Boiling River

by Andrés Ruzo

  About fifteen minutes pass before Maestro calls me. He and Brunswick’s figures appear as silhouettes through the heavy steam. They are about twenty yards downstream, standing in single file on their newly cleared trail.

  The thin trail is on the knife-edge where the steep slope falls abruptly into the river below. One foot in front of the other, I very carefully make my way to them. Where the trail is not muddy it is covered by freshly cut vegetation, which proves to be slippery. Occasional breezes surround me with steam, limiting my vision.

  I focus on walking. Sweat pours down my face. Each breath is slow and deep, each step calculated and firm.

  Finally I reach Maestro and Brunswick. Only then do I notice the churning, splashing sound. Through the thick, humid air and suffocating heat, I see a large patch of water less than a foot below us, churning violently.

  “This is La Bomba,” Maestro says. (The Pump.) “Be extremely careful here.”

  His warning is unnecessary. The heat is intense—almost unbearable—and it feels significantly hotter than any other spot I’ve been to on the river. In spite of the sweltering day, thick clouds of vapor rise from the river, forcing us to squint to protect our eyes from the searing hot air. I have never seen so much thermal water with such a powerful flow rate—and certainly not from such a precarious position. One slip would mean instant third-degree burns, and I’d have no easy way out of the current. Bubbles erupt across the water’s surface and a plume of vapor rises thickly above. There is no room for a misstep, nor the distraction of a needless thought. Instinct fills me with a clear-headedness dominated by a singular focus: every breath, every step, every thought is intentional and calculated. There is no room for error.

  I know I don’t have much time here, but I urgently want to understand this bizarre system. One by one, I begin adding up the facts before me: the density of the white vapor in spite of hot air temperatures, the intensity of the bursting bubbles, the almost unbearable heat. Through squinted eyes, I scan the scene beyond the violently bubbling patch of water. I notice that the river’s surface breaks in many places as if raindrops were falling on it—but there is no rain, only bubbles from below. My eyes follow faults, linear cracks in rock, down the cliff on the opposite side of the river and into the water below. The bubbles were coming from the faults! Faults often serve as earth’s “arteries,” superhighways for water flowing through the earth. This is exactly what is happening here—the river is being heated by fault-fed hot springs.

  I am in awe. Wasn’t this supposed to be a legend? An exaggeration?

  In disbelief, I turn to the bubbling water. I can’t be certain if the odorless, colorless gas is just water vapor or something more exotic. I’m devising how I can get a sample, and wishing I had brought my thermometer. I need hard data to confirm what I’m seeing. Is the river really boiling?

  A voice plays in my head: Andrés, if you were a scared conquistador lost in the jungle, you wouldn’t be running around with a thermometer. And you know exactly what you would call this. The uncertainty fades, and I let myself savor the moment, relishing every breath of painfully hot air.

  For a long time, I had secretly hoped the Boiling River would live up to its name, and in this moment of discovery it has—qualitatively at least. I still need to quantitatively confirm the temperature measurements, but for now I stand mesmerized by La Bomba’s churning, bubbling waters, thrilled and relieved in equal measure.

  I could stay looking at the river for hours, but Maestro and Brunswick politely express their eagerness to escape the suffocating heat. Single file, we slowly, carefully retrace the knife-edge trail back to the Sacred Waters. Back on the secure stone bank, I profusely thank Maestro for bringing me here. “But there is one thing I don’t understand,” I press. “If this part of the river is so special, why were the paths so overgrown?”

  Maestro smiles like a teacher whose student has asked the right question. “We conceal to protect,” he explains. “This river is sacred. In churches, the smoke from incense and candles takes the faithful’s prayers up to God—here, it is the river’s vapor that carries the prayers of the animals, plants, rocks, and all creation. It is a natural church.

  “Long ago, in the time of the grandfathers, almost no one came here. People were afraid of the river’s spirits and only the most powerful curanderos would come.

  “The grandfathers had a deep respect for this river. But times change. The Great Civilization has brought its progress to the jungle, and now only a few old people even remember its legitimate name: Shanay-timpishka.” (Boiled by the heat of the sun.) “It is tempting to fall under the spell of the modern. It almost called to me, but the river called me with more force.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Walking through the jungle, I fell into a hunter’s trap and was shot. The hospital doctors said I would never walk again. I still have the scars.” He points to his legs and feet, and I understand why Maestro always wears socks or long pants that cover his lower legs.

  “But you walk perfectly,” I marvel. “How did you heal?”

  “Sandra,” he says with a smile. “She was my nurse at the hospital, and she told me, ‘If you are such a great shaman, why don’t you heal yourself?’ She called me to be better than myself. She was right.

  “With some help from friends and crutches, I left the hospital and came to this place, remembering the stories the grandfathers once told of the spirits of the jungle and the powerful medicines. The Came Renaco gave me its medicine, and together with the vapor of the river, my bones and muscles began to heal. They said I would never walk again—but I proved that the ancient medicines still have their value. The Great Civilization too often underestimates the power of the plant, and even our youth forget. This is why we founded Mayantuyacu—so that the ancient study of the plants is not lost.”

  That evening I sit alone under the Came Renaco, watching the river surge past.

  “Boiled by the heat of the sun,” I whisper aloud, thinking of the Amazonians who long ago gave the river this name. I’m not the first to wonder why the river boils.

  To the ancient Amazonians, the river being sun-boiled was the best hypothesis. Now their descendants think it is volcanic. So far, my data suggest a powerful hydrothermal system. Maybe one day, my “advanced” scientific understanding of the river will seem as limited an explanation as the sun boiling it into existence.

  A dark thought crosses my mind: I still haven’t ruled out the oilfield accident hypothesis. Oral traditions are not considered accurate scientific documentation. I need to find the Moran study—with luck the river is documented, and I’ll finally know if it existed before development.

  The thought is gut-wrenching. This place and its people have become important to me. I feel that it is a special place—but will the data tell the same story?

  Running my hand across my bare arms and legs, I notice no new bug bites. Maybe I just can’t tell the new bites from the old—or perhaps some chemical in Maestro’s perfume works as a natural repellent. There must be a scientific explanation. But I can’t escape the fact that something is different: the ceremony seems to have worked.

  I look back to the river, trying to understand this limbo in which I find myself—a place where science and spirituality appear to coexist in harmony.

  The rest of the month passes quickly. On the eve of our departure, I seek out Maestro to say good-bye and find him in his hammock, smoking a mapacho. I pull up a plastic stool next to him and open my computer to show him the graph of the river’s temperatures along its flow path.

  “Here are the temperatures we measured,” I explain. “We made it as far upriver as we could, but Luis did not want to go all the way to the source. He said there are spirits that appear to you in the form of a family member before taking you away.”

  “Shapishicus,” Maestro says. “They can be nasty. Better that you didn’t go.” I smile, wondering how my doctoral committee will take this explanation.

  “A
s you can see in the graph,” I continue, “the river starts off cold, then heats up, cools, heats up again, cools a little, then heats up to its maximum temperature, before slowly cooling along its path before crashing into the Pachitea. Unfortunately we couldn’t measure the entire river—the jungle was too thick. But I’ll come back for that. For now, these data show multiple injection zones, where hot water pours out of fault zones, boosting the river’s temperature and volume. My hope is that by comparing these data with the rock and water analyses, I’ll be able to chemically identify individual aquifers the fault zones tap into. There is much more work to do.”

  Maestro studies the graph and points to the temperature peaks. “I have never seen the Yacumama, Sumiruna’s Pool, and the Sacred Waters like this before,” he says. I realize that the sites that are scientifically significant for me independently hold deep spiritual meaning for Maestro.

  He smiles approvingly. “This is good and important work. Thank you.” I’m euphoric.

  “One more thing,” I say, reaching into my backpack. “I found this in the jungle with Luis.” I show him a pair of oyster fossils that have been naturally cemented together into a heart shape.

  “An encanto,” Maestro says. “I’ve never seen one like this.” He contemplates it, then says softly, “The jungle has given you her heart. Take good care of it.”

  The bubbling Sacred Waters. Faults—fractures in the earth—serve as “arteries” that allow geothermal waters to flow to the surface and create the Boiling River.

  12

  The Smoking Gun

  “Disturbing on first observation . . .”

  R. G. Greene, a colleague of Robert B. Moran and Douglas Fyfe, on encountering the Boiling River in the early 1930s.

  Moran Papers. 1936.

  It’s February 2013, and I’m at the SMU Geothermal Lab in Texas, analyzing the Boiling River samples in a cold, windowless lab. In the six months since I last left the Amazon, I’ve found my mind regularly drifting back to the river and its jungle. Maestro said that the jungle had “given me her heart”—and it’s clear to me that I had left her a piece of mine.

  The Boiling River is not a legend—but it does seem out of a dream. Its hot waters flow for about four miles, getting more than six feet deep in places, and up to eighty feet wide in others. The river boasts large thermal pools, scalding rapids, steaming waterfalls, and boiling hot springs—and all this, in a non-volcanic geothermal system, over four hundred miles from the nearest active volcanic center.

  But a threat still looms like a nightmare—could the sacred river be an oilfield accident? After all, how could such a large geothermal feature go undocumented and “unnoticed” in such a well-studied, well-visited area? Why had this large, culturally significant, thermal river never been properly identified? Though Maestro and other older members of the community insist that the river has existed “since before the time of the grandfathers,” there is no definitive proof. Finding the Moran and Fyfe report is more important than ever now. It’s the only document that can answer whether or not the Boiling River existed prior to oilfield development.

  I walk over to my lab computer and type “Moran and Fyfe” into the search engine for what seems like the millionth time. Over the years, I had unsuccessfully sent various combinations of related keywords into the virtual void. I pause, waiting for the queries to load. Unbelievably, this time there is a hit. I lean in close and read the title: “Guide to the Robert B. and William R. Moran Papers.”

  In the flurry of a few clicks, I’m taken into the Online Archive of California, where I discover the archival breakdown of a collection of original reports, writings, photographs, and other documents belonging to Robert B. Moran—collectively referred to as the “Moran Papers.”

  After two years of searching, here it is: a lead on the actual Moran report. Neither the report nor any documents from the Moran Papers are visible online. But the website indicates that the Moran Papers are kept in the closed archives of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Special Collections Library. Then I hit a dead end: the archives can only be accessed with special legal permission from the Moran Trust.

  I call the library. A quiet “hello” from the librarian on the other end of the line triggers a passionate account of my search for the Moran Papers and the huge relief that the search might finally be over. I pause to breathe. There is an awkward silence. I quickly realize the librarian was ill-prepared for the tenor of this conversation when he picked up the phone. Suddenly embarrassed, I will my voice to calm.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Andrés Ruzo, I am a doctoral student from Southern Methodist University, and I am calling regarding obtaining access to the Moran Trust Archives for purposes relating to my geophysical research in Peru.”

  There is a pause, then, “For the Moran Papers, you will need to contact the trust’s lawyer.”

  Ten long days pass before I hear from the lawyer, but at last I get my answer. Soon, I’m on a plane to Santa Barbara.

  “This is the viewing room.” A kind, soft-spoken librarian leads me to a large, rectangular room in the UCSB Special Collections Library. “No food or drink is allowed here, and the documents cannot leave this room. Find a table and I’ll bring the cart with the Moran Papers archival boxes to you.” She leaves me alone in the room, but not before adding, “Oh, and please remember—this is a quiet room.”

  As a geoscientist, “archival work” brings to mind poorly lit, windowless rooms, generally in buildings that could easily pass for abandoned warehouses, full of long, heavy trays filled with rock samples. Rock libraries are rarely the cleanest places; you often leave covered in dust and badly in need of a shower. By contrast, my archival work here feels luxurious. The viewing room is immaculately neat. The long fluorescent lights overhead illuminate subdued neutral colors that seem to enhance the silence and stillness. Ten tables, each with a single chair, fill the room—a reminder that work is to be done alone, and quietly.

  A series of identical, ancient card catalogs, six feet tall, stretch across the entire length of the back wall. Hundreds of regularly spaced drawer knobs and labels reinforce the room’s sense of order. Atop the card catalog, taciturn busts watch over the room. Nearby, a ceramic, life-size Jack Russell terrier stares into an old gramophone. But the room’s most distinctive features are the large windows that cover the remaining walls. They inspire the feeling of being in a fishbowl, where the archive-viewer is viewed, in turn, by watchful librarians from almost every angle.

  I choose my table just as the librarian returns with a multilevel metal cart. The old cart bears a number of gray archival boxes, each with a red ribbon securing its lid. I’m told I can only enter the room with one box at a time. I gingerly lift the first of the numbered boxes in the series, keenly aware of the librarian’s scrutinizing gaze as I walk into the viewing room. I comb through the box with great care, meticulously checking every document, before rewrapping it with its red ribbon, and carrying it back out of the room to exchange it for another. This goes on for hours. Most of the contents are personal items: postcards, opera playbills, or other nongeologic information.

  As I lift the lid off Box 89, a label instantly catches my attention: “Agua Caliente, Peru, Geologic Reports.” My breath catches. It’s like seeing a ghost. Gently, I lift the folder out of the box and open slowly to unveil a stack of old, yellowed papers. Here and there, the typewritten text is annotated in a handwritten cursive of a time gone by. As I look through the creased pages a wave of uncontrollable joy washes over me—I found it. I’m holding not only the 1933 study I’ve sought for so long, but a whole trove of unpublished notes and reports that puts the study in its historical context—invaluable insight into the earliest stages of exploration and development on the Agua Caliente Dome. The answer to whether or not the river existed before oilfield development is hidden in these pages.

  It’s midmorning, and through my fishbowl, I see UCSB students walking the halls and diligently working in the l
ibrary. Amazing, I think to myself. I’ve spent years looking for this information, and flown halfway across the country just to be in this library. But to these students this library is just as much a part of their everyday as SMU is to me, or the river is to Mayantuyacu. Then a thought takes hold: what discoveries lie hidden in the white noise of my own life, lost in my own everyday landscape? The fishbowl’s large wall clock chides me back to the pages in my hand. The Moran Papers tell a fascinating story of the unrestrained early days of Amazonian oil exploration.

  In the 1920s and 1930s, the Peruvian Amazon was in the crosshairs of international oil development. Standard Oil of New Jersey and the Rockefeller Foundation were sending teams of geologists into the jungle, and secrecy was paramount.

  It was during this time that geologist Robert B. Moran, came across a large, oval-shaped landform while doing an aerial survey for a railroad construction project—a geologic dome, rising hundreds of feet above the flat, low jungle.

  Moran quickly identified the dome as an ideal place to find oil and swiftly organized a team to investigate the area between 1930 and 1932.

  Though there are no original field notes in the archives, I find numerous field reports, compiled long after their team’s time in the Amazon was over. The reports tell a perplexing story. Moran and his team had found the river. However, inconsistencies within their reports confuse me—some match my own observations of the river, but others do not. In those that don’t, it seems as if the river is being purposely underplayed. I’m well aware that their focus was finding oil, not studying the Boiling River—but still, something doesn’t seem right. Fortunately an internal report by geologist R. G. Greene presents a compelling explanation for the inconsistencies. Greene was a third-party contractor called in to check the work of Moran and his team. This is still a common practice in the oil industry—getting a third-party expert to confirm a company’s geologic work, often for the sake of potential investors (who regularly have no technical geologic knowledge whatsoever).