Six Pictures of Paradise

or many years I ran a field station in Amazonian Peru. The station was a five-hour canoe ride from the nearest road, and every Friday our boat made the long trip upriver carrying crates of groceries, drums of gas for the generator, a mountain of scuffed-up backpacks and duffel bags, and the latest crop of scientists. The station buildings sat on a high bluff that looked a long way down the river, and late Friday afternoon I would begin to hear the buzz of the outboard motor when the boat was still a tiny comet-shaped object rounding the farthest bend. By the time I made it down the long wooden stairway to the riverbank, the sunburnt boat driver was pulling in