Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
It’s difficult to describe the feeling of standing beneath Auyán-Tepuí, that towering table mountain in southern Venezuela, except to say that something in me changed.
In the mid-1990s, I visited Auyán-Tepuí, part of Canaima National Park, drawn by the allure of Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall on Earth. But nothing prepared me for the sheer presence of the landscape. The tepui rose from the rainforest like a stone citadel from another world, its flat summit often veiled in cloud, as if the sky itself had settled upon it. From its rim, most of the water drifted down in impossible cascades, dissolving into mist before ever touching the ground.
Orchids and bromeliads clung to lichen-laden limbs of miniature trees that grew on beds of colorful spongy moss. Carnivorous pitcher plants pooled rain and trapped the forest’s tiniest lives. The air was thick with the breath of the jungle, fragrant and wild.
There were animals I couldn’t name. Colors I had never seen. Textures unfamiliar to my hands. The forest was not a backdrop — it was the drama, the memory, the dream you didn’t know you’d had until you stepped into it. Rounding a bend, I’d catch a glimpse of sunlight threading the fog, touching down on a patch of color so briefly it felt imagined. There was nothing to say. Just the stillness that comes when beauty strikes something deep and wordless.
Auyán-Tepuí means “Devil’s House” in the Pemón language, but there was no menace here — only power. The kind of power that humbles. That erases all pretense and leaves you still, small and in awe. The kind of power that reminds you the world is not yours to own, only to witness.
That feeling has never left me. It’s what animates everything we do at Mongabay. Because once you have seen the world as it truly is — brimming with mystery, resilience, and life — you understand why it must be protected. Not just for science or climate or utility. But because places like Auyán-Tepuí are sacred. They hold something older than us. Wiser than us. And when we allow them to endure, they make us better.
I left the mountain with wet shoes, a full heart, and a vow: to try, however imperfectly, to honor what I had seen.
Banner image of Auyán-Tepuí in Venezuelaby Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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