PUT TR LC CL] ae ee cir ty Wat by Lew Freedman U1 pring rain on the Amazon River drenched the six paddlers, the drops like nails pounded by giant hammers. Other times the 90-degree, 90-percent humidity! Peruvian air was an enveloping mist. They glided in 20-foot-long, 250-pound dugout canoes along the muddy waters of the 8,000-square-mile Pacaya- Samiria National Reserve, saturated by the rain, bodies producing water from exertion, and drinking water by the gallon. Water was the environment's defining element. “It was the hottest I've ever been in my life,” Jesse Beightol said. “We were constantly sweating.” ‘Mumity isthe water in the ait. When the humidity is 90 percent, the ar feels very damp, | drenched (érencht)v. soaked or covered with liquid { FeSerVe (rh ZURV) n. land set aside fora special purpose 16 UNIT 1 Why Do We Read? Practice the Skills Setting a Purpose for Reading Would you know how to survive even a short stayin the wilderness? A possible pur- pose for reading this story is to learn how people can five in the kind of place described hereProject Peru Amazon Adventure 2005, organized by the Practice the Skills Wilderness Classroom of Western Springs [Illinois], took four . -- =~ young Americans and two Peruvian guides through the Amazon Basin, a unique region of the world. The five-week journey ending in early May offered a rare glimpse of a flooded forest. Not just to the travelers but to about 12,000 students from 100 schools, the majority in the Chicago region. Though it lived primitively, the group communicated globally through computers, a Web site, and a satellite phone, interacting with students who made suggestions from thousands of miles away. Through a 27-pound, 1-kilowatt generator it carried and a $7,000 Immarsat satellite phone provided by the company tha also defrayed? the $7-a-minute-phone charges, the team communicated three days a week with updates to classrooms. “It worked amazingly,” said Dave Freeman, the trip organizer. Freeman and partner Eric Frost run the outfit from Western Springs and previously completed school-oriented missions paddling the Mississippi River, mushing by dog sled across the Manitoba and traveling through Costa Rica. The Peruvian reserve, where villagers subsist? in the rain forest, seemed intriguing. “We were trying to answer the question of how people, plants, animals and fish survive in the flooded forest,” Freeman said. There was also the question of how the four paddlers, ranging in age from the early 20s to early 30s, would survive the specially permitted visit to the reserve that has 449 bird species, 102 types of mammals, 69 reptiles, 58 amphibians, 256 fish and 1,204 plants. Seeing benign species like anteater was fun, but snakes and poisonous insects were threats. Before she left Santa Cruz, Calif, for the paddle, Jennifer Coveny said she was teased constantly about what might be encountered in the rain forest. Context Clues Using the con- text clues, what would you say benign means? (Remember that you can always pause to look up words in a dictionary) 2. Immarsat gave them a phone and provided payment for (defrayed) ther call '. To subsists olive by being able to get the necessities of life, ' | GBR (00 NEEK) of unke anything ese Paddling Dicey Waters 17_"My friends spent all oftheir time telling me what would Practice the Skills Kill me,” she said. “And then they divided up what they would get of mine.” 9 5 OL A different world. Flights from Chicago to Dallas to Lima, | Setting a Purpose for Peru's capital, deposited the team in Iquitos, its 400,000 Reading Sometimes you'l have population making it the world’s largest city without road a special purpose for reading _ access, Here the group explored the flavorful 1 2Paftof a selection, Look at : the secon heading ‘A cferent market and stocked up on supplies 1 ord Why do you think the section might have this name? What purpose could you set for reading this section? Conducting commerce in Spanish, they passed up a three-toed sloth for a pet but, found a bounty of bananas. “There were bananas everywhere,” said Beightol, a canoeing guide from Ely, Minn. More importantly, the group rented two Visual Vocabulary! canoes carved from downed ponga trees | Thesiohisa, 1 for $1 a day and bought wide-bladed American mammal | Wooden paddles for $3 and a canoe for $60. thatlves in wees “We think we overpaid,” said Adam Hansen, from St. Louis Park, Minn, whose height of 6 feet 6 inches made him more of a curiosity in Peru than the sloth. @ Freeman experimented with local cuisine, grimacing as he downed 3-inch yellow grubs, and the kids chortled* at the pictures sent back. “It tasted like salty pudding,” Freeman said. “The outside was leathery. The inside was gooey, salty mush.” {ono Context Clues What isthe ‘meaning of curiosity here? (One context cue is that Adam is 6 feet 6 inches tall, Another clue is that in Peru a sloth is less of a ‘curiosity than Adam, A four-day ride on a three-story ferry packed with nearly 200 people and pigs, cows, and other goods below decks, dropped the group off in Luganos, a community of about 3,000. Then gear, supplies and canoes were moved six miles by horsedrawn cart to the headwaters of the Samiria River, one of the Amazon tributaries paddled. By the time they were put in with guide Ruben Paiva and reserve volunteer Warren Coquinche Saurio, the explorers were a week out of Chicago. ‘The paddlers were surrounded by lush forest, including palm, cecropia, rubber and kapock trees. Some trees were 4. Cuisines 2 French word that means “cooking” or “fod.” Freeman was making a face (grimacing) vinen he swallowed (downed) the grubs. A grub isthe wormlike form ofa justhatched insect. When the kids chortld, they were laughing quietly with satisfaction 18 UNIT 1 Why Do We Read?underwater. Some had visible high-water marks 15 feet above Practice the Skills the canoes. They were privileged visitors to a region that has om few. Paiva estimated only 10 people annually paddle in the flooded forest and never stay as long as the Americans did. Paiva called the “environment amazingly flooded in the rainy season where you can see a huge variety of fishes, two species of dolphins, including the beautiful pink one,” ina “remote, pristine’ area.” Movies come to life. About four days into the paddle, the team was fascinated by about 30 frolicking pink dolphins, a national treasure considered the most intelligent of dolphin species. They were more perturbed by armed poachers* logging mahogany trees who stared grimly from passing motorboats. No chitchat was exchanged. “I was a little nervous about those guys,” Beightol said. It was like stumbling upon movie bad guys. Influenced by other movies, Beightol attempted a once-in-a-lifetime Tarzan imitation. He climbed a tree, grabbed a vine and soared through the air. “Then the vine broke and I fell into the water,” he said, Fortunately, splashdown did not result in an unplanned rendezvous? with any of the millions of piranha living in the area. The fish were ubiquitous and a regular staple* of local villagers’ diets, but Freeman reported that no one lost, fingers or toes swimming or fishing. Periodically, the group passed small patches of land above water level, just often enough, Hansen said, to stretch legs before they cramped. Floating ranger stations were sought for camping, Like the villages, these stopover buildings were constructed on stilts. Roofs were made of palm thatch and flooring was bark lashed together with vines. Meals were heavy on bananas, fish, beans, rice, lentils, Saltine crackers, canned tuna fish, cookies and candy, all transported in 30-gallon plastic barrels. B Roc Context Clues What does lashed mean? Which word in this sentence helped you figure out its meaning? 5. rstne rs TEN) meas ot sped or pled pure™ 6. Pcchersare people il ost id annals rans when sagt te onto dso. | 1. Rrenervus (WN ay 0) saeco ‘Ubiquitous (yoo BIK wih ts) means “being everywhere atthe same time.” Here, staple means a chie par.” Paddling Dicey Waters 19Sometimes at night the team members took turns spraying Practice the Skills flashlight beams on the dark water. If the light settled on orange orbs, it was revealing the eyes of a black caiman? Some were 9 feet long, and occasionally the paddlers checked! them out by hand. More than a week into their 12 days on the Samiria, the paddlers were discovered by potentially deadly insects. Spiders and tarantulas flocked to Hansen. One day he had his picture taken with a monstrous spider apparently welded to the side of his canoe. Another time Hansen awoke to find one spider in a shoe, another spider on his clothes and a tarantula prepared to hitch a ride on his backpack. ‘The torment of her friends aside, if Coveny heard Paiva’s speech of caution back in the United States, she never would have boarded the plane despite the presence of medical supplies for most emergencies. “The danger is there,” Paiva said. “There is the ‘wandering 9 CORSUCCOCUN spider, and their venom’? is 18 times more deadly than the Photographs What information black widow spider of the US. In addition, they have the foe phos an hse mand largest venom glands of any spider. But I've never heard of anyone bitten by this one. Call it luck or being careful. ‘Then we have bullet ants. For some people this is very painful, but not deadly. Of course, it depends on how allergic a person is.” Once, Coveny read an e-mail from an Illinois student, discussing the trip. He signed off with “PS. Get hurt.” “They were looking for excitement,” she said Story Time. The Samiria blended into the Maranon [River] into the Ucayali [River] into the Amazon. In Lake El Dorado, where schoolchildren urged an extension of a few days to look for animals, Saurio set up a 100-foot fishing net. After one check, Saurio woke up the camp by announcing, “Hey, I've got an anaconda in my fishing net” ‘9. The caiman (KAY mun) is kind of crocodile, 10, Venam ste poison that snakes and spiders inject wen they bite or sting. | ele (pu TEN shu le) ode possibly 20 UNIT 1 Why Do We Read? Jesse Beighton stands on the stump of a mahogany treeThe potentially deadly 9-foot snake apparently lunged for a fish and snared its teeth in the webbing, Freeman, Beightol and Saurio carefully extricated!" the snake. Paiva grabbed it behind the neck to prevent bites. A second snake-charmer grasped it to prevent anyone’s body from being squeezed into breathlessness. “As long as there were two people handling it, it was manageable,” Freeman said. “It was tired.” The outer limits of the first-aid kit were never tested. Paiva said the paddlers’ role educating the schoolchildren is an important one. “Because it’s a unique ecosystem,!2” he said. “This area for sure must be known for everybody to create a consciousness to protect it” Soggy and stinking of sweat after 350 miles on the nearly current-free water, the travelers completed the journey in 25 paddling days. “What we learned is that everything is interconnected,” Freeman said. “All the plants and sir Coven Ss Cam animals rely on each other. The people in the villages eat Cain a retin gtd Ren catfish, piranha and pacu. A classic example is the creporia Paiva handle a tuckered-out tree. Fire ants live on the tree as a home, and they defend the Soot anaconda tree too.” The group returned to Chicago on May 6 and began lectures for kids who vicariously" followed the trip. The first Practice the Skills school appearance was at Field Park Elementary in Western -- 7 Springs. “They love it,” teacher Scott Elder said of his students. ! “They kept journals.” In tune with his audience, Freeman teased the kids. “We were looking to bring a poisonous frog back for you, but we couldn't,” he said. No, what played in Peru, stayed in Peru. Only the images ofa faraway land traveled. HO Did your experience with this 1 attcle help you see why it might be worthwhile to read it? What might a reader get out oft? Write your ideas on the “Big Question” section of Foldable | for “Paddling Dicey Waters.” Your ideas will help you com- plete the Unit Challenge later. T1.When they extricated the snake, they freed it from being tangled inthe net. 12.An ecosystem is the entire group of ving and nontving things in a particular area 13. To doa thing vicariously isto understand another's experience a fit were happening to ‘onesel Paddling Dicey Waters 21