That Many-Splendored Thing

"The Amazon? For a year?" That was Dad, afraid for my life.

"Can't you use your Ph.D. here in Boston? You really need to settle down, honey. Science won't love you back." And that was Mom, just as fearful for my lovelife.

"Gosh no! Sorry, Mom. Not my kind of jungle."

"But a year?"

Yes, a year. Four glorious seasons mashed into one long, sultry summer. The jungle took me in with a great lungful of air and grew around me as I explored, spewing forth rainbow birds and creeping marvels with frantic variety, like the output of some mad, creative god.

In my second week, I discovered a new variety of frog in the forest canopy—a tiny black fellow, with white markings like a skintight tuxedo. Carlo was there to photograph it and share my thrill.

"It lives its whole life cycle in the treetops," I told him.

"A high-society frog," he called it.

We stayed up late that night, celebrating the find and regaling each other with fantastic tales of treetop amphibian cocktail parties.

Carlo had come with me to split the travel costs and to photograph everything. Each day he hacked away into the woods and came back with something wild and untamed, captured in the bowels of his camera. Birds, bugs, flowers. His camera clicked and whirred like a thing from the jungle itself.

One afternoon Carlo found the most amazing orchid in the crook of a colossal tree. It was pure white, with trailing petals like a bridal gown.

"I knew I'd find something beautiful and special on this trip," he said.

A picture of the orchid and my frog was on the wedding announcement Carlo and I mailed to my folks.

"Mom, Dad, you won't believe what I found in the jungle."