Michael Tweed - The Forest People

Colin Turnbull’s book The Forest People has changed me a lot. He lived with a hunter-gatherer pygmy community for years. The way they lived and knew things seemed so real to me. Real as in down to earth and being humble about life. I am like the botanist in The Four Loves; I like to point out individual things, but I relate it to the whole picture. I often times put myself in the individual things’ perspective to try and get a sense of its wildness. I try to respect and love nature for what it is, as did the pygmies did in The Forest People. I put myself in their perspective and realize that home to them is the wilderness. If the wilderness was not wild they would not have a home. They have a different respect for nature than I because they depend on the wilderness; they only need to focus on the individual things that matter to them. To me, every independent thing matters because it allows me to ponder and try to figure out this world. I don’t have to worry about survivorship, and the pygmies help teach me that.