Photo of the Month (July 2025 Edition): Blue Tapajós
The grandeur and vibrant colors of the Tapajós River, which amazed me 14 years ago, continue to amaze me still. As I wrote before, last month I had a few afternoons to contemplate the beauty and calm of the Tapajós’s blue waters during a fieldwork trip to collect soil samples in burned forests.
On one of those afternoons, the sunset was hidden behind the clouds. As I returned to the camp, lights from a few riverside houses began to glow, and one of them illuminated a blue boat anchored in the stillness. The landscape, painted in the same hue after the sunset, contrasted with the boat’s red edges, tinged orange by time.
Artificially lit on the port side, the little boat’s edge stood out against the naturally blue vastness of the scene, above and below it, from the waters of the Tapajós River and the waters from the Amazonian flying rivers, that carry the blue far from the green forest.