The Jungle Nature Project

Mom & Son In the Moment –

A few months back we had the opportunity to meet one of the owners of  Rainforest Expeditions, here in Lima. We came together with the intention of  discovering a way to work together. We talked about collaborating as way to promote their lodge, tours and jungle ecology awareness to a new audience. For us,  we saw it as win / win opportunity, providing Miro and I  with the chance to experience part of Peru’s incredible Amazon jungle. But I wasn’t interested in providing a typical review in exchange for the experience.

I pitched a project where both Miro and I would participate by  sharing our individual perspectives in relation to being in nature. I write a lot about being present and somehow the jungle seemed like the perfect place to be commit to the intention of being in the moment.  So this is the kick off of that project called The Jungle Nature Project.

What is this project about?

• This project is about inspiration.
• This project is about being in the moment.
• This project is about observing and internalizing what’s out there.
• This project is about observing  what’s happening internally as a result.
• This project is about the jungle inside and the jungle surrounding both of us.
• This project is about  is about observing the narrative based on our individual perspectives and recognizing where they diverge.

Project Details:

Miro and I will spend a week with Rainforest Expeditions participating in as many activities as possible. We’ll  record our personal experiences in a daily diary through  a photo essay  which we will share first through twitter, then as a visual daily diary of our web site.

Once each hour, we’ll respond to our alarm, take the moment to write down our observation in a journal we’ll carry with us and snap a photo. Miro’s will look very different from mine, and vice versa. That will provide not only an interesting perspective of our surroundings but it’ll create an interesting narrative about point of view between mother and son.

Story Telling

This project is a story telling project where we will upload an image along with an accompanying text description, 160 characters or less. (for use on twitter). In essence, we see this project as an exercise of ‘being’ in the moment, as the jungle invites us to be.  The project will function like this:

From sunrise to sundown, regardless of where we are, (outside in nature or  in the lodge, the physical location does not matter, it’s all part of the experience), Miro and I  will  each snap a photo once each hour that inspires us. Independently, we will both write text to accompany our image that expresses our unique perspective from the point of being in that moment. The text in some cases will be a literal description, an internal emotion, an observation, a feeling, a thought, or a reflection. However, each of us will participate independently and only as we produce this project we’ll be able to see the interceptions in terms of our personal perspectives.  Knowing that the natural environment will provide an incredible amount of  inspiration, it will be interesting to see how the thought processes converge.

We began The Jungle Nature Project on Thursday June 21st. The project rand through Wednesday June 27. Today is exactly 1 week since we’ve returned from the jungle and will kick off the project in realtime (Peru time) starting tomorrow, Thursday July 5th. Using twitter, we are going to upload a photo and description as it correlates to the time it was taken. So a photo that was taken on Thursday at 12:06 will be posted at that time this week. We will post 2 photos with descriptions each hour from both Miro’s perspective as well as from mine.  You can follow along on twitter from my twitter account here: @ilainie and Rainforest Expeditions account here: @PeruNature . Also at the end of each day, we’ll be posting two  daily diaries to our web site, here on RaisingMiro.com. One will be Miro’s diary and thoughts and the other will one mine. So stay tuned for kick off of the  The Jungle Nature Project!

We want to express a wonderful heartfelt thanks once again to the folks over at the Rainforest Expeditions for providing this incredible opportunity!

See the Daily Diaries:

Miro’s  Diaries :    Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Day 4  |  Day 5  |  Day 6  |  Day 7

Lainie’s  Diaries : Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Day 4  |  Day 5  |  Day 6  |  Day 7