Dear Lola,

We continue upriver through night.  When the river becomes too narrow and entangled by hanging vines, we walk up to a path, which follows the river.

Here, only a dozen feet from the river, our flashlights capture a completely different biological world.  Butterflies hang upside down from leaves.  Until now, I never gave a moment of thought as to where the butterflies sleep.

If you look carefully between the legs of sleeping butterflies, you can see leafcutter ants, moving like robots along trails of scent and chemical.  Don't stop there, because underneath the legs of the ants are tiny white specks with red eyes, moving in the opposite direction.

Next

12345678910111213