I don’t read many biographies, but a few years ago I picked up a book called One River by the anthropologist and botanist Wade Davis. One River is a historical account of the exploration of the Amazon river basin and the story of Davis’ own experience on the river in search of medicinal, and often hallucinogenic plants. There are odd parallels here to Apocalypse Now. Davis’ teacher had gone up the river in the 1930s and briefly joined a so-called “peyote cult” as he pursued long-lost sacred plants of the Aztec, which in my mind is a character clearly played by Brando. In trying to follow his teacher’s footsteps, Davis bucks danger left and right over a 15 month-long journey – sometimes in the form of exotic diseases, other times in the name of hallucinogenic research. But ultimately it’s a story of man’s inability to truly conquer everything. Like Apocalypse Now’s Vietnam, Davis’ Amazon is too big, too overwhelming to fully penetrate.
But as it turns out, things would probably have been a lot easier for Wade if he had just brought along his motorbike and done a big wheelie in the sky. Way to miss a trick, guy. The Amazon rainforest is now a backdrop in Trials Rising‘s second expansion Crash & Sunburn, which invites you on a tour of the some of the world’s most dangerous places to ever take your bike out for a spin. And a demo for its base game is now available for free.