It’s 7am. Easter is over and I’m not hungover. Still the long-brewed green tea hits me in the gut. I’m sitting under a luxuriant stilt house whose beams and floorboards are polished by touch. In the yard out front, under a green tin roof, are a cluster of logs. Not great, sombre, illegal logs, just dusty thigh-thick logs from the hillsides. Some look like ash from an English woodland. One has been corkscrewed by a vine and another, zombie-faced by termites, bleeds out clay. A neighbour, a gentle older man who helped us set cameras in 2018, has been caught and heavily fined by the rangers. He doesn’t go to the forest any more. This house belongs to his brother, a small-time wildlife trader, possibly former; he’s away.
Clouds and maps.
Clouds and maps.
Clouds and maps.
It’s 7am. Easter is over and I’m not hungover. Still the long-brewed green tea hits me in the gut. I’m sitting under a luxuriant stilt house whose beams and floorboards are polished by touch. In the yard out front, under a green tin roof, are a cluster of logs. Not great, sombre, illegal logs, just dusty thigh-thick logs from the hillsides. Some look like ash from an English woodland. One has been corkscrewed by a vine and another, zombie-faced by termites, bleeds out clay. A neighbour, a gentle older man who helped us set cameras in 2018, has been caught and heavily fined by the rangers. He doesn’t go to the forest any more. This house belongs to his brother, a small-time wildlife trader, possibly former; he’s away.