Mom earth's many splendid things

Why do we use red dye No. something we can't pronounce when Mom Earth supplies so many tiny miracles all the time?

A visit to his village and just 2 minutes in, Wilder cracked open an "achiote" fruit, which has long been used to color food and used as a natural dye.

He also showed us how to find food in the forest beyond the animals – grubs and gel fruit that come from hard, nobby nuggets that look like they are well to rotten, not to survival, and how to find water from a vine.

The coconut worm was a crack of wetness, mostly tasteless but then a hint of coconut from its entire life being spent inside one. If it had lived, it would become a white butterfly.

i ate this worm

The vine was the biggest surprise. Water enough for three of us to gulp it down like a funnel came out ... fresh and delicious and clean.

So. much. amazement. So much we don't yet know. More than 120 prescription drugs are derived from plants.

Each day, more of the forest is destroyed.What are we losing? We will never know.

Each shaman? Each Wilder? A library. A resource beyond books.