Stephen Kirkpatrick and Marlo Carter Kirkpatrick. Lost in the Amazon. W Publishing, 2005.
Lost in the Amazon is a modern true story of—well, you can guess from the title. In some ways it is not as harrowing as earlier jungle expeditions such as the one former President Teddy Roosevelt took in the Amazon Basin. Nevertheless, it is intense. One is very much aware that the man versus nature conflict is truly elemental.
Kirkpatrick was a freelance photographer of forty-one when he undertook this little expedition. He and another American went to the Peruvian Amazon to report on and photograph the wildlife and possibly indigenous cultures there. They flew to the inland town of Iquitos and took a boat to a village. From there they hiked through the rain forest to another village with three native Peruvian helpers and guides.
It turned out that the trail to the second village had probably not been used in a generation. There was no trail. Of course, it does not take long for the jungle to grow over any trail. One of the interesting observations about the story of the Lost City of Z was that there truly was a city, but once its inhabitants were decimated by European diseases, it took less than a generation for the city to be swallowed up again by the rain forest.
We read about all kinds of obstacles. Diseases, check. Insects, check. Bat droppings while sleeping, check. Foul water, check. Jaguars, check. Anacondas, check. Fer-de-lances, check. This is dangerous territory. People have to know what they are doing.
Still, probably the feature that added the most misery was the feature that gives the rain forest its name, namely, rain. There were two season there. One season it rains every day. The other season it rains constantly. The men were never dry. Even the native villages were subsistence operations at best.
Kirkpatrick had plans. None of them worked out, except that he and his group did all survive. We are told that God told Kirkpatrick that he would get out, just not the way he planned it. There are swamps to wade through, rivers to cross, balsa rafts, a dugout—all contribute to the adventure. By the end, even the other American, a skeptic at the beginning, is almost ready to admit that their ultimate survival was supernatural.
One clear takeaway from Lost in the Jungle is that, in spite of frustration and impatience with each other from time to time, the men stayed together. No one was ultimately lost. Together they had enough to survive. No, Kirkpatrick’s film and equipment got lost or damaged at various points. He regrets packing more film instead of Cipro. But they made it.
Lest it seem like an unrelenting tale of survival, there were lighter points, too. Villagers were hospitable. There were many beautiful flowers and creatures to observe as well. If there is a hero of the story, it is the native Peruvian guide Ashuco. Although only weighing 120 pounds, he carried more weight than anyone. He knew survival in the jungle including what to eat and how to get drinkable water. Together they make it.
One small critique of the book is the map in the end covers. It apparently is a map of the part of the Amazon and many tributaries where the story takes place, but the only name on the map that was in the story was the aforementioned Iquitos. The other villages and rivers named in the book do not appear on the map. It would have been interesting if the track the travelers took had been noted on the map. Perhaps the point was to show us that the towns, villages, and rivers they visited still do not appear on anyone’s map. There are still regions which, as Thoreau put it, are white on the chart.