"...and here is..."

Four days after traveling we arrive at 1:00 in the morning. The island is basked in darkness. "...and here is a mangrove, and over on that hill are wild lands," Rick, Ben's dad, gestures towards the dark lush, sweeping slopes and lowlands surrounding us.
In the moonlight we arrive at Ben's home, his tropical home. At 2 in the morning I get the grand tour. After our airport torture, our internal time clocks don't know up from down anyhow.

Rick shows me about the forest surrounding the house. With the light of the moon I meet my first plants in Brazil. "...and here is a coffee plant." Enormous, it mocks my baby potted coffee plant at dome. Cashews, avocados, lemons, tangerines, pineapples, guavas, passion fruit, jack fruit, açai... these trees, vines, and bromeliads Rick has planted to create an agroforesty system at home.

For those unfamiliar with the concept:
Agroforesty combines the techniques of agriculture and forestry to create more integrated, diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems. --USDA National Agroforestry Center

And what is that smell? So familiar to leis of graduates and Hawaiian vactions -- blossoms of the fragrant frangipani (Plumeria sp.). What a wonderful feeling to be in a forest at home.

Waking up the next morning to the cicadas, song birds, and dappled sunlight, I am in a dream state. My sleep deprived mind registers the various shades of greens as different layers of canopy--I am in a magical land. A forest of life.

But what about Ben's house? Is it really 90 years old?

Driving on the other side of the island, on the way to the mainland, Rick points out the window to a high rise amongst urban growth, "...and there was the spot where the house used to be before we bought, disassembled and then reassembled the pieces."

The pieces are colonial--tall French doors and windows with white trim, bright blue shutters and clay tiles. The design is more utilitarian, maybe because it had to be. "...And here is where we used the wide wood planks in the living room floor, and then we used the medium planks in the other direction for the dining room (we only had to cut off the ends of the wide planks slightly), and then continuing into the downstairs bedroom the small planks were used and we ran out in the end so there is a mix of small and mediums. All the wood was re-used."

The high lofty wood ceilings remind me of my home in Templeton. But the furniture is most unique. Carved from the dark burgundy wood of the endangered Jacaranda tree, the furniture belonged to Ben's great-grandmother. "Maybe that is why my brother and I went into sustainable agriculture and environmental protection, out of guilt for our grandmother's furniture," Rick jokes.

The house used to be on the shore, looking out over a bay. The bay was filled, the houses were demolished (except for the pieces of this one), and high rises, shopping areas and highways were built.

Ben tells me that considering the rest of Brazil, today Florianópolis is fairly conscious of preserving its environment. This protection is evident in the island's sweeping forested hills, delicate drifts of dune vegetation and clear water of the sweet and salty lagoons. But, Ben continues to say, that not much effort is made to restore or fix current environmental degradation and later we see murky rivers subject to sewage dumping and polluted runoff.

I gaze across the shore where high rises and asphalt now meets sand and waves. Like cancer moving across the body, some humans move across the land. I am glad to know that I will not be one of them.