A Forest in the Clouds

by John Fowler

  Our bivouac made a serene setting where the forest opened into a green glade. Around the edges of this clearing, Nani’s favored foods, gallium, thistle celery, and nettle, grew abundantly. When I stopped to peel the backpack from my shoulders, Nani crawled to the ground and sat on a comfortable moss-covered log. Because Dian had wanted Nani’s hair and body to lose the camp’s pervasive smell of wood smoke, I didn’t have a supply of firewood here. Dian believed the wild gorillas would associate a smoke smell with poachers, who typically had campfires in the woods. The rising smoke from a fire would also draw attention to our location from all around. Instead, camp staffers had provided me with a small kerosene stove to heat water for coffee or tea stored in a metal canister.

  Nani crawled across the fallen log, examining the lantern and mouthing a sleeping bag. When she pulled at the tent’s support cords, I pig-grunted, “eh . . . eh . . . eh . . .” She well knew what this gorilla word meant and stopped her exploration, peering up at me with her innocent dark brown eyes. To divert her attention, I carried her to a stand of thistles and gallium. With Nani feeding one minute and sitting on my lap the next, we made our way around the little glade under a cold gray sky. By the time Toni arrived in late afternoon, we knew every inch of the half-acre clearing that was our camp.

  At 5:00 P.M., I left Toni watching the baby, and walked back up the trail toward Stuart’s bivouac. I realized that the distance that had taken me nearly an hour with Nani foraging along the way was only a ten-minute walk alone. When I arrived, Stuart offered me an enameled bowl of steaming beans and rice. It was the best indulgence I could have imagined since my last bit of cooked beans had been finished off by the giant rat in my cabin.

  “Dian also sent us some Primus,” Stuart said, grinning as he pulled two of the large half-liter beer bottles out of a box—a sure sign of our leader’s approval for our efforts. It was clear by now that when we did good, we got beer. As the minutes of my precious dinner hour ticked away, Stuart and I chatted about our arrangements for the next few days. Always upbeat and talkative, Stuart also talked a lot about his girlfriend and how he was looking forward to her coming to camp to begin a research project of her own.

  “She’s going to do a project on gorilla anatomy and locomotion,” he mentioned. “That’s kind of her area.” He had spoken of her often, but seemed vague about when she might actually arrive.

  I enjoyed the beer and conversation, but as it grew dark within the hour, I headed back to my campsite. Glancing back, I thought Stuart looked more out of place than me, camping completely alone in the forest. Stuart was a people person, and the social skills and congeniality that helped him win over Dian at Karisoke seemed moot in his isolation here.

  Back at my campsite, Toni and I readied ourselves for the first night of our assignment. Dian had provided the tent for Nani and me but I decided that if the baby gorilla was supposed to readjust to the outdoors, we should sleep outside. Besides, Nani would urinate whenever she wanted to, and I could envision the pee seeping across the tent’s canvas bottom only to be blotted up by me and my sleeping bag.

  As the light faded, heavy mists rolled down Visoke and wafted into our tiny meadow, enveloping us in a bank of cold cloud. Knowing it was as likely to rain as not, I unfurled a blue plastic tarp, compliments of the Japanese film team, and stretched its corners to tree branches in opposing directions. When he saw what I was doing, Toni jumped up from the entrance of his tent and helped me secure the bits of twine to the grommets of my makeshift shelter. In the remaining light I unrolled my sleeping bag on a plush salad of weeds beneath the hagenia.

  In the darkness, Toni held the flashlight while I lit the wick of our lantern. When it glowed to life at the touch of a match, I hung it on a tree branch out of Nani’s curious reach. The lantern illuminated our immediate area, but the night loomed black, cold, and mysterious beyond the short radius of its glow.

  I had looked forward to Toni’s company as an opportunity to practice my Swahili, but soon learned that this youth, who spoke Kinyarwanda, still knew less Swahili than me. When I tried a few words on him, he nodded saying “eh . . .” the Rwandan version of “yeah,” or “huh?” depending on intonation. I was never quite sure if he understood or misunderstood any word I was saying.

  To get Nani back on a normal gorilla day cycle, of dusk to dawn, I decided to put out the lantern and get to bed. Toni crawled into his tent, and I took off my shoes and slid, clothes and all, into my sleeping bag. Nani, keeping her hand on me during the process, snuggled close. Instinctively, she knew what time it was and pulled a couple of nearby senecio stalks over, tucking the leafy ends under her to make a proper gorilla nest. Settled in and satisfied, my bed buddy made a contented belch vocalization, hmwaaahh . . . obviously happy to know we’d be sharing a nest, her breath suffused with the pungent smell of digesting herbs.

  Out from under the edge of the tarp, I could see the night sky clearing. Like stage curtains, the clouds parted and in the high thin air, brilliant stars sparkled in countless numbers, like the whole of the sky was the Milky Way. The monolithic silhouette of Mikeno was visible against their luminosity. Northern stars were always bright back home in the mountains of Virginia, but never had I seen so many. I was far from home.

  Cold air drifted down from Visoke’s slopes, but I felt the warmth of my little gorilla. Warmth flowed from her body through my sleeping bag, through my clothing to my skin. And with it, wetness . . . Gorilla pee! I bounced and wiggled like a caterpillar trapped in a cocoon, in my effort to roll away from my little bedmate. But she was on me, clinging. My sudden actions startled Nani, making her draw even closer for security while she emptied her bladder. I maneuvered off the wetness, and she maneuvered too, staying close. My T-shirt was soaked, but I’m sure she wondered what the heck was wrong with me.

  I shifted onto my side so at least her rump wouldn’t be on top of me. Realizing she wasn’t going to tolerate any distance from me, I pulled more vegetation under her nest and my sleeping bag until we were both buoyed at least six inches above the ground, for drainage. With this arrangement, urine-soaked, and tired, I finally fell asleep.

  At first, I didn’t know why I had woken. Curious about the time, I tried to read my watch face, but the little glow-in-the-dark dots were never bright enough. Nani was sleeping soundly with slow rhythmic breathing, and I found myself listening for other sounds. Did I just hear something? I shifted to listen. The silence was disrupted by the rustling and cracking of something moving through the brush on the edges of our little meadow. I froze. There it was again, only louder. Footsteps? Nani lifted her head, awake now. As I reached without success for the flashlight, Toni shifted in his tent. The strange sounds, like heavy boots, closed in on all sides, and I wriggled free of my sleeping bag. Nani grasped at my legs as I bolted upright. It sounded like an army shuffling their feet slowly through the brush. We were surrounded!

  Toni popped his head out of the tent, clicking on the flashlight as he stood to join me, but we couldn’t see a thing in the weak beam. As we strained to see, the sounds grew louder, enveloping us in the darkness. Nani climbed into my arms with a silent wide stare. The noise continued, accompanied by a loud crunching and munching. Then I heard the familiar snort, whoosh—buffaloes!

  Mbogo, I said to Toni.

  Eh . . . mbogo, Toni echoed with affirmation. Nani clambered onto my shoulders. Our idyllic little meadow by day was obviously a favored buffalo feeding ground by night. Nani’s hands clasped around my forehead from her perch on my shoulders made me realize that we would not be getting much sleep in the middle of this herd.

  “Hey!” I shouted, in an effort to scare our visitors. I was answered with indignant snorts from the darkness and a tighter grip from Nani around my face. As hard as I tried, I could not see a single animal, black on black as they were, and the dim flashlight was of little use. Shifting the baby to my back, I grabbed two metal coffee cups, and clanged them together. The snorts grew louder, and the heavy hoof sounds moved ar
ound and past us as if the giant bovines didn’t know which way to go. I had only succeeded in irritating them. From the sounds, I could tell this was a big herd. Toni moved in closer to me while Nani nearly choked me with her arms around my neck. I could see in the flashlight beam, her eyes stared as widely into the darkness as Toni’s and mine. I found myself wishing I had one of Dian’s pistols, just to make some noise.

  Balancing Nani, I bent over to pick up a large plastic trash bag on the ground next to my sleeping bag, Nani’s restless, shifting weight at my shoulders almost pulled me to the ground. I cupped my hands around a portion of the bag and blew into it to make a crude plastic balloon of sorts. Twisting the end closed, I torqued the plastic bag progressively tighter until, with a sharp slap from my left hand, it ruptured in a loud bang. At that, the unwitting denizens of the darkness lurched in unison before crashing around and past us where we huddled amid their throng. These great bovines were barely visible in the shadows that matched their black hides, but I could smell their steaming breath as they huffed and snorted their displeasure at us. Toni grabbed another plastic bag and we repeated our little explosions, over and over, until the buffalo stampede we had started abated into the forest.

  Although completely exhausted, Toni and I sat up with Nani for a while afterward before retiring again. With our language barrier, Toni and I made no conversation in the darkness except to say “mbogo” every few minutes and laugh, as we struggled to get back to sleep. In the absurdness of our circumstances, we had at least one word in common.

  The morning came cold and damp, with a light misting rain. We were in the clouds. After coffee and toast at Stuart’s camp, I went back to my own. Dian had instructed Toni to return to Karisoke to do chores during part of the day, and Nani followed him to the edge of the clearing before scampering back to me when he disappeared into the forest toward home camp. In this new place away from Karisoke, Nani reached up for me repeatedly when I set her down to forage. Intermittently, when the drizzle turned to downpour, we took refuge under the tarp, huddling together like two gorillas in the rain. When Toni returned at noon, the rain had stopped, and I trekked back to the midway camp for lunch. Stuart, still out with Group 4, wasn’t there, but I knew to look for my lunch, a cheese sandwich and bananas, in a metal locker in the tent. After I ate, I didn’t go immediately back to my bivouac, but lingered around Stuart’s empty camp to enjoy a full hour of solitude. As much as I cared for Nani, it was a relief to be temporarily free from the grasp of a clinging toddler. The sound of water drew me to a gushing stream that had become swollen in the day’s rain. It flowed in a series of pretty waterfalls through a sequence of terraced pools. By the stream, I sat on a large moss-covered rock until it was time to return to my duties.

  When I got back to our bivouac, Nani scrambled from Toni’s feet over to me, and hoisted herself up my leg into my arms. The rain had ended, and surprisingly the clouds parted allowing us a view of Mount Mikeno shining in the brilliant afternoon sun.

  In 1926, the famed naturalist Carl Akeley died beneath Mount Mikeno while on a collecting expedition for the new Africa Hall of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. He was buried according to his wishes at the edge of the serene Kabara meadow, just under this mountain. Akeley had described the spot as one of the loveliest places on earth. From the same meadow, in 1959, American scientist George Schaller launched his landmark study of mountain gorillas. His research culminated in the 431-page comprehensive treatise, The Mountain Gorilla, and a popularized account of his experiences titled The Year of the Gorilla. When I thought of Schaller’s work, I realized how scant Dian’s productivity seemed in her thirteen years compared to Schaller’s single year of studying gorillas. It was obvious Dian had achieved greater fame despite George Schaller already having produced the definitive books on mountain gorillas.

  In January 1967, like Schaller, Dian also launched her career as a primatologist from the meadow at Mikeno’s base. I would later learn that after six months, she was removed from the Kabara meadow by Zairean soldiers. For two weeks, she was abused and molested before fleeing into Uganda. (Some of her closest friends reported that Dian had confided that she was raped repeatedly during that detainment.) What she lacked in scientific productivity, she made up for in determined tenacity. Five weeks later, she climbed back into the Virungas on the Rwandan side and founded the Karisoke Research Center. I couldn’t help but think that her desire for isolation, even after her horrible experiences in Zaire, outweighed her willingness to return to society.

  As I mused at Mikeno’s history to the sound of Nani’s contented munching, I noticed a wispy cloud was always perched above its summit like a white beret. I was transfixed by the way the cloud was always moving eastward, yet never leaving the volcano. Only after a long period of pondering did I realize that Mikeno was making the cloud cap it wore. The warm sunlight accelerated the evaporation on its black peak, and as the vapor rose, it quickly condensed in the cold air at its 14,553-foot summit. As the mist moved away, it dispersed and dissipated into thin air like the steam from a whistling teapot on an enormous scale.

  To pass the time, I tried to converse in Swahili again with Toni, pointing at items and trying to recall the Swahili words for tree, rock, cup, gorilla . . . Toni would just cock his head and knit his brow saying, “Eh?” I’d laugh. He’d laugh. We’d both laugh. I wondered what his sense of duty was in an occupation as rare to him as mine was to me, far above the rest of Rwanda, Zaire, and the worlds beyond. He had a steadfast understanding of his role in assisting me with the bivouac camp and taking care of the baby. But what did he think of all this gorilla business and camping with a baby ape and a white guy in the cloud forest? I was curious to ask him, but our language barrier stood between us.

  As the afternoon drew on, the low-angled sun cast a bright golden light through the rain-washed air. Having brought my camera, I decided to take some photos in the rare lighting. Noticing Toni’s apparent interest in what I was doing, I showed him how to aim and focus and click the shutter. I posed with Nani in my lap and Toni took a picture of the two of us as a memento of what were to be our last few days together.

  After dinner with Stuart, I rejoined Toni and Nani, settling in for our second night in the bush. With Nani huddled next to me on a fresh bed of greens, I listened and waited for the buffaloes to return to our meadow, but they didn’t. Apparently last night was as unsettling to them as it was to us.

  Late in the night, I woke to the sound of pelting rain on the tarp suspended above me. It was sagging on one corner and water was dripping onto the foot of my sleeping bag. With my feet, I drew my bedding inward out of the rain and sat up to pull my backpack farther under the tarp. I checked the contents to make sure that my camera and spare clothes were still dry. Nani shifted in from the drips and snuggled closer to my shoulder.

  Suddenly the tarp’s right hand corner near my feet snapped loose with a splash. Water, which had pooled on the tarp, gushed into my backpack. Springing upright, I grabbed the pack in an effort to save the contents. Shit! Shit! Shit! All I could do was to invert it and dump the water out as quickly as possible, hoping my camera stayed dry on the inside. To make matters worse, our makeshift roof was reduced by half and water seeped across the ground into my sleeping bag. What was once a fluffy grass bed became a muddy mess beneath us, before the downpour abated just before dawn.

  In the growing light, I examined the contents of my backpack, really feeling the stress of the bivouac experience. My spare clothes were soaked, but my greatest disappointment was lifting my treasured Pentax camera, and watching the water pour out of it. It had cost me $250, a fortune at the time. Looking through the viewfinder, I tried to get the light meter to respond. The needle didn’t bounce to life and my camera’s shutter wouldn’t click. It, and my last pictures of Nani, were ruined.

  Three days of the bivouac camp with my simian dependent was taking its toll on me. For the last seventy-two hours, the two of us had been in near complete
physical contact with my baby gorilla clinging to my legs, waist, and neck during the day, and wanting to be picked up after every few minutes of feeding on her own. With the long hike ahead, I reasoned that if she was going to be thrust into a new group of wild gorillas, she could afford to be a little more independent.

  This third day of this round-the-clock parenting made me feel the strains of having a baby gorilla attached to me night and day. That, combined with a growing sleep deficit, had begun to put cracks in my emotional state. During the night, she had shifted and wriggled and urinated on me whenever she felt like it. I was experiencing the kind of battle fatigue that only a parent understands after spending too much time with a needy child; Toni’s mealtime relief was no longer enough. I was weary from not being able to take a few steps without having what was beginning to feel like a furry ball and chain around my leg. Despite my affection for her, I reasoned that Nani needed to develop some self-sufficiency; no silverback, or other wild group member, was going to indulge her like I had been doing. And so, while Nani was feeding at my feet, I walked away from her.

  As usual, she grabbed for my leg, but this time I sidestepped her grasp. Perplexed, she stared blankly up at me, as if sizing up this sudden change in my behavior. I walked farther away. She pursued. I trotted farther ahead, repeatedly just out of reach. I wanted her to just stop and feed again on her own, but Nani scrambled to keep up, grabbing at me. I kept one step ahead of her. In the middle of this crazy game of tag, my little orphan finally had enough. She let out a long scream I hadn’t heard before. The sound welled from a deep emotional place that I had not yet witnessed in her, sounding as if she was being eaten alive by some unseen carnivore within. Her hands formed small fists, and slammed the ground angrily at her sides while she wailed. Screaming again, she spun around in a blind rampage of bewildered frustration. She was having a tantrum . . . a meltdown!