Tying my Bootstrings
The Cardamom Mountains are one of Southeast Asia’s last great wildernesses, a biodiversity hotspot that feels raw and untamed. My expedition here was an exercise in logistics and endurance. We traded 4WD vehicles for motorbikes to ford silty rivers and our hotel beds for hammocks strung between jungle trees. I was warned to watch for pythons in the canopy. The humidity was a physical weight that settled on the skin and never truly left.
Initially, I struggled with the discomfort. I let the bugs and the distance from home control my emotional state, and the trip felt like a massive inconvenience. But then a researcher named Bunny walked into our office and told me that the local villagers had just spotted a newborn baby elephant wandering with its mother in the jungle. Suddenly, the “inconvenience” faded. My thoughts shifted from missing home to the necessity of the wilderness. I remembered what it was like in India, searching for tigers, and I realized I had let my emotional comforts get in the way of the mission.
Every time I lace up my hiking boots, something inside of me begins to glow. Going outside, especially to the mountains or the forest, is like going home for me, even if that forest is a remote jungle nine thousand miles from the comfort of my pillow. I stopped looking at the trip as a hardship and started looking at it as a return to form. We spent our nights in the jungle, listening to the cacophony of insects and conducting night hikes to look for reptiles and amphibians. It was a reminder that some of the most important conservation work happens in the places that are hardest to reach. You cannot understand the value of the Cardamoms by looking at a map; you have to breathe the silty air and struggle through the undergrowth to truly grasp what is at stake.