Let’s be honest. How many of us register that it’s Earth Day, a 24-hour tribute to addressing the health of our forests, plants, animals, and oceans, and then forget all about it the moment our alarm goes off on the morning of April 23rd?
I am the first to admit that I did…for a long time.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened on Earth Day, April 22, in 1998. A crowd of 2000 attended the festivities, including esteemed primatologist Jane Goodall, who is responsible, by the way, for the presence of the regal chimp David Greybeard (her favorite one!) at the foot of The Tree of Life. Though Walt Disney had passed away over thirty years earlier, his mission and spirit resonated in every one of Animal Kingdom’s 500 acres. Guests would be able to delight in the company of African zebras, rhinos, meerkats, giraffes and okapis; Asian tigers, cotton-top tamarins, and small-clawed otters; and extinct and imaginary beasts, too, such as dinosaurs and flying banshees.
Photo: Kilimanjaro Safaris, Animal Kingdom
Photo: DINOSAUR attraction, Animal Kingdom
You may not know that in the 1950s, Walt Disney and his crew traveled the world to capture footage of exotic animals in their habitats, and made thirteen nature films that became the True-Life Adventures series. These films won eight Academy Awards. Public schools even showed them in classrooms. While these films are not without their controversies (you may want to investigate the lemmings-jumping-off-a-cliff fiasco in the White Wilderness documentary from 1958), Walt Disney’s fascination with Nature, and his desire to educate families about the Earth’s natural creatures and resources, was undeniable. “Our films have provided thrilling entertainment of educational quality and have played a major part in the worldwide increase in appreciation and understanding of nature,” Walt Disney said. “These films have demonstrated that facts can be as fascinating as fiction, truth as beguiling as myth, and have opened the eyes of young and old to the beauties of the outdoor world and aroused their desire to conserve priceless natural assets.”
Animal Kingdom is not simply an extravagant zoo. The purpose of this Park is not solely to entertain us, to draw a distinct boundary between spectator and subject. All around us in this Park are calls to action—to respect, conserve, and preserve Earth’s flora and fauna. And one attraction at Animal Kingdom summons our attention to Earth Day matters year-round with particular insistence: Kali River Rapids.
Walt Disney and his Imagineers excel at balancing the effect of fantasy and reality. Even when they construct an entirely fictional world—such as Pandora or Batuu—that defies the limits of locations we already know, the details of that world are so precise, so authentic, that we feel grounded in a real-life place and time. In the Asia domain of Animal Kingdom, the make-believe continent of Anandapur provides the setting for both an aesthetic and educational journey that exposes us to the health concerns of Nature, and therefore, of humankind.
If we have done our research on Kali River Rapids before traveling to Walt Disney World, we come to Animal Kingdom fairly sure we understand the most pressing predicament involved in deciding whether to spend a Fast Pass on it. To be drenched, or not to be drenched—that is the question. As we head toward the boarding pagoda at Kali River Rapids, though, we realize that this whitewater rafting ride cannot be quantified in such a simplistic way. If we commit to this attraction, we commit to seeing an unattractive truth that will cling to our memory.
As we walk through the queue, the character of Manisha Gurung, the founder and manager of Kali River Rapids Expeditions, comes over the PA system and gives us the unnerving backstory to this well-known Animal Kingdom ride:
All around Anandapur, logging companies in search of tropical hardwood have bitten deep into the jungle. When this happens, the traditional life of village and forest is destroyed forever. I created this river-rafting enterprise to demonstrate there are non-destructive ways to bring revenue to the village. Because the more people like you care, the better chance our jungle has of surviving.
At this moment, as Walt Disney World Guests, we become activists with the potential to save our ecosystem. We have the power to regulate how we treat our environment, whether we decide to use public transportation to reduce fuel emissions, composting methods to condition our soil, or conservation practices such as showering less often and patching leaky pipes to save the energy it takes to pump precious water into our homes.
The first stage of the Kali River Rapids Expedition involves our raft’s ascending a tree-lined lift hill of 90 feet. We cannot see over the crest of that hill until we have reached it, suggesting that the landscape that waits for us on the other side is sacred. This initial climb of our adventure might signify an act of transcendence, of rising far above the temporal world to cross over into a purer sphere. But our sense of peace amongst the trees and ferns is short-lived. Just beyond the riverbend, we hear the growl of chainsaws. Soon, a gray haze seeps through the air, obscuring our view, and the odor of smoke burns in our nose and mouth. The loggers that Manisha Gurung warned us about are poisoning our air with their greed as they cut down trees and burn brush in the jungle of Anandapur.
Fire can both give life and destroy it. People must apply fire with wisdom and care. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when man learned to tame the blazes, they also learned to warm themselves in the cold, brighten the dark for hunting, and cook the animals they captured. But the Tetak Logging Company’s use of fire to clear wood and foliage in Anandapur guarantees the demise of the trees, rivers, and soil as well as the animals and people who live amongst them. Our raft brings us face to face with the consequences of fire-gone-wrong, taking us past piles of charred trunks and branches. For those Animal Kingdom Guests who pack their ponchos and flip flops to hit up Kali River Rapids on a humid July afternoon, the problem of deforestation is no longer a distant one. This crisis does not happen in some other part of the world—it happens here and now.
Once we have witnessed the results of this destruction, our raft slides down a 20-foot slope and settles into a rocking rhythm on a winding yet non-threatening course. We are lulled back into safety, and greeted on either side by elephant statues playfully spouting thin sprays of water over our heads. Was the turmoil we saw just a dream? Or should we be regarding the revived natural landscape around us with a new appreciation, and changing our attitude toward the sanctity of Earth’s gifts?
One message that Disney’s Animal Kingdom (and more pointedly, Kali River Rapids) delivers without fail is that Nature would sustain itself, and thrive, without the interference of man. On the contrary, man would probably feel unequipped to conquer the world without the assistance of Nature…without fertile soil for growing food, water for drinking, cleansing, and traveling, and foliage for oxygen and climate control.
I have decided that it’s Earth Day year-round at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Once I pass through the gates at the front of the Park, I listen for the thumping of those bongo drums. They accompany my stroll through the walkways of the Oasis on my route to the Tree of Life—and then on to Kali River Rapids—beating from somewhere within the Earth’s core, in sync with my steps and the thrumming of my heart.
This essay includes sections from a more extensive article that I wrote about Kali River Rapids for Celebrations Magazine, Spring 2020, edited by Tim Foster: http://www.celebrationspress.com
Wow! Such an erudite essay. As always, so proud of you. I know your love of fiction but non fiction is not outside your realm.