"Yes,” I said. “Especially since I left all my sunscreen in my purse at your village. What kind of shelter did you have in mind?"
"One higher off the ground, in the trees. It might take us a couple of days to finish it. The most important material will be twine to hold the support beams in place. And that takes a bit of time to produce. But two people can do it twice as fast. Let me show you how to make organic rope."
Te' led me a few hundred feet into the forest until we came upon a clump of short, spiky bushes.
"This is the pandanus plant," she said. "Our tribe normally makes ties using bark, but the fewer trees we have to strip the better in case someone comes snooping around. The leaves of this plant are very fibrous and will be a good substitute."
"You can hold up a house with just a few leaves?" I said, bending the skinny stalks in my hand.
"With the right braiding, yes. Plant cellulose is an incredibly strong material, especially when it's properly twined."
She snapped one of the leaves off near the base, then ran her fingernail along its length to separate the fibers. She pulled a few of the stringy strands apart and lay them in her hand.
"Now they look even flimsier than before," I said, shaking my head. "How can those skinny fibers hold much of anything together?"
"For such an enlightened culture," Te' smiled, "you Americans sure lead a sheltered existence. Watch what happens when we combine the strands and weave them together."
Teuila bunched the strands together in her palm and folded them into a long U-shape, then she bent one end down, forming a small loop at the joined end. As she pinched the loop with the fingers of her left hand, she twisted the horizontal band of strands away from her with her other hand while using her middle finger to lift the end pointing down and pulling it toward her, wrapping the two shoots around one another. She repeated this process for a minute or two, until she'd formed a six-inch-long line of interlaced strands that looked just like a braided rope.
"That's pretty cool," I said, nodding at how quickly she'd fashioned a rope out of natural materials. "But that doesn’t even look long enough to tie around my wrist. What do you do if we need to make a longer rope?"
"It's simple to join extra pieces together," she said. "Watch carefully."
Te' gathered another bunch of leaf strands and folded them in half, pinching them tightly together at the fold. Then she inserted the V-end of the folded shoots into the open end of the braided strands and repeated the wrapping sequence, twisting the two ends of the joined strands away from her while simultaneously pulling the other two loose ends toward her. Within seconds, the loose ends of the first set of strands disappeared into the lengthening braid until there were only the short ends of the new set of strands remaining at the end of the rope.
"Holy crap," I said, shaking my head at how easy it was to create any length of rope using just plant leaves. "But how strong is it? And how firmly connected are the two joined pieces?"
"Why don't you see for yourself?" Te' said, handing me the waxy twine. "Try to pull it apart."
I grasped the braid on each end and yanked it as hard as I could in opposite directions. Still not believing that a plant leaf could be so sturdy, I lifted my leg and wrapped the twine over my knee and pulled as hard as I could on each side. Still skeptical of its strength, I lifted it in front of me and bent it up and down a few times. When it began to splinter and crack, I looked up at Teuila triumphantly.
"Hold on, girl," she said, taking the leaf rope
out of my hands.
"If you bend anything like that long enough, just about anything will break—even steel. But we're not going to use it that way. We're going to bend it around large poles and tie it in a fixed position. You saw how it's almost impossible to break with fixed tension. That's all we care about at this point. We're going to use it to hold things, not as a swing!"
"Okay," I sighed. "You've convinced me. How much of this stuff do we need to build our tree house?"
"A lot. A few hundred pieces of cord a couple of feet long should do it. If we separate the tasks and work together, it shouldn't take too long. Would you rather harvest the strands or braid them together?"
I held Te's bandaged hand and peered at the swelling around her finger.
"Which task will be easier on your hand? It looks like you still need a bit more rehabilitation time than me."
"The less twisting and bending, the better," she nodded, pinching her finger tenderly near the knuckle. "How about if I collect the leaves while you weave them together to start?"
"Sounds like a deal."
Teuila demonstrated one more time how to properly twist and join the shoots, then I sat down on a broken tree stump while she began to tear and separate the leaves. After a half hour or so, I'd assembled a decent pile of arms-length twine, and I shook my wrists trying to relieve the muscle cramps in my hands.
"That's a pretty impressive length of cordage," she said. "I think we're about halfway there. Would you like to switch positions for a while to rest your aching fingers?"
"If you think you're up for it," I nodded. "I'm not used to doing this amount of physical labor with my hands. I better pause for a while before I get repetitive stress syndrome."
"Repetitive what—?" Te' asked with a puzzled expression.
"It's another frailty of our Western culture. A lot of people sit around hammering away at computers all day long and develop sore wrists and hands. Something tells me this is not an affliction known to native Anutians."