Born Wild in the Forest

Jorge Alcalá was walking through the sanctuary when something stopped him in his tracks: there, among the shadows of the deciduous understory, upon a carpet of dry leaves and bare trunks, a young shrubby plant with large, deep-green leaves had sprouted without anyone having sown it. A little further on, standing tall amid the dense vegetation, a wild papaya — Carica papaya — spread its crown of lobed leaves toward the blue March sky, slender and upright, as if it had always known exactly which way to grow. No one planted them. No one prepared the soil to receive them. The sanctuary's earth did it on its own, as it has spent years learning to do. Both plants, recorded in GPS coordinates by Jorge, are a sign that the forest carries its own memory — and knows how to find its way back.