Slow reading The Cloud Forest on Christmas Eve

My slow reading, Dec. 18-May 6, of Peter Matthiessen's The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness continues with Matthiessen's brief entry on Christmas Eve. I loved this quote and being transported from the Northwest to the Amazon today.

Christmas Eve in the Amazon? Maybe someday.

"The larger trees have aerial gardens of red-flowered epiphytes, Bromelia, and strange silver cylinders—these are hornets' nests—hanging like Christmas ornaments; everywhere, fastened leechlike to the trunks, are the dark masses of white ants' nests. The lowest branches of the trees must be fifty feet from the ground; in the evening light, its pale marble columns mysterious in the greens, the forest is truly beautiful; it is difficult to conceive of a lovelier forest in the world. Tonight is Christmas Eve." — Peter Matthiessen, The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness

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Shel Graves' Sensorium

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