The Endangered Meaning of Place

books:

	• The Clouded Leopard: A Book of Travels Wade Davis Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2007 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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The Endangered Meaning of Place

In one chapter of this book Wade Davis quotes British writer Lawrence Durell as saying "To know a people..you need only a little patience, a quiet moment and a place where you might listen to the whispered messages of their land."

Wade Davis has lived this suggestion and has harvested the knowledge of some of the most interesting cultures of the world, cultures threatened by the far reach of modernization and environmental destruction.

Reading this book makes me feel like a teenager again, enthused with the prospects of travels and new adventures. It is full of the fascination of discovery and novel knowledge about the world that is buried under the incessant wash of media news and popular culture. Here you will read of the "survival" culture of Canada, the reason the ethnic cultures of the Amazon have no word for the color blue, an Malaysian forest people without a concept of time, the fragility of our modern economy at risk of collapse from the lack of resin from a jungle tree.

If you have read "The Serpent and the Rainbow" or "One River" you will find familiar but reexamined thoughts on the Vodoun ceremonies of Haiti and the hallucinogen religious journeys of Amazonian shamans.

Wade Davis himself has traveled the world far enough to know and tell many fascinating stories but it is his ability to find those places and moments to listen that have made him an exceptional writer and this book one more treasure to read.

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For many years and through many of the world?s most remote regions, Wade Davis has traveled in search of the rare places where cultural diversity survives, untainted by the influences of globalization and modernization. The Clouded Leopard brings together the extraordinary travels that sprang from this quest. His travels emphasize the fragility of the planet yet also illuminate the places and people where the bond between landscape and spirit is preserved. Beautiful and disturbing, tragic and yet hopeful, his work sends out a timely message that cannot be ignored.

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