Dan's Papers - September 5, 2008

About half the time I hear from Andy Sabin, he's off on a mountaintop somewhere. "Hi," he'll say when he calls me. I might be on a street corner in Water Mill. He's on top of a mountain in the Himalayas. And he'll tell me so.

"I'm at 11,000 feet on Mount Ermishan," he'll say. "I can see Chengdu from here."

"Sezchuan Province in China. But I wanted to ask you something. Do you know who owns that new shopping center they're putting up in Hampton Bays?"

And if I do know, of course, I'll tell him.

Andy lives in Amagansett, and he is the multi-millionaire owner of a giant factory in upstate New York that recycles metal. Trash goes in one end. Platinum and silver and other special metals ready to be resold come out the other. And the money rolls in.

Say what you want about this, but the truth is that he is a deep-down adventurer, activist and environmentalist. He spends one-half the time working for the environment, mostly here on Long Island. (He has used his own money to file suits to stop developments.) He bikes 30 miles every day. He looks out for endangered species. He leads groups into the woods between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor looking for turtles. Sometimes he goes out at night with groups to look for salamanders and other nocturnal creatures. He created and largely funded the South Fork Natural History Museum and Science Center in Bridgehampton. And that's what he does with his time here in the Hamptons.

The rest of the time he's traveling around the world both exploring and looking for new sources of junk metal he can recycle. Sometimes the calls to me come in from Madagascar. Other times they come in from an island in the Bering Straits. He's an amazing man, as far as I am concerned.

But then, last week, he called to tell me words I never expected to hear him say. He was in Amagansett. "I have just come back from the most amazing trip I have ever taken. It's a trip of a lifetime." This is quite a statement, coming from the likes of an Andy Sabin.

Andy and his friend, Mike Cinque, who owns the Amagansett Liquor Store, and their three teenage boys, visited a tribe this past month that, until just a few years ago, had never seen the outside world. The two men and three boys lived among them. And it was utterly fantastic.

"You should come over to my house," Andy said. "We're still all painted up."

Andy's house is on Bluff Road. There is a gravel driveway leading up to a roundabout alongside which Andy keeps pigeons, geese, turtles and several other creatures in a pond. There is also a wonderful garden.

When I got there, three native boys with spears came out of the house. They wore shorts and headdresses, were barefoot, and had brightly colored stripes, handprints and squiggly swirls of colorful paints all over their bodies. They were Nicholas and Chris Cinque, ages 18 and 16. Also, Sam Sabin, age 13. They didn't speak. I think they didn't quite know who they were. But one of them threw a spear at a tree. It missed.

Andy and Michael came out. They were all painted up, too - not only their faces, but their necks and torsos. Andy was wearing an open shirt for the occasion. And they were so excited about their time in the Amazon forest they were just beside themselves.

"How long are you going to leave this on?" I asked Andy.

"I can't get it off," Andy said. "It has to wear off."

"That's going to be cute, going to a business meeting."

"When did you get back?"

Michael told me it took two days and many planes to get down to the village of Kendjam where a pilot had landed them in a small plane on a dirt runway. "We went New York to Miami to Manacous to Belem to Maruba to Kendjam," he said. "Each plane was smaller than the last."

They had brought a small tent, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, DEET, suntan lotion, bathing suits, shorts, t-shirts and linen long-sleeved shirts and slacks. They also brought about $400 in cash, though none of it would get used in Kendjam because the natives there do not use money. They also brought flashlights, Swiss Army knives, bath towels, yo-yos, Frisbees and little airplanes on sticks that you launch by pulling a string.

"That, we expected, would show them our peaceful intentions," Andy told me. "All together, we were there four days. We had three guides, two of whom spoke Portuguese and English, and one of whom spoke the native language and English. Other than us, these three guides were the only people who spoke English the whole time we were there."

The trip was organized for them by Barbara Zimmerman, an adventure planner. The accommodations were, as Andy put it, "minus-50-star hotels."

Andy had first learned of these people when, last year, he had heard that a tribe of indigenous people in Brazil who had never seen the outside world before came out of the woods alongside the Brasilia Airport to have a look at the goings-on there.

"I wanted to meet them," Andy said. "That, it turned out, was not going to happen. But then there were the Kayapo, who had only been in contact with Westerners for only a short time. There are 7,000 of them. They live in 17 separate villages in a 27-million-acre jungle - that's about as big as the state of New York."

Flying for hours and hours over the canopy of the Amazon jungle, they finally were able to see this one clearing, with what appeared to be a dozen or so huts in a circle around an open area. In every direction, for a hundred miles or more, there was nothing but jungle. Airplane was the only way in or out. This was Kendjam. Other villages were equally isolated.

They were met by the chief of this village and some other tribal members. They had heard the plane come in. They wore loincloths and traditional neck beads and headdresses. There was a lot of smiling and bowing.

"Everyone was very friendly," Andy said. "They took us to their village, on foot, through some paths."

The village, as they expected, consisted of about 15 grass-and-bamboo huts in the circle they had seen from the air. The chief indicated that the Americans were welcome to pitch their tent there, though, as he said, they might prefer to pitch their tent down by the river.

"There was no such thing as hygiene here," Andy said. "There were chickens, geese, dogs, ducks and pet monkeys running around. And there was nobody in the business of cleaning it up. And washing did not seem to be a priority. It sort of stank. We opted for the riverside."

A sandy spit by the Iriri River was a little better. They had been warned not to drink directly from it, although the natives did. Although it was sparkling clear, it would not go well on Western tummies. They'd drip it through a chemical strainer for four hours before drinking it. But at least they could wash themselves and, when necessary, wash the clothes they wore. And so they made camp.

There was, of course, no electricity, no running water, no anything. But they had brought matches, and so they gathered branches from the woods and built a fire and cooked the fish they caught for dinner, along with rice and beans, which the natives provided them.

"We did have salted meat that had been set aside for us," Andy said. "But it was inedible. If I hadn't caught fish, we would have starved."

That night, they slept in their tents under a dome of stars, listening to the cries of the Macaws that flew along overhead, the splash of fish, the croaking of frogs and the sounds of other animals. It was a profound experience.

Some natives came down to the river the next day to watch them fish. The Americans had lures and rods and reels. And they pulled in fish one after another.

"These fish had never seen a lure," Andy said.

The natives only knew about putting bait on a hook and hanging it over the side with a string in the hopes that a fish would come over.

At one point, a native came over and, observing that Michael was bringing in fish after fish, clapped Michael on the back and said something, which the translators put into English. "You are a fishing god," he said.

The first order of the day back at the village was to personally meet every single person in the village, from the eldest to the youngest, in order. There were about 500 tribesmen. The five Americans with their three guides were set up on seats inside a hut with children outside peering through the slits in the bamboo to watch what was going on. The American boys went out for a while to entertain them by throwing Frisbees around. Everybody howled with laughter at this.

The costumes the tribal members wore, said Andy, simply dazzled them - they were so colorful and lovingly created. Later, in the dining room of Andy's house in Amagansett, I saw on the table all sorts of things they had traded for - necklaces, headdresses, spears and shields. They gave up flashlights, jackknives, fanny packs, sleeping mats, Frisbees and the toys to get these things.

"Both men and women wear loin cloths and brightly colored sashes in addition to a lot of jewelry," Andy said. "They are all painted up. They painted us all up. It was a sign of respect."

"What did they paint you with?" I asked, touching the red line on Andy's nose.

"It's a combination of fruit juice and ashes from the fire. And it doesn't easily come off."

They spent their time at the village joining with the villagers in getting ready for an upcoming festival - there is always an upcoming festival or event in the village. They could not fully explain to me what they were all getting ready for, but it was something very important that everyone seemed very happy about. This is a warrior tribe.

Every night, natives from the village came with spears and stayed near where they camped by the river, just in case they were needed - not to protect them from other people (there were no other people within two weeks of walking), but to possibly protect them from animals wandering by.

The chief told them the legend of how the village had been founded. They had been somewhere else, but his grandfather had been told to find a place where there was a giant rock outcropping and so they had wandered for a while looking for it. When they found it - it was near where this village is now - they found four trappers who had staked a claim to the land around it, so, he said the tribe would be prevented from going there. His grandfather had them killed. So now it was theirs.

"The whole time we were there," Andy told me, "we only saw one gun. It was a twin-barrel, 10-gauge shotgun, and very old, maybe 100 years old. One hunter had it. That was it. They hunt with spears and bows and arrows."

The villagers seemed extremely happy with their lives.

"They have family, fun, a sense of pride," Michael said. "They live simply. But they have a wonderful time," he said.

The Amazon land that shelters the Kayapo has been set aside as a preserve for the natives by the Brazilian government. It is the largest saved tropical forest on the planet, though all around it, loggers and farmers are rapidly deforesting the rest of the Amazon.

"We gave $50,000 to the tribe," Andy said. He hoped they would use this money to buy from the white men what they thought might help them both keep their way of life but enjoy it better. He also hoped it would help them find a way to police the forest.

On the way out, they were met, of course, by Barbara Zimmerman, who wanted to find out how it went. In the course of things, Barbara said that a few months earlier the tribe had contacted her by CB radio to say they had captured four loggers who said they were taking over. They were calling to ask her permission to put them to death. She said no, let them go. And so that's what they did instead.