and the botanical world and it’s importance in developing a knowledge base in so many facets of life as we know it today.
This undoubtedly was one of the densest books I have read in a long time, yet it was captivating throughout. Many of my goodreads friends know I am a sucker for a good travel journal/travel narrative piece of work, so this scratched that itch (please enjoy my jungle and mosquito joke here).
Set up as a dual biography of Davis’s time in multiple South American regions in the 1970s and his mentors Richard Schultes in the 40s-50s the reader is taken on the many adventures of discovery of plants and fauna and historical background of the regions. I enjoyed the technical writing throughout(dictionary used a few times) albeit it does sometimes detract and get bogged down with a lot of details. This wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but I did find myself skimming at times ahead.
Overall, great read and would recommend to anyone who has an interest in learning more about South America, botany, and the botanical world and it’s importance in developing a knowledge base in so many facets of life as we know it today.
February 10, 2018
Take a lot of plants, trees, seeds, some of them hallucinogenic, some known, lots unknown, a dog, Botany’s answer to Indiana Jones, his brightest student and another wide eyed yet equally capable student, Rubber, Orchids, Coca, a cast of incredible and wonderful characters and a sizeable chunk of South America and slowly drift down the Amazon river, from one end to the over, from one tributary to the next, and you have, well you have a lot more than One River, I have to say.
Much like the river of the title, I imagine anyway, this is a big, sprawling book that seems to be a biography, a travelogue and a study of medicinal and hallucinogenic plants mashed in a great mortar and pestle and pressed onto the pages. Ostensibly dedicated to the memory of Tim Plowman, Wade Davis has written a detailed biography of Richard Evans Schultes (who has become a hero of mine on the basis of this book), as well as the histories of rubber and Coca and their impact, the lives and roles of Indians in the Amazon basin and beyond, and their incredible knowledge and understanding of the world around them. Along the way he travels with Tim, throws in the histories of Richard Spruce, a bit off Alfred Russell Wallace, the Inca’s and even a little bit of Peyote.
What this meant was that while reading, I drifted in and out of interest. Just when I got into the life of Richard Schultes, we were back with Wade Davis. Just when you remember what Davis was doing the last time we were with him, we were back with Schultes, or spinning off with a detailed history of whatever it was that Davis was talking about at that point. In complete naivety I came to the book to read about the Amazon and despite thinking I would enjoy the travelogue parts, it is in fact the biography of Schultes that I grew to love, a man with a passion and curiosity for plants that drove through almost any obstacles that nature or man placed in his way which I could only admire more and more throughout the book. Davis also gives detailed history or everything relevant to the narrative. Indeed, the exploits of the rubber barons, particularly Julio Cesar Arana were horrific, and made uncomfortable reading, yet still fascinated me, particularly after all those years of hard work were ended by petty shortsightedness of the US government.
It is the sheer breadth of the book that makes it feel like an encyclopedia while reading. The Latin plant names, and technical botanical terms which at the same time piqued my interest in botany, but not quite enough and so kept me at arms length. The switching between Schultes and Davis would have been easier to keep pace with without the additional history of subjects related to where they were or what they were doing, this all made One River feel like three different books.
Until.
Until I finished. Then it became a great book, filled with seemingly endless information on the Amazon rainforest, and it’s human and flora inhabitants and the adventure for their discovery and their impact on medicine, and in the case of cocaine and rubber, on society and technology across the whole world.
By this time Waterton was familiar with the work of Brodie and Bancroft, and one morning he decided to experiment with their technique. He began by injecting the poison into the shoulder of a female donkey. In ten minutes the creature appeared to be dead. Waterton, being rather accomplished with a blade, having bled himself on at least 136 occasions, made a small incision in the animals windpipe and began to inflate its lungs with a bellows. The donkey revived. When Waterton stopped the flow of air, the creature once again succumbed. Resuming artificial respiration, he nursed the animal until the effects of the poison wore off. After two hours the donkey stood up and walked away. This treatment marked a turning point in the history of medicine.
It wasn’t until towards the end of the book that I thought of the Indiana Jones comparison for Schultes, and I’m pretty sure it’s a comparison he himself would of not appreciated, maintaining as he did in the book that he hadn’t known any adventures. Yet his journeys up and down rivers and through jungles far outstrip giant rolling boulders and alien crystal skulls. Travelling for days to get treatment for Beriberi and malaria, then continuing with his collecting showed an almost stubborn refusal to let these inconveniences to get in the way of the job in hand. He believed and appreciated the knowledge and expertise of the native indians, making great efforts to understand them and their worldview, which was sometimes completely alien to what he knew and understood himself.
These traits influenced both Davis and Tim Plowman, who spent his life researching Coca, before the narcotic derivative took over the known world and forever tarnished a nutritional stimulant used by people for thousands of years before it became a good time drug for everyone. He actually managed to trace it’s evolution throughout the different locations in South America.
Coca had been found to contain such impressive amounts of vitamins and minerals that Duke compared it to the average nutritional contents of fifty foods regularly consumed in Latin America. Coca ranked higher than the average in calories, protein, carbohydrate, and fiber. It was also higher in calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, and riboflavin, so much so that one hundred grams of the leaves, the typical daily consumption of a coquero in the Andes, more than satisfied the Recommended Dietary Allowance for these nutrients as well as vitamin E. The amount of calcium in the leaves was extraordinary, more than had ever been reported for any edible plant.
So in the end I struggled, I forced myself to finish it before the new year, but it was worth it all. Now that I’ve finished I will delve back in to various bits, particularly one of the final chapters which contained interesting history on the Inca’s. If you like travel writing, you’ll like bits of this, if you like history, you like some of this, if you like biography, you’ll like most of this, If you like botany, you’ll love this. If you like to read about a real life adventurer (Don’t call him Indy) then you’ll definitely love this.
(blog review here)
Much like the river of the title, I imagine anyway, this is a big, sprawling book that seems to be a biography, a travelogue and a study of medicinal and hallucinogenic plants mashed in a great mortar and pestle and pressed onto the pages. Ostensibly dedicated to the memory of Tim Plowman, Wade Davis has written a detailed biography of Richard Evans Schultes (who has become a hero of mine on the basis of this book), as well as the histories of rubber and Coca and their impact, the lives and roles of Indians in the Amazon basin and beyond, and their incredible knowledge and understanding of the world around them. Along the way he travels with Tim, throws in the histories of Richard Spruce, a bit off Alfred Russell Wallace, the Inca’s and even a little bit of Peyote.
What this meant was that while reading, I drifted in and out of interest. Just when I got into the life of Richard Schultes, we were back with Wade Davis. Just when you remember what Davis was doing the last time we were with him, we were back with Schultes, or spinning off with a detailed history of whatever it was that Davis was talking about at that point. In complete naivety I came to the book to read about the Amazon and despite thinking I would enjoy the travelogue parts, it is in fact the biography of Schultes that I grew to love, a man with a passion and curiosity for plants that drove through almost any obstacles that nature or man placed in his way which I could only admire more and more throughout the book. Davis also gives detailed history or everything relevant to the narrative. Indeed, the exploits of the rubber barons, particularly Julio Cesar Arana were horrific, and made uncomfortable reading, yet still fascinated me, particularly after all those years of hard work were ended by petty shortsightedness of the US government.
It is the sheer breadth of the book that makes it feel like an encyclopedia while reading. The Latin plant names, and technical botanical terms which at the same time piqued my interest in botany, but not quite enough and so kept me at arms length. The switching between Schultes and Davis would have been easier to keep pace with without the additional history of subjects related to where they were or what they were doing, this all made One River feel like three different books.
Until.
Until I finished. Then it became a great book, filled with seemingly endless information on the Amazon rainforest, and it’s human and flora inhabitants and the adventure for their discovery and their impact on medicine, and in the case of cocaine and rubber, on society and technology across the whole world.
By this time Waterton was familiar with the work of Brodie and Bancroft, and one morning he decided to experiment with their technique. He began by injecting the poison into the shoulder of a female donkey. In ten minutes the creature appeared to be dead. Waterton, being rather accomplished with a blade, having bled himself on at least 136 occasions, made a small incision in the animals windpipe and began to inflate its lungs with a bellows. The donkey revived. When Waterton stopped the flow of air, the creature once again succumbed. Resuming artificial respiration, he nursed the animal until the effects of the poison wore off. After two hours the donkey stood up and walked away. This treatment marked a turning point in the history of medicine.
It wasn’t until towards the end of the book that I thought of the Indiana Jones comparison for Schultes, and I’m pretty sure it’s a comparison he himself would of not appreciated, maintaining as he did in the book that he hadn’t known any adventures. Yet his journeys up and down rivers and through jungles far outstrip giant rolling boulders and alien crystal skulls. Travelling for days to get treatment for Beriberi and malaria, then continuing with his collecting showed an almost stubborn refusal to let these inconveniences to get in the way of the job in hand. He believed and appreciated the knowledge and expertise of the native indians, making great efforts to understand them and their worldview, which was sometimes completely alien to what he knew and understood himself.
These traits influenced both Davis and Tim Plowman, who spent his life researching Coca, before the narcotic derivative took over the known world and forever tarnished a nutritional stimulant used by people for thousands of years before it became a good time drug for everyone. He actually managed to trace it’s evolution throughout the different locations in South America.
Coca had been found to contain such impressive amounts of vitamins and minerals that Duke compared it to the average nutritional contents of fifty foods regularly consumed in Latin America. Coca ranked higher than the average in calories, protein, carbohydrate, and fiber. It was also higher in calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, and riboflavin, so much so that one hundred grams of the leaves, the typical daily consumption of a coquero in the Andes, more than satisfied the Recommended Dietary Allowance for these nutrients as well as vitamin E. The amount of calcium in the leaves was extraordinary, more than had ever been reported for any edible plant.
So in the end I struggled, I forced myself to finish it before the new year, but it was worth it all. Now that I’ve finished I will delve back in to various bits, particularly one of the final chapters which contained interesting history on the Inca’s. If you like travel writing, you’ll like bits of this, if you like history, you like some of this, if you like biography, you’ll like most of this, If you like botany, you’ll love this. If you like to read about a real life adventurer (Don’t call him Indy) then you’ll definitely love this.
(blog review here)
January 10, 2020
Este libro es una carta de amor a Colombia, una carta de más de 600 páginas escrita por un extranjero para cualquier persona que habite el territorio colombiano y que de alguna u otra forma ame este país; una carta sobre algunas de las grandes bellezas que están escondidas entre la selva y a las que a veces es difícil llegar, pero que están y estarán allí por muchos años para deleitarnos y ser contempladas con asombro.
Lo cierto es que, si bien ese es el mensaje a grandes rasgos que deja el libro, no es el único que hay entre sus páginas. Este es un libro que narra a dos tiempos las vivencias de dos expedicionarios por parajes diferentes del mundo en dos épocas muy diferentes entre si, pero igual de importantes y trascendentales para sus expedicionarios: Las travesías de Richard Evans Schultes estudiando plantas alucinógenas como el peyote y el yagé, y las más modernas hechas por Wade Davis años después; por parajes muy similares a los recorridos por su profesor en búsqueda del origen de la Ayahuasca y de la Coca silvestre.
En 1941 y durante doce años Schultes estuvo en el amazonas explorando ríos que no estaban en ningún mapa, recolectando plantas desconocidas para la ciencia y estudiando la sabiduría y las costumbres de docenas de tribus indígenas de Ecuador, Perú, Brasil, Bolivia, Venezuela y, particularmente, Colombia. De vuelta en Estados Unidos, 30 años más tarde, su estudiante Wade Davis junto con su compañero Tim Plowman volvieron a estos parajes a seguir sus pasos con el ánimo de investigar los secretos botánicos de la coca, la vilipendiada fuente de la cocaína, la planta sagrada conocida por los incas como “la hoja divina de la inmortalidad”.
Este libro es justo eso, una reconstrucción de dos viajes tan distintos en el tiempo y en los objetivos, pero tan similares en la forma de hacerlos, de vivirlos y en las cosas tan bellas que ambos personajes descubrieron. Poco a poco, a lo largo de las páginas Wade va dejando de ser el protagonista de las historias que ha escuchado el río para darle protagonismo y contarnos todo lo vivido por su profesor tiempo atrás a veces en los mismos sitios y otras veces en lugares muy lejanos a donde este se encontró alguna vez en medio de la selva colombiana.
Es un homenaje también a la prematura muerte del compañero de viaje de Wade, un homenaje a Tim Plowman; un biólogo increíble que pese a su temprana muerte llegó a ser considerado una autoridad mundial en en la etnobotánica de la coca y en la taxonomía del gran género Erythroxylum —género al que pertenece la coca—, publicó más de 60 artículos científicos y fue editor de varias revistas especializadas. ¿Qué hubiera hecho este hombre con otro par de décadas de vida?
Un libro que no es solo de interés para biólogos, especialmente botánicos o áreas afines; sino un libro que es de vital interés para cualquier colombiano, o en general, para cualquier ser humano que quiera aproximarse a los secretos naturales y humanos que todavía esconde el amazonas y que podrían extinguirse por siempre tal vez en unas décadas.
Algo que me ha gustado mucho del libro es que en el aparece la versión anterior al jardín Botánico de Medellín, un lugar por muchos años olvidado y cerrado con unos muros altos y blancos que parecía más una cárcel para plantas que cualquier otra cosa. Hoy solo los más viejitos podemos recordar ese lugar ya hasta con cierto humor donde fuimos en alguna mañana del colegio y desde donde muchos años antes partió Wade en un viaje que lo llevaría a descubrir una parte del país que hoy todavía muchos ignoran.
Wade combina de una manera increíblemente perfecta el relato de los dos viajes con apuntes sobre la historia de cierto lugar en particular y datos de la biología de alguna especie en concreto, algo que es muy útil para entender desde múltiples puntos de vista el libro; un agregado que lo convierte en una obra completamente transversal a muchos conocimientos.
El Río es el homenaje de Wade a sus dos grandes compañeros, es un canto a la vida prodigiosa y multiforme de los grandes bosques pluviales de Sudamérica.
Lo cierto es que, si bien ese es el mensaje a grandes rasgos que deja el libro, no es el único que hay entre sus páginas. Este es un libro que narra a dos tiempos las vivencias de dos expedicionarios por parajes diferentes del mundo en dos épocas muy diferentes entre si, pero igual de importantes y trascendentales para sus expedicionarios: Las travesías de Richard Evans Schultes estudiando plantas alucinógenas como el peyote y el yagé, y las más modernas hechas por Wade Davis años después; por parajes muy similares a los recorridos por su profesor en búsqueda del origen de la Ayahuasca y de la Coca silvestre.
En 1941 y durante doce años Schultes estuvo en el amazonas explorando ríos que no estaban en ningún mapa, recolectando plantas desconocidas para la ciencia y estudiando la sabiduría y las costumbres de docenas de tribus indígenas de Ecuador, Perú, Brasil, Bolivia, Venezuela y, particularmente, Colombia. De vuelta en Estados Unidos, 30 años más tarde, su estudiante Wade Davis junto con su compañero Tim Plowman volvieron a estos parajes a seguir sus pasos con el ánimo de investigar los secretos botánicos de la coca, la vilipendiada fuente de la cocaína, la planta sagrada conocida por los incas como “la hoja divina de la inmortalidad”.
Este libro es justo eso, una reconstrucción de dos viajes tan distintos en el tiempo y en los objetivos, pero tan similares en la forma de hacerlos, de vivirlos y en las cosas tan bellas que ambos personajes descubrieron. Poco a poco, a lo largo de las páginas Wade va dejando de ser el protagonista de las historias que ha escuchado el río para darle protagonismo y contarnos todo lo vivido por su profesor tiempo atrás a veces en los mismos sitios y otras veces en lugares muy lejanos a donde este se encontró alguna vez en medio de la selva colombiana.
Es un homenaje también a la prematura muerte del compañero de viaje de Wade, un homenaje a Tim Plowman; un biólogo increíble que pese a su temprana muerte llegó a ser considerado una autoridad mundial en en la etnobotánica de la coca y en la taxonomía del gran género Erythroxylum —género al que pertenece la coca—, publicó más de 60 artículos científicos y fue editor de varias revistas especializadas. ¿Qué hubiera hecho este hombre con otro par de décadas de vida?
Un libro que no es solo de interés para biólogos, especialmente botánicos o áreas afines; sino un libro que es de vital interés para cualquier colombiano, o en general, para cualquier ser humano que quiera aproximarse a los secretos naturales y humanos que todavía esconde el amazonas y que podrían extinguirse por siempre tal vez en unas décadas.
Algo que me ha gustado mucho del libro es que en el aparece la versión anterior al jardín Botánico de Medellín, un lugar por muchos años olvidado y cerrado con unos muros altos y blancos que parecía más una cárcel para plantas que cualquier otra cosa. Hoy solo los más viejitos podemos recordar ese lugar ya hasta con cierto humor donde fuimos en alguna mañana del colegio y desde donde muchos años antes partió Wade en un viaje que lo llevaría a descubrir una parte del país que hoy todavía muchos ignoran.
Wade combina de una manera increíblemente perfecta el relato de los dos viajes con apuntes sobre la historia de cierto lugar en particular y datos de la biología de alguna especie en concreto, algo que es muy útil para entender desde múltiples puntos de vista el libro; un agregado que lo convierte en una obra completamente transversal a muchos conocimientos.
El Río es el homenaje de Wade a sus dos grandes compañeros, es un canto a la vida prodigiosa y multiforme de los grandes bosques pluviales de Sudamérica.
February 23, 2019
I read this book for my studies, writing an essay about the movie "Embrace of the serpent", which has one of the main characters based off Richard Evans Schultes and which's main plot is to find a medical and hallucinogenic plant in the Vaupes region. If you compare the movie and book you do actually find so many parallels and quotes that it becomes apparent this was very read by the producers themselves.
After having finished the essay but not yet the book I quickly renewed it in the library to be able to finish it.
The book is a well-balanced mix of science, anthropology, history, funny anecdotes, biography and travel journal. It jumps through time to tell the story of both the author himself and his professor Richard Evans Schultes (and their colleagues)
You don't need any knowledge of botany or Latin America or anything to enjoy this book, just a general interest to learn .
The only reason I give this book only 4 stars is that it kinda makes me want to travel to the Americas and try natural hallucinogenics myself which is a very very bad idea I blame on the beautiful, vivid descriptions.
After having finished the essay but not yet the book I quickly renewed it in the library to be able to finish it.
The book is a well-balanced mix of science, anthropology, history, funny anecdotes, biography and travel journal. It jumps through time to tell the story of both the author himself and his professor Richard Evans Schultes (and their colleagues)
You don't need any knowledge of botany or Latin America or anything to enjoy this book, just a general interest to learn .
The only reason I give this book only 4 stars is that it kinda makes me want to travel to the Americas and try natural hallucinogenics myself which is a very very bad idea I blame on the beautiful, vivid descriptions.
June 13, 2016
Este libro me lo recomendaron mucho desde hace diez años y finalmente lo leí. Es un 'must' para biólogos, farmacéuticos y antropólogos. Es el libro en que se basa la película 'El abrazo de la serpiente', la cual aun no he visto, pero ahora sí tengo curiosidad por ver. Narra la forma como Richard Evans Schultes (quien posteriormente sería director del Museo botánico de Harvard) se adentra en la selva amazónica y con muchísima humildad aprende sobre el uso que los indígenas le dan a las plantas, pudiendo posteriormente identificar y aislar sus principios activos. Increíble como por años y sin comodidad alguna este señor fue capaz de navegar por los ríos suramericanos expuesto a enfermedades tropicales y la escasez de alimentos para llegar a lugares donde otros no llegaron. Increíble como el conocimiento que tienen los nativos y que a veces desde la academia es despreciado llevó a tantos descubrimientos.
December 15, 2016
It was a little slow, but good story
September 3, 2023
Real life indiana jones but with mind altering substances. This book is ace.
August 25, 2016
Tremendo: aventura, conocimiento ancestral, política, botánica, poesía. Promete un río y abarca todo un universo.
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-Hay una tribu en el Uruguay, del grupo guaraní, cuya palabra para el alma era "el sol que está adentro"...Perdonar era la misma palabra que olvidar. No tenían escritura, y cuando vieron por primera vez el papel, lo llamaron la piel de Dios, sólo porque uno podía enviar mensajes con él.
-Prosiguió hablando de la fotosíntesis en la forma en que un artista describiría los colores:...Se refirió a la savia como la sangre verde de las plantas, y explicó que la clorofila es estructuralmente casi igual a la sangre humana...Para él los nombres en latín eran como poemas japoneses o versos. Los recordaba sin hacer esfuerzo, encantando por su origen. -Cuando uno pronuncia los nombres de las plantas, pronuncia los nombres de los dioses.
-Los kogis le contaron una historia sobre el nacimiento del mundo: al principio todo era agua y oscuridad. No había tierra, ni sol o luna, ni nada vivo. El agua era la Mama Grande. Era la mente dentro de la naturaleza, la fuente de todas las posibilidades. Era la vida naciendo, el vacío, el pensamiento puro...En el principio comenzó a hilar sus pensamientos. En su forma de serpiente colocó un huevo en el vacío, y el huevo se convirtió en el universo.
-...los desplazamientos eran en parte una metáfora, que al recorrer la tierra tejían una gran manta sobre la Mama Grande, siendo cada jornada como un hilo, y convirtiéndose así cada migración estacional en una oración por el bienestar del pueblo y de toda la tierra. Los kogis mismos se refieren a sus ires y venires como tejidos.
-Para el kogi, los pensamientos de una persona son como hebras. El acto de tejer es el acto de pensar. La tela que tejen y la ropa que llevan se convierten en sus pensamientos...En la sencilla acción de hacer la tela, el tejedor se alinea con todas las fuerzas del universo.
-Tanto para los ikas como para los kogis, la tierra está viva. Cada sonido en la montaña es elemento de un lenguaje del espíritu, cada objeto, un símbolo de otras posibilidades. Un templo se convierte en una montaña; una cueva, en un vientre; una totuma con agua, en reflejo del mar. El mar es la memoria de la Mama Grande.
-...el chamanismo es uno de los empeños espirituales más antiguos, nacido en los albores de la conciencia humana. Para nuestros antepasados paleolíticos, la muerte fue el primer maestro, el primer dolor, el borde más allá del cual terminaba la vida tal como se conocía y empezaba el asombro. La religión fue fomentada por el misterio, pero éste nació de la cacería, de la necesidad de los seres humanos de racionalizar el hecho de que para vivir tenían que matar lo que más reverenciaban, los animales que les daban la vida. Ricos y complejos rituales y mitos nacieron como expresión del pacto entre los animales y los humanos, un medio de contener dentro de límites manejables el miedo y la violencia de la caza y de mantener un equilibrio esencial entre la conciencia del hombre y los irracionales impulsos del mundo natural.
-...uno se adaptaba a la perfección a la vida de la selva: los monos aulladores en lo alto, los incesantes ríos de hormigas, los encuentros casuales con serpientes y jaguares, los inquietantes gritos de águilas reales; las mariposas iridiscentes, con su belleza incitante, y las ranas bronceadas y púrpuras, venenosas al tacto. En mi diario anoté los sencillos lujos de la vida en la selva: "El humo de una hoguera que espanta a los insectos, una noche sin lluvia, un rancho de paja en medio del bosque, un banano casi podrido encontrado en una hondonada, sembrados de yuca abandonados, un animal recién cazado y lo que sea: agua lo bastante profunda para bañarse, la insinuación de una cagada sólida, una noche de sueño continuo, un limonero encontrado en el bosque."
-Cuando no sabía nada sobre las plantas, vivía el bosque como una maraña de formas, figuras y colores sin significado o profundidad, bello cuando era visto en su totalidad pero en última instancia incomprensible y exótico. Ahora los elementos del mosaico tenían nombres, los nombres implicaban relaciones y las relaciones estaban preñadas de significados.
-El yagé...es la fuente misma de la sabiduría...el vehículo por medio del cual cada persona adquiere poder y experiencia directa de lo divino....la gente del yagé les inspira a todos una imagen, una canción y una visión...nadie comparte el mismo motivo o la misma canción. Hay tantas melodías sagradas como personas, y al morir una persona su canción desaparece.
-Erosionados por el tiempo y transformados por la lluvia, estos cerros aislados se levantan como centinelas solitarios, serenos y como de otro mundo, sobre un río que se tuerce como una serpiente...le parecían a Schultes ecos del principio de los tiempos, levantándose como gigantescas esculturas abandonadas en el primer taller de Dios. Fue -pensó, a partir de estos experimentos tentativos cuando Dios se dio a la tarea de construir el mundo.
-En la época de más lluvias, los animales de la selva vivían en las copas de los árboles, las mulas pastaban metidas en el agua hasta las ancas, y los peces mordisqueaban las ubres de las vacas.
-"Masquemos coca, compadre"...El intercambio de hojas es un gesto social, un acto de cortesía y una manera de reconocer el contacto entre los hombres, por tenue o transitorio que sea. El soplo es un acto de reciprocidad espiritual, pues al ofrecer las hojas a la tierra, el individio asegura que con el tiempo la energía de las hojas cerrará un círculo completo, con la misma certeza con que la lluvia que cae sobre un campo renace inevitablemente en forma de nube.
-Para los runakunas, las gentes de los Andes, la materia es fluida. Los huesos no son muerte sino vida cristalizada, y por ello una potente fuente de energía, como la piedra con la carga eléctrica de un rayo o de la planta a la que da vida el sol. El agua es vapor, un efluvio de muerte y de misterio, pero en su estado más puro es hielo: la forma de la nieve sobre las faldas de las montañas, los glaciares, que eran el más alto y sagrado destino de los peregrinos. Cuando el cantero inca ponía las manos en la piedra, no sentía la fría materia; sentía la vida, el poder y resonancia de la tierra en su interior...Para la gente de los Andes la tierra está viva, y cada rugosidad del paisaje, cada afloración y colina, cada montaña y todo río tienen un nombre y están imbuidos de significados rituales...Una montaña es un antepasado, un ser protector, y cuantos viven a la sombra de un alto pico comparten su benevolencia o su ira. Los ríos son venas abiertas de la tierra; la Vía Láctea, su contraparte en el firmamento. Los arco iris son serpientes de dos cabezas que surgen de fuentes hundidas en la tierra y que luego se ocultan en ella. Las estrellas fugaces son centellas de plata...El rayo es luz concentrada en su forma más pura.
-...las plantas son como la gente, cada cual con su propio genio y su propia historia. Los cactos duermen de noche. Los hongos crecen cuando oyen los trenes, los líquenes sólo en presencia de la voz humana. Las flores solitarias en los campos abiertos no simpatizan con las demás. Las delicadas gencianas pliegan sus pétalos de vergüenza. Las plantas de los setos que se demoran en florecer simplemente son perezosas, maldispuestas a trabajar por la comunidad. Todas las plantas tienen nombres y son útiles.
-...había comparado el yagé con un río, con una jornada que lo lleva a uno sobre la tierra y bajo el agua, hasta los confines del mundo, donde viven los amos de los animales y los rayos esperan su nacimiento. Beber yagé...es volver al útero y renacer. Es romper la placenta de la percepción normal y entrar en reinos donde se puede conocer la muerte y es posible rastrear la vida, mediante la sensación, hasta la fuente primigenia de la existencia. Cuando los chamanes hablan de enfrentarse al jaguar, es porque realmente lo hacen.
-Escucha -dijo Tim.
Había un zumbido bajo en la tierra, profundo, inconfundible. Un impulso, resonante y completo.
-Es el sonido de la vida -dijo-. No hablo en metáforas. Me refiero al sonido real de la vida. Al tono de la energía dentro de nuestras células.
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-Hay una tribu en el Uruguay, del grupo guaraní, cuya palabra para el alma era "el sol que está adentro"...Perdonar era la misma palabra que olvidar. No tenían escritura, y cuando vieron por primera vez el papel, lo llamaron la piel de Dios, sólo porque uno podía enviar mensajes con él.
-Prosiguió hablando de la fotosíntesis en la forma en que un artista describiría los colores:...Se refirió a la savia como la sangre verde de las plantas, y explicó que la clorofila es estructuralmente casi igual a la sangre humana...Para él los nombres en latín eran como poemas japoneses o versos. Los recordaba sin hacer esfuerzo, encantando por su origen. -Cuando uno pronuncia los nombres de las plantas, pronuncia los nombres de los dioses.
-Los kogis le contaron una historia sobre el nacimiento del mundo: al principio todo era agua y oscuridad. No había tierra, ni sol o luna, ni nada vivo. El agua era la Mama Grande. Era la mente dentro de la naturaleza, la fuente de todas las posibilidades. Era la vida naciendo, el vacío, el pensamiento puro...En el principio comenzó a hilar sus pensamientos. En su forma de serpiente colocó un huevo en el vacío, y el huevo se convirtió en el universo.
-...los desplazamientos eran en parte una metáfora, que al recorrer la tierra tejían una gran manta sobre la Mama Grande, siendo cada jornada como un hilo, y convirtiéndose así cada migración estacional en una oración por el bienestar del pueblo y de toda la tierra. Los kogis mismos se refieren a sus ires y venires como tejidos.
-Para el kogi, los pensamientos de una persona son como hebras. El acto de tejer es el acto de pensar. La tela que tejen y la ropa que llevan se convierten en sus pensamientos...En la sencilla acción de hacer la tela, el tejedor se alinea con todas las fuerzas del universo.
-Tanto para los ikas como para los kogis, la tierra está viva. Cada sonido en la montaña es elemento de un lenguaje del espíritu, cada objeto, un símbolo de otras posibilidades. Un templo se convierte en una montaña; una cueva, en un vientre; una totuma con agua, en reflejo del mar. El mar es la memoria de la Mama Grande.
-...el chamanismo es uno de los empeños espirituales más antiguos, nacido en los albores de la conciencia humana. Para nuestros antepasados paleolíticos, la muerte fue el primer maestro, el primer dolor, el borde más allá del cual terminaba la vida tal como se conocía y empezaba el asombro. La religión fue fomentada por el misterio, pero éste nació de la cacería, de la necesidad de los seres humanos de racionalizar el hecho de que para vivir tenían que matar lo que más reverenciaban, los animales que les daban la vida. Ricos y complejos rituales y mitos nacieron como expresión del pacto entre los animales y los humanos, un medio de contener dentro de límites manejables el miedo y la violencia de la caza y de mantener un equilibrio esencial entre la conciencia del hombre y los irracionales impulsos del mundo natural.
-...uno se adaptaba a la perfección a la vida de la selva: los monos aulladores en lo alto, los incesantes ríos de hormigas, los encuentros casuales con serpientes y jaguares, los inquietantes gritos de águilas reales; las mariposas iridiscentes, con su belleza incitante, y las ranas bronceadas y púrpuras, venenosas al tacto. En mi diario anoté los sencillos lujos de la vida en la selva: "El humo de una hoguera que espanta a los insectos, una noche sin lluvia, un rancho de paja en medio del bosque, un banano casi podrido encontrado en una hondonada, sembrados de yuca abandonados, un animal recién cazado y lo que sea: agua lo bastante profunda para bañarse, la insinuación de una cagada sólida, una noche de sueño continuo, un limonero encontrado en el bosque."
-Cuando no sabía nada sobre las plantas, vivía el bosque como una maraña de formas, figuras y colores sin significado o profundidad, bello cuando era visto en su totalidad pero en última instancia incomprensible y exótico. Ahora los elementos del mosaico tenían nombres, los nombres implicaban relaciones y las relaciones estaban preñadas de significados.
-El yagé...es la fuente misma de la sabiduría...el vehículo por medio del cual cada persona adquiere poder y experiencia directa de lo divino....la gente del yagé les inspira a todos una imagen, una canción y una visión...nadie comparte el mismo motivo o la misma canción. Hay tantas melodías sagradas como personas, y al morir una persona su canción desaparece.
-Erosionados por el tiempo y transformados por la lluvia, estos cerros aislados se levantan como centinelas solitarios, serenos y como de otro mundo, sobre un río que se tuerce como una serpiente...le parecían a Schultes ecos del principio de los tiempos, levantándose como gigantescas esculturas abandonadas en el primer taller de Dios. Fue -pensó, a partir de estos experimentos tentativos cuando Dios se dio a la tarea de construir el mundo.
-En la época de más lluvias, los animales de la selva vivían en las copas de los árboles, las mulas pastaban metidas en el agua hasta las ancas, y los peces mordisqueaban las ubres de las vacas.
-"Masquemos coca, compadre"...El intercambio de hojas es un gesto social, un acto de cortesía y una manera de reconocer el contacto entre los hombres, por tenue o transitorio que sea. El soplo es un acto de reciprocidad espiritual, pues al ofrecer las hojas a la tierra, el individio asegura que con el tiempo la energía de las hojas cerrará un círculo completo, con la misma certeza con que la lluvia que cae sobre un campo renace inevitablemente en forma de nube.
-Para los runakunas, las gentes de los Andes, la materia es fluida. Los huesos no son muerte sino vida cristalizada, y por ello una potente fuente de energía, como la piedra con la carga eléctrica de un rayo o de la planta a la que da vida el sol. El agua es vapor, un efluvio de muerte y de misterio, pero en su estado más puro es hielo: la forma de la nieve sobre las faldas de las montañas, los glaciares, que eran el más alto y sagrado destino de los peregrinos. Cuando el cantero inca ponía las manos en la piedra, no sentía la fría materia; sentía la vida, el poder y resonancia de la tierra en su interior...Para la gente de los Andes la tierra está viva, y cada rugosidad del paisaje, cada afloración y colina, cada montaña y todo río tienen un nombre y están imbuidos de significados rituales...Una montaña es un antepasado, un ser protector, y cuantos viven a la sombra de un alto pico comparten su benevolencia o su ira. Los ríos son venas abiertas de la tierra; la Vía Láctea, su contraparte en el firmamento. Los arco iris son serpientes de dos cabezas que surgen de fuentes hundidas en la tierra y que luego se ocultan en ella. Las estrellas fugaces son centellas de plata...El rayo es luz concentrada en su forma más pura.
-...las plantas son como la gente, cada cual con su propio genio y su propia historia. Los cactos duermen de noche. Los hongos crecen cuando oyen los trenes, los líquenes sólo en presencia de la voz humana. Las flores solitarias en los campos abiertos no simpatizan con las demás. Las delicadas gencianas pliegan sus pétalos de vergüenza. Las plantas de los setos que se demoran en florecer simplemente son perezosas, maldispuestas a trabajar por la comunidad. Todas las plantas tienen nombres y son útiles.
-...había comparado el yagé con un río, con una jornada que lo lleva a uno sobre la tierra y bajo el agua, hasta los confines del mundo, donde viven los amos de los animales y los rayos esperan su nacimiento. Beber yagé...es volver al útero y renacer. Es romper la placenta de la percepción normal y entrar en reinos donde se puede conocer la muerte y es posible rastrear la vida, mediante la sensación, hasta la fuente primigenia de la existencia. Cuando los chamanes hablan de enfrentarse al jaguar, es porque realmente lo hacen.
-Escucha -dijo Tim.
Había un zumbido bajo en la tierra, profundo, inconfundible. Un impulso, resonante y completo.
-Es el sonido de la vida -dijo-. No hablo en metáforas. Me refiero al sonido real de la vida. Al tono de la energía dentro de nuestras células.
May 2, 2023
What a remarkable book! Like its subjects, biological explorers Schultes and Plowman, it wanders all over the upper Amazon basin, with special attention to Colombia, as well as up and down through time and species. For me, with a little experience of Shell and the upper Pastaza in Amazonian Ecuador, the wonders of the selva were faithfully conveyed . . . the major difference being that I was there in the 1990s for a couple of weeks under comfortable circumstances (for the selva) but these guys, and the author, Wade Davis, subjected themselves to an excruciating range of hardships, canoe overturnings, disabling sickness, hallucinatory drugs, bureaucratic dysfunction, and transit misadventures, for YEARS at a time. For anyone looking for an amazing armchair adventure, this is an immersive reading experience.
What was seen by these men, was the discovery and subsequent "acculturation" of the last indigenous tribes on the planet, who were living in a primal, pristine rainforest on the verge of resource extraction to benefit "civilization." In one of Davis's many fascinating divergences, we see the Inca in his glory, and the development of a civilization equally elaborate to our own, only fair and equitable -- and its decimation (not a strong enough word) by the Spanish bigot army and church. (Elsewhere, we learn how tapioca and manioc are made.) Davis quotes an informant, "Nothing thrills the Waorani [one of the last 'discovered' tribes] more than killing game and cutting down big trees. It's what so many people don't understand who haven't lived in the forest. You don't have to conserve what you don't have the power to destroy. Harming the forest is an impossible concept for them. The fact that they use every part of an animal has nothing to do with the conservation ethic, and everything to do with hunger. . . In a world of such abundance, the word 'scarcity' has no meaning. It's what makes them most vulnerable. It's the same with their culture. When you've lived in complete isolation, how can you understand what it means to lose a culture? It's not until it is almost gone and when people become educated that they realize what's being lost. By then the attractions of the new way are overpowering, and the only people who want the old ways are the ones who never lived it." [pg 294]
Here's a too-late cautionary tale if ever there was one, and fascinating to see the same mistakes and loses happening again and again.
What was seen by these men, was the discovery and subsequent "acculturation" of the last indigenous tribes on the planet, who were living in a primal, pristine rainforest on the verge of resource extraction to benefit "civilization." In one of Davis's many fascinating divergences, we see the Inca in his glory, and the development of a civilization equally elaborate to our own, only fair and equitable -- and its decimation (not a strong enough word) by the Spanish bigot army and church. (Elsewhere, we learn how tapioca and manioc are made.) Davis quotes an informant, "Nothing thrills the Waorani [one of the last 'discovered' tribes] more than killing game and cutting down big trees. It's what so many people don't understand who haven't lived in the forest. You don't have to conserve what you don't have the power to destroy. Harming the forest is an impossible concept for them. The fact that they use every part of an animal has nothing to do with the conservation ethic, and everything to do with hunger. . . In a world of such abundance, the word 'scarcity' has no meaning. It's what makes them most vulnerable. It's the same with their culture. When you've lived in complete isolation, how can you understand what it means to lose a culture? It's not until it is almost gone and when people become educated that they realize what's being lost. By then the attractions of the new way are overpowering, and the only people who want the old ways are the ones who never lived it." [pg 294]
Here's a too-late cautionary tale if ever there was one, and fascinating to see the same mistakes and loses happening again and again.
February 10, 2021
This is a book about the ethnobotanist Richard Schultes and his extraordinary explorations in Columbia and the upper regions of the Amazon in the 1940s and 50s. Schultes, essentially created the discipline--which connects the life of indigenous people to their environment. The author was one of his students at Harvard and he intertwined his own travels in South America with an account of his mentor. The book covers everything from the life of the isolated Amazonian tribes, to Schultes and Davis experience with hallucinogenic compounds used by the indigenous peoples. It also includes a fascinating account of Schultes' work to develop a new source of rubber during World War II. But at the heart of the book is the extraordinary explorations of Schultes and Davis. The writing is compelling - and it needs to be given the subject mater and the length of the book.
December 16, 2022
I would have rated it higher had it been shorter. The accounts of travel in the Amazon, the details about plants, and the descriptions of native Amazonian and Inca culture were fascinating. But in the last 100 pages I had grown tired of the repetitive journeys and just wanted Schultes to go home to Boston and stop getting malaria for the sixtieth time. Also the descriptions of the horrors perpetrated on the natives were too detailed and agonizing. This book was at times agonizingly sad, agonizingly tedious. But then there were good parts were the author philosophized about plants and culture.
October 14, 2021
To summarize this book in one sentence: an apology for the use of hallucinogens. That explains the abnormally high ratings which it has received.
For me the most enjoyable sections of this book were those that focused on Richard Spruce and Richard E. Schultes, in which the author stops raving about drug-use and tells us something useful.
For me the most enjoyable sections of this book were those that focused on Richard Spruce and Richard E. Schultes, in which the author stops raving about drug-use and tells us something useful.
December 20, 2025
Don’t think there’s many books like this - completely upended my expectations. Read for 3 things:
1. Botany, lots of it
2. Accounts of gruelling travels, hardship and death in the Amazon back when it was still truly wild and unknown
3. The use of pretty much every drug that originates from plants, with a special focus on ayahuasca and cocaine.
10/10
1. Botany, lots of it
2. Accounts of gruelling travels, hardship and death in the Amazon back when it was still truly wild and unknown
3. The use of pretty much every drug that originates from plants, with a special focus on ayahuasca and cocaine.
10/10
June 2, 2024
Gifted to me on Saint Jordi by a very special person, This book captures me with its ethnobotanist take on the history of botany in the amazon. It inspires me to look for opportunities to explore and serves as a reminder to listen to what all cultures have to say. It doesn’t shy away from the depravity of human nature or the gross overconsumption perpetuated by western ideology and industry. Wade Davis is an inspiration and a clearly thoughtful person, I hope I become as insightful as him one day.
March 11, 2025
*
El río es un relato fascinante sobre la riqueza cultural y biológica de la Amazonía, y en particular sobre el papel fundamental de las plantas sagradas en la cosmovisión indígena, con el Apaporis como epicentro de esta tradición.
El Apaporis también se presenta como un espacio de sincretismo cultural y resistencia indígena, donde las comunidades han logrado preservar su cosmovisión a pesar de la presión del mundo moderno. Davis resalta cómo la experiencia de Schultes en esta región no solo fue científica, sino también espiritual y filosófica, transformando su visión sobre la relación entre humanidad, naturaleza y conocimiento.
El río es un relato fascinante sobre la riqueza cultural y biológica de la Amazonía, y en particular sobre el papel fundamental de las plantas sagradas en la cosmovisión indígena, con el Apaporis como epicentro de esta tradición.
El Apaporis también se presenta como un espacio de sincretismo cultural y resistencia indígena, donde las comunidades han logrado preservar su cosmovisión a pesar de la presión del mundo moderno. Davis resalta cómo la experiencia de Schultes en esta región no solo fue científica, sino también espiritual y filosófica, transformando su visión sobre la relación entre humanidad, naturaleza y conocimiento.
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