Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
wood coming out of the Amazon had been logged illegally. And although Rick didn't like
to get specific, more than once he had made vague references to the frenzy of the old days,
of the crazy things he'd seen in the Brazilian logging industry. He knew the business he
had made his fortune in. When he talked about preserving his seven hundred hectares of
rainforest, he sounded like a man trying to prove to himself what kind of person he was.
The soy field just in front of us, I realized, was about the size of a single hectare. In gen-
eral, I have no sense for what an acre is, much less a hectare. But I had looked it up, and
here was one in front of me: a piece of land about the length of a soccer field on each side.
“Isn't that a huge piece of land?” Rick said. “And then there's seven hundred of
those back there in that forest.” Rick's piece of rainforest suddenly seemed incredibly
massive—an entire world.
“I still have a hard time even believing that I own that piece of property…This shouldn't
even belong to a human being!” He laughed. “To have that kind of ability or power or
whatever it is, or…”
“It's not like owning a car, or a house,” I said. “It's like owning a little universe that
you're inside.”
He nodded. “And it's been there since, oh, you know. It's evolved for millions of
years…And what gives me the right to just be born and all of a sudden it's mine? I'm like
a speck on the Earth. I've only been here for like, just a grain of sand in time, and all of a
sudden I've got this ability to just erase something that took…”
Rick shook his head and looked at the darkness on the other side of the hectare, where
his rainforest began.
“All of a sudden I'm here,” he said. “And it's like, I'm the guy holding the bag.”
Search WWH ::




Custom Search