Blog by MBP Volunteer, Julia

It was like the mirror of a normal workday, routine happening in bizarre reverse. Instead of driving to Kianjavato under a lightened sky and birds waking up, chirping as we rumbled along, we took the trip at dusk. By the time Sheila, Trevor, Adam and I faced the entrance to Sangasanga, the town was washed in twilight. The air was buzzing, as usual, but with a slightly unfamiliar quality: all the day-bugs going to sleep, and the night-bugs picking up the chirping symphony where they left off.

I’ve become more than familiar with the forest during the day, but this was going to be different. Sheila had asked two of her guides to escort us on a night walk.

We crossed the bridge, turned west, hiked up the familiar hill, and eventually plunged into the woods. By the time we did, it was almost completely dark. Each of us had a headlamp cutting a slice out of the nighttime gloom. It was a moonlit night, but under the canopy only the faintest pale gray sliver of clouded sky was visible between all the branches. The dark made everything strange and new. The marks and distinctions of familiar paths made unfamiliar.

The nighttime wildlife, too, is sometimes much different from the critters that leap through the trees in the day.

We were quickly advised to turn our headlamps and flashlights into the trees. The trick, you see, to spotting nocturnal lemurs is by their eye shine. Their huge, round eyes glow a sinister red-orange out of the dark, flashing in response to the merest brush of light. A rhythm quickly emerged: take a few steps with the light pointed down, because without it your feet become nearly instantly entangled in invisible vines or stumble over hidden rocks, pause, sweep the trees above. It gave the forest kind of a spooky, almost haunted air, the narrow beams of sweeping light illuminating the shivering leaves only briefly enough to give an impression of twisting branches, deep shadows, and then just the profound darkness again.