Botanical Expedition! - Botanical Research Institute of Texas

20 Twenty Hours
and Counting:
The Journey
of a Lifetime
by tiana franKlin
whAt if You hAd 20 houRs to tRAvEl?
Here’s an idea: travel from cosmopolitan
downtown Fort Worth into the depths of the
Peruvian Amazon, by way of a couple of spins
in an airplane, two rides in a car, and one in a
Peruvian boat called a peke-peke. Get ready—
you’ll be hours and hours away from modern
civilization and the comforts of a big city: no
hot water, no air-conditioning, and with at best,
a thatched roof over your head.
Does this sound miserable? Not really—not
when you’re compensated by the view of
sunrise reflecting on the Madre de Dios River,
sweeping across untamed forest, and lightly
touching giants that are the Andes Mountains.
Welcome to morning at the Los Amigos
Biological Station.
High on a terrace, 297 steps above the
meandering Madre de Dios River that travels
east to empty into the mighty Amazon River,
sounds abound. Listen to the chatter of small
tamarin monkeys, the dawn chorus of the birds,
and the grumbling thunder in the distance that
is the howler monkeys. Visually, it’s a sea of
green. There are towering trees like nutmegs
(Myristicaceae), Brazil nuts (Lecythidaceae),
chicle trees (Sapotaceae), and kapok trees
(Bombacaeae). Below, the understory is full
of small shrubs with lianas winding about
them. And beneath the understory? There lie
all the microorganisms that keep the entire
system in balance—the fungi, bacteria, and
the thousands of insects. This all combines to
make the inconveniences inconsequential.
Virola sebifera (Nutmeg Family)
TIANA FRANKLIN
PIHER MACEDA
PIHER MACEDA
how MY JouRnEY BEgAn
In fact, the above describes part of my journey
thanks to BRIT and Texas Christian University
(TCU). The journey began with a serendipitous
series of events: my graduation from Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, the arrival
of John Janovec and Amanda Neill at BRIT,
the birth of the Andes to Amazon Program,
and the collaboration between TCU and
BRIT. Through this collaboration I get all the
advantages of a strict academic atmosphere
on a university campus and the advantages
of BRIT’s herbarium and the Amazon of
southeastern Peru as my laboratory! I feel as
if I’ve been given a new set of glasses to look
at the world with. In the Amazon, the endless
sea of green I can now parse out into the
appropriate plant families and begin to ask
pertinent questions about how it all functions.
I have undergone a magic Lasik procedure;
it’s that dramatic. I worked in a part of the
world where my education and labors and their
outcomes are directly related to the fate of the
area and the opportunity to conserve it.
Few graduate experiences can even
approach the impact of the BRIT/TCU/
Amazon amalgam. The outstanding faculty and
programs at TCU and the guidance, direction,
and student program at BRIT have taken me
all over the western hemisphere. TCU students
Ethan Householder, Romina Gazis, Rebecca
Repasky, and I have traveled to countries
throughout the Americas—from Canada in the
north to Costa Rica in Central America, to the
Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, to Peru
in South America. Collectively we’ve given
more than 30 presentations relating to some
aspect of our research. We have spent from
three months to a full year in remote jungles in
the Andes and Amazon, and we have survived
to tell the tales.
MY JouRnEY continuEs
BRIT has a remarkable dedication to students
and learning and to conservation. BRIT
catalyzes the advancement of knowledge. Such
willingness to collaborate brings our stories
from the depths of the Amazon jungle to
BRIT’s home in Fort Worth and beyond. My
hope is that great deeds begun as small seeds
of inspiration will grow and flourish. BRIT is
that inspiration for me. Thank you, for the
journey begun.