Move quickly, move quietly
Our trip up the Kampar River began ominously enough.
“When we stop, don’t get out of the car,” said Indra, our translator. “Remain inside.”
We left our Pekanbaru hotel at 5:30 am, driving an hour and a half to this riverside spot, where we were now parked. The early morning sun began to emerge in the east over the tops of far off trees. We waited, behind tinted SUV windows, for the speedboats to arrive. Within minutes two slim, wooden vessels – little more than rowboats with steering wheels and outboard motors – coasted-up quietly to the river’s edge. We quickly jumped out from the vehicles, descended down an embankment, and got in the delicate boats. Our destination: the forest concessions four hours up river, where international paper conglomerates have been clearing the carbon-rich peat lands of the Kampar Peninsula. As quickly as we had gotten into the boats, we were off – heavy blue tarps draped overhead and dropped down over the sides in order to conceal our identities.
I wondered, though, if these precautions – the peering-in-the-rearview-mirror feeling of our drive and, now, the heavy tarps – were unwarranted paranoia on the part of my NGO handlers or were necessary security measures as we headed into an area of intense land dispute.
I had forgotten about this, when, nearly eight hours later, four of us disembarked from our boat and prepared to enter a forest concession, where logging activities were currently underway. ’Nando, our guide and a local forest defender, was nervous. So nervous, in fact, that it took several hours, the promise of legal assistance should he be arrested, and the explicit approval from the village elder to convince him that the risks were worth taking. And I could tell he still wasn’t fully convinced. Move quickly and quietly were his instructions during our approach.
The third person in our group – a young researcher with an international NGO – was also nervous. Several foreign journalists had been detained and deported within the past several months when they were found by company security snooping around this area trying to see what we were now venturing to find. A late 2009 Greenpeace action here had further escalated tensions. The area is “too hot”; the area is “very tense” were the oft-repeated descriptions as we negotiated whether or not to go.
Our morning security measures may not have been warranted, but ’Nando’s anxiety and the recent history of arrests made this trek into the woods a high stakes affair – maybe not for me, the British journalist that was also with us, or the NGOer, but most definitely for ’Nando.
The Brit was recovering from ankle surgery that repaired a ruptured tendon – tennis is a high stakes affair as well. Thus, even before leaving the boat, we had already broken one of ’Nando’s codes. At least we could remain quiet.
We strode – three of strode, actually, the Brit limped – through a plot of rubber trees, small coconut shell bowls at their base captured the milky white puss that oozed from cuts in the trunks. Further along the foliage became thick and bright green. More jungle-like, I thought. I was last in line, behind the Brit, thinking foolishly that somehow I could push the pace of the gimp. ’Nando and the NGOer raced ahead; the Brit and I fell behind. We tumbled over felled trees – the remnants from an earlier clear-cut – and pushed through dense brush, mostly heavy ferns and bushes. The sun, now descending in the west, was large and burning. Sweat poured down my face and bled through my shirt. I hate the feeling of cotton sticking to my skin.
After twenty minutes of stumbling, climbing, and occasionally walking, we emerged from the thick brush and saw before us a line of stacked logs – hundreds of them, large and cut into uniform lengths – that stretched the length of several football fields to the right. The ground below us: an undulating surface that was like a stormy sea of muddy earth, broken tree limbs, stumps, and scattered bark. Moving beyond the log stacks, a landscape – unlike anything I have seen other than in pictures – lay before us. I struggled silently to myself to find words that could describe what I was seeing. The western front during World War One. Hiroshima. A Midwestern town after a tornado. None seemed to fit as I tripped and stumbled through the wasteland.
So this is a clear-cut, I thought; how will I describe it?
The sound of chainsaws buzzed from the opposite side of the clear-cut – the opposite side, meaning, a kilometer, maybe more, across the open expanse, where once stood tall rainforest trees. I saw a single, yellow excavator working in the distance. Suddenly, ‘Nando raced toward the edge of the still standing forest and gestured for me to follow. The NGOer was recording a stand-up interview with the Brit. ’Nando heard voices. So did I. On our way in we also heard the sound of a motorboat that wasn’t ours. Were we being followed? Were we moments away from being found?
After several minutes, ’Nando and I returned to the clearing. I thought, if we’re caught, at least I should record what I see. Maybe, somehow, I would be able to keep my footage and my notes. I shot some video, and talked out loud with the others, needing to confirm the dimensions, number of logs, colors, and other characteristics of what lay before us. Nothing we confirmed – at least for me – seemed to capture very well the destruction. We agreed that there were roughly 2000 hectares of cleared forest and that it was a primary forest – that is, consisting of old-grown trees. We agreed that it looked “post-apocalyptic.”
We raced back – ’Nando and the NGOer raced, actually, the Brit limped – more heavily now, and I followed. The Brit and I talked about what we had seen and were told by ‘Nando, via the NGOer, to keep quiet. We had now broken both codes.
We briefly visited the owner of the rubber trees and I fell in the river. Then we got in our boat and returned to the safety of the open waters of the Kampar.
Speeding away, the NGOer and ’Nando looked relieved and the Brit appeared satisfied that he had gotten his story. I stared into the muddy waters of the Kampar River, imagining that, below the rippled brown surface, there was a deep void, a magical reservoir that stored the natural history and local knowledge of these forests, a limitless locker of memory that would remain even if all the trees were gone.
