Suzy Loeffler

I sit with the old Shipibo Medicine man on the raised, wooden floor of his open- walled home. A palm thatched roof shades us from the tropical sun. He looks beyond me with gray, sightless eyes as he tells stories of how his people once lived. With decrepit fingers he draws pictures in the air of pathways through dense forests where the Shipibo hunted wild pigs and gathered food, herbs, and medicines. His stories describe the Peruvian Amazon that existed before the roads, when the forest averaged about 135 tree species per square mile. The diversity of plants was even greater. Amphibians, insects, and the more elusive mammals lived in a system of coexistence so elaborate it is difficult for me to imagine. The old man explains that the Shipibo were a part of the forest and the river ecosystem for thousands of years, and they needed nothing more.

Laughter and voices reach us from the river, where most of the village has gathered to escape the oppressive midday heat. I notice the tools and seeds abandoned on the outskirts of the women's garden. Next door, a man continues his work in the plant nursery, where tiny seedlings are protected by the shade of a thatched roof. There is a boy in the pond outside the nursery, fishing from a traditional Amazonian dugout canoe. He lunges from the canoe into the brown water with a thin spear. The pond where he practices, the nursery, and the garden are part of the village's Permaculture project.