Message From Aru Summary and Analysis

The final chapter is an optimistic epilogue in which Quammen describes his visit to the island of Aru, where Alfred Wallace had done his main research leading to his co-discovery of natural selection. Aru is still an isolated place and the only way Quammen was able to get there was to join a tourist cruise and to be let off on a nearby island, negotiating with the natives to take him out to Aru. He sought the bird of paradise or the colorful bird that Wallace had first described over a century before. He had heard there was a tree on Aru where the birds gathered to mate and the natives confirmed that there was such a tree. Guided by some of the natives, he made his way by boat to Aru and visited the tree, listening...