Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [6]
Order did not exist here the way it does in other countries. Sidewalks all over town blinked in and out of existence like a demonstration of quantum theory, ending abruptly, sometimes starting again a few blocks later, but certainly following no predictable pattern. Houses of various and dissonant architectural styles leaned on one another. Glass medical centers clung to the gabled offices of massage therapists, which cast their shadows on brown adobe liquor stores. Street vendors hawked batteries, scissors, pirated DVDs, cell phones, peanuts, coconuts, electric sanders, and leather-covered steering wheels, in case drivers wanted to pimp their ride mid-commute. And then the Brazilians—tanned, lean people in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops everywhere, all on their way somewhere. (I suppose, given the national motto, they were on their path to progress.) The hum of conversation mixed with the cries of the vendors, the rumble of idling motorcycles, the drone of airplanes and sightseeing helicopters, and the whines and sighs of trucks braking to stops and moving on again. Blasts of exhaust, sweat, grime. and dust joined the humidity to create a suffocating cloud. In the shade of the omnipresent buses, manic taxis, scooters, policemen, pushcarts, and bicycle delivery riders for “Bob’s Burgers” competed for space on the street. One messenger company that dispatched riders to sites around the city was called, in English, “Boy Delivery.”
While I struggled with a radically different version of social order, Darwin confronted in Brazil a radically different version of the natural world. Darwin hailed from a country that, after thousands of years of cultured habitation, had essentially become one big garden. A big cultivated garden in a cold climate. A two-month boat ride and he found himself sweating and marveling at an intensity of color he had never encountered outdoors before. Vegetation grew uncontrollably, in a way that seemed a direct challenge to a stiff-upper-lip-loving Englishman’s sense of the universe, and his reaction to virgin forest pretty much mirrored my German roommate’s reaction to the girls on the beach: “Delight is however a weak term for such transports of pleasure” and “I can only add raptures to the former raptures.” He concluded his diary entry from his second day in Brazil with “Full of enjoyment one fervently desires to live in retirement in this new & grander world.”
In the 1830s, Rio de Janeiro amounted to a whole lot of neat monolithic rock formations with jungle covering everything in between. Twelve million people later, the city forced its will on what little natural spaces remained, presenting its own profusion of growth—an urban mirror to the bursting vegetation of Darwin’s day. Now tall, clean skyscrapers rose above all else, lifeless towers of cement and steel punctuating the swarming, sweltering, steamy mess below, competing for attention with forest-clad mountain peaks in the background. It was the pure state of nature, still—just the “nasty, brutish and short” Hobbesian version.
After my forest-bound bus had lurched through that tumult for more than an hour, crammed streets gave way to a shadier, quieter neighborhood. The road climbed a winding hill, with thick tropical foliage hanging over the road. Gated driveways led to fantastic houses overlooking the skyscrapers and curving white sand beaches below. (“On the road, the scenery was very beautiful,” Darwin declared from the same spot, “especially the distant view of Rio.”) At the top of the hill, in a tranquil neighborhood called Alto da Boa Vista, another long gated driveway curled into the Tijuca National Park