Looking back on XPRIZE Rainforest

Like the tributaries of a great river, a continent’s worth of emotions come swirling together in the wake of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition.

They flow over a bedrock of physical and mental exhaustion, tumbling over each other in no particular order, from rapids to riffle. There’s a current of pride at everything our team accomplished in those three breathless days. An undercurrent of relief that we found some grace under pressure when it mattered and a way around all the whirlpools that would have otherwise sunk us. A persistent bubbling up of regrets in the genera Coulda, Woulda, and Shoulda. Surges of admiration for my teammates. The same for our competitors, tempered by the secret hope that they found that forest every bit as challenging as we did. There’s a roiling impatience to set foot in the forest that during the competition we were only able to peer at through laptop screens. An ebb of disappointment that we didn’t hear more about that forest from the people who live in it — whose lifetimes of experience span so much more than we could ever glean in three days. Across this messy encontro das águas I feel swells of gratitude for the organizers, supporters, and family members who made it all possible. A determination to not stop here. And a deeply anchored respect for everyone who has made the preservation of rainforest their life’s work.

Running through it all and carrying it down to the sea is a powerful current of emotion that I struggle to put a name on. It’s a conviction about how and why we do this work. I’ve felt it ever since this competition began: a turning away from the idea that we’ve come in any spirit of mastery or dominion, or with the notion that we can solve the world’s problems with a technical fix — and a turning towards fellowship and connection. We do this work for love. For the chance to love another blackwater creek, another patch of shade-dappled rainforest, another community of homes along the river, another flowering crown in the canopy. We do it to spend one more day in the sun together, learning and sharing and feeling ourselves drawn ever closer to the creatures of the Earth.

Throughout the finals I kept a tab on my browser open to Ecclesiastes. Among all the dashboards and databases I wanted the voice from the whirlwind hissing in my ear, asking:

Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

By now we scientists have stretched plenty of lines upon the earth. Maybe someday the drones and models we send out like messenger pigeons will succeed in bringing back a list of everything these wild places contain. That will be a great day. But even then our admiration won’t be for those tools. Our admiration is now and will always be for the tropical rainforests that wreath the world in their buzzing, chirping, howling, and everlasting glory.

Thanks, XPRIZE.

Thanks, Alana Foundation.

Photo by Lesley de Souza