A Loaded Totumo with No Witnesses

Under a blue March sky, Michel was walking through the rural landscape when he came upon it: a totumo of middling stature, branches reaching outward in every direction, laden with dark, rounded fruits at different stages of ripening. The tree stood alone — no birds, no mammals had come to contest that abundance. Michel took his photographs, recorded the coordinates, and added it to the Fundación's map of food resources. The totumo — *Crescentia cujete* — is one of those trees that along the Colombian Caribbean coast one simply takes for granted: its fruit has always appeared in courtyards, pastures, and roadsides, a fixture of the landscape. But for the species the Fundación protects and rehabilitates, a tree in active production is exactly what the map needs: a point of reference, a marked larder, a promise that food will be there when the moment calls for it.