A heart-warming encounter in the Sumatra jungle
Have you ever noticed that countries each vibrate with a singular energy which, when we visit them, crosses the sensitive membrane of our soul to produce a particular emotion which leaves its mark, like a dominant flavor, on the whole trip and which at the end, is the one which remains imprinted in our memory many years later, when all other memories have been erased by time.
And in the collection of flavors that I keep in one of the cupboards of my mind, there is one, so different from the others, so unique, so unclassifiable, that it is placed on its own shelf, apart from the others, in a small glass jar, waiting patiently for me to come, in my darkest moments, to unscrew the lid to inhale the powerful aroma that emanates from it and to find, for a time, the strength to continue dreaming. This intoxicating flavor, which I could describe as a slight electric tingle on the skin, or as a musical note hanging in the air before the drop, is that of Indonesia and manifests itself as the deep sensation that everything could possibly happen, that in this country more than any other, the ropes which keep our societies firmly anchored in reality, are here a little looser, opening up the possibility of the improbable, of the emergence of the implausible. It is the country where the jungle is still too deep for us to have pierced all its secrets, where the islands are still too numerous for us to have already explored them all, the country where we can still discover at the bottom of a cave a new species of archaic hominin, which we thought impossible; where scientists sometimes find animal species that were thought to be extinct for centuries; a country where the maps still have their gray areas. In a word, Indonesia is perhaps one of the last frontiers. It is in this country that the meeting that I am about to describe to you was possible.
I was at the end of a journey in Sumatra, which had taken me across the north of the island, to explore volcanoes, to disappear for several days on a forgotten island in the middle of an inland sea, to witness the last traces of an almost extinct people. In short, I was vibrating at the frequency of Indonesia and, when that morning I set off with a guide for a walk in the jungle, the conditions were gathered for the possibility of an extraordinary experience. The forest was very calm and slowly awakening in the fresh air of the morning. I was following my guide in silence through the tall, dew-laden leaves that were sticking to my pants. We had already been walking for several hours and the vegetation was becoming denser. The rubber plantations had given way to the primary forest and progress became difficult as we crossed curtains of branches, pushing aside the lianas and stepping over the trunks of trees fallen to the ground, which the forest seemed to have put in the way of our path as if to discourage us from venturing deeper.
After a while, however, when we were no longer far from the heart of the forest, it became more aerial, like a cathedral, with a high roof of leaves, which seemed supported by rows of large trunks which ended at ground level in stars shape long root branches on which I tripped at times, while contemplating, with my nose in the air, the majesty of this immense plant edifice. It was here that my guide decided to stop and signaled me to wait, his finger on his mouth.
At first nothing happened. No movement, no noise other than that of the arteries beating in my head, amplified by the sharpness of my hearing exacerbated by the adrenaline of anticipation. And then suddenly, somewhere up there in the foliage, a rustling first, like the wave of majesty which precedes the royal person before she enters the room. Something was moving, something we couldn't yet see but whose aura, in the calm of the morning, filled the forest just with its presence. Then finally, like a large migratory bird popping out of the cloud layer to descend towards the earth, we saw an orangutan gently emerging from the leaves. With slow and measured movements, it lowered itself to us without hurrying, in a breathtaking lightness for an animal of this size, as if it was floating in the air, then stopped, suspended two meters above us, where we could observe it clearly and see that it was carrying, clinching to its fur, a baby, staying as far away from us as possible. For a moment, we remained in this distant proximity, like very faraway cousins who see each other for the first time on a station platform, hesitating to take the step of their reunion. Then my guide took out of his backpack a bunch of these small bananas that he had taken with him and handed it to the orangutan who, with majestic slowness and without a glance, unfolded her endless arm to delicately grab it, and establish at this very precise moment, this fabulous connecting point between the world of men and her own. A moment of barely a second but which was instantly removed from the earth's clock, to be sent up there, to the museum of sublime moments, where it will be preserved for eternity. Then, without a sound, without an effort, the orangutan and her baby set off again, in a movement imbued with all the nobility of their species, towards their kingdom of leaves, where they disappeared forever.
