A forest in the clouds : my year among the mountain gorillas in the remote enclave of Dian Fossey

For the first time, a riveting insider's account of the fascinating world of Dr. Dian Fossey's mountain gorilla camp, telling the often-shocking story of the unraveling of Fossey's Rwandan facility alongside adventures tracking mountain gorillas over hostile terrain, confronting aggressive silverbacks, and rehabilitating orphaned baby gorillas.

In A Forest in the Clouds , John Fowler takes us into the world of Karisoke Research Center, the remote mountain gorilla camp of Dr. Dian Fossey, a few years prior to her gruesome murder. Drawn to the adventure and promise of learning the science of studying mountain gorillas amid the beauty of Central Africa's cloud forest, Fowler soon learns the cold harsh realities of life inside Fossey's enclave ten thousand feet up in the Virunga Volcanoes.

Instead of the intrepid scientist he had admired in the pages of National Geographic , Fowler finds a chain-smoking, hard-drinking woman bullying her staff into submission. While pressures mount from powers beyond Karisoke in an effort to extricate Fossey from her domain of thirteen years, she brings new students in to serve her most pressing need--to hang on to the remote research camp that has become her mountain home. Increasingly bizarre behavior has targeted Fossey for extrication by an ever-growing group of detractors--from conservation and research organizations to the Rwandan government.

Amid the turmoil, Fowler must abandon his own research assignments to assuage the troubled Fossey as she orders him on illegal treks across the border into Zaire, over volcanoes, in search of missing gorillas, and to serve as surrogate parent to an orphaned baby ape in preparation for its traumatic re-introduction into a wild gorilla group.

This riveting story is the only first-person account from inside Dian Fossey's beleaguered camp. Fowler must come to grips with his own aspirations, career objectives, and disappointments as he develops the physical endurance to keep up with mountain gorillas over volcanic terrain in icy downpours above ten thousand feet, only to be affronted by the frightening charges of indignant giant silverbacks or to be treed by aggressive forest buffalos. Back in camp, he must nurture the sensitivity and patience needed for the demands of rehabilitating an orphaned baby gorilla.

A Forest in the Clouds takes the armchair adventurer on a journey into an extraordinary world that now only exists in the memories of the very few who knew it.

Author Notes

John Fowler holds a BS in Zoology from the University of Georgia and an MS in Technology and Science Policy from Georgia Tech. In the wake of Fossey's murder, Zoo Atlanta invited him to Africa to assist a television crew, WSB-Atlanta, filming a documentary about Fossey in Africa. In 2007, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International asked him to participate in their fortieth anniversary celebration by escorting a group of travelers to Rwanda to visit the mountain gorillas and the site of the original Karisoke Research Center. Fowler appeared in the pages of Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist as well as Farley Mowat's Woman in the Mists . After twenty-one years working in zoological parks, he is now a research professional in Tallahassee, Florida.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Fowler's memoir of his year spent as a student assistant at the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda conveys delight in and appreciation for gorilla-human relationships. But it is primarily an unflattering profile of camp founder and primate behaviorist Dr. Dian Fossey, best known for her book Gorillas in the Mist, who was murdered at the facility in 1985. Fowler's descriptions of his interactions with the "miserable" Fossey, whom he calls "good at humiliation and demoralization," show her as mercurial, foul-mouthed, irritable, often drunk, paranoid, controlling, vehemently possessive of "her" mountain gorillas, and extreme in her response to both research competitors and poachers. Nevertheless, the mood is lightened by descriptions of Fowler's peers building community by working together in the field, mocking their boss, and secretly indulging in communal dinners despite Dian's ban on them. Fowler shows incredible warmth in his stories about becoming babysitter and big brother to a rescued baby gorilla and his description of introducing himself to a gorilla group by allowing them to walk all over him, making the emotional whiplash caused by reporting in at the end of the day seem particularly dramatic. Though it's unclear whether Fowler's behind-the-scenes report is intended more to take down a celebrity or to add to her dramatic mythology, in the end he has definitely done both. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

"Who was this woman who could leave behind so many murder suspects?" So asks one-time apprentice Fowler of Dian Fossey, the renowned and supremely difficult primatologist.After a year of working with Fossey, who was murdered in her forest hut in Rwanda in 1985, the author recounts that he returned to the U.S. a little shell-shocked though missing the forest preserve where he worked with her in her study of wild gorilla populations. To his new colleagues at a stateside zoo, he said only, "Dian was kind of difficult to work with." This book is a longindeed, somewhat too longcommentary that puts a point on that observation. Fossey felt embattled by challenges to the fiefdom she had created in the rainforest; poachers were a constant menace to the gorillas that lived there, but it did not help that she seems to have suspected just about every African person she encountered. Her paranoia mounted, as did her fear of black magic, "the stuff of African lore in which someone might put a curse on you." It did not help, either, that she took to drinking heavily and was abrasive and confrontational even when sober. Readers take the point of Fossey's deep unpleasantness early on, so Fowler's repeated assessments get a little tiresome as the catalog builds. More interesting are his notes on fieldwork among the gorillas of the Karisoke Research Center, whose personalities he found less challenging and frightful than his employer's. One highlight involves separating himself from a baby gorilla that had become too attached to him and that reacts with a gigantic scream: "She was having a tantruma meltdown!" Fowler even ventures a little sleuthing as to the identity of Fossey's killer, whom he suggests was someone trusted enough to have come inside her dwelling unsuspected.A little goes a long way here. Of interest, though, to students of field science as well as devotees of Gorillas in the Mist. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The world knows Dian Fossey as the champion of the mountain gorilla, iconic author of Gorillas in the Mist (1983), and one of Louis Leakey's famous students. But how many knew the real Fossey or know how difficult it was to study the gorillas in Rwanda's mountainous terrain? When he was an undergraduate pre-veterinary student, Fowler was chosen to be one of three students to assist Fossey in her research, setting off for her Karisoke camp in early 1980. He now offers a vivid inside view of field research on two equally famous subjects: the gorillas and the notoriously difficult Fossey. As he learns how to follow the gorilla groups and tell them apart, Fowler also learns that the reason he and his fellow undergraduates were chosen was that Fossey had found previous graduate students too threatening to her rule over the research. But the wonder of the gorillas, particularly the baby he helps rear, shines through the tension and drama in the research camp, exacerbated by the volatility of Fossey's alcohol-fueled moods. As Fowler says in his epilogue, Fossey succeeded not because she made the world love her but rather because she made them love the gorillas more.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2018 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Researcher Fowler's memoir covers the year he spent as an undergraduate at Karisoke Research Center, Rwanda, working for famed mountain gorilla behaviorist Dian Fossey. While at first thrilled to be chosen as one of three students to work with Fossey, the author quickly learns the scientist can be unwelcoming and temperamental, offering limited direction to her students and suffering from paranoia. Fowler perseveres despite the challenges, and his first job is caring for a young gorilla, recovered from poachers, that Fossey hopes to return to the wild-their first attempt is a harrowing experience for all. Fowler describes in detail his life and work in the beautiful Virunga Mountains and shares his experiences studying gorillas at Karisoke. VERDICT Vividly descriptive of the landscape, plants, and animals Fowler encounters, this fascinating memoir will appeal to those interested in Dian Fossey, gorilla conservation, and the life of a research scientist.-Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Preface	p. xi
Prologue A View from a Tree	p. xvii
1 My Own Vision of the Wild	p. 1
2 Into Rwanda	p. 17
3 Through the Mille Collines	p. 32
4 Karisoke Welcome	p. 43
5 A Cruel Climb	p. 65
6 Un-Settling In	p. 74
7 Gorilla Communion	p. 88
8 Gorilla Without a Name	p. 102
9 The Empty Cabin	p. 112
10 It's N'gee!	p. 124
11 Lockdown	p. 130
12 A Sad Goodbye	p. 139
13 The Poacher Patrol	p. 146
14 Nyamuragira	p. 154
15 A Man a Plan a Gorilla Dian	p. 172
16 The Bivouac	p. 186
17 A Near-Death Experience	p. 203
18 Siku ya Uhuru!	p. 222
19 Kima Kufa	p. 239
20 A Break in the Clouds	p. 245
21 Dian Returns	p. 265
22 Dian's Friend	p. 282
23 Gorilla Murder	p. 297
24 Nairobi	p. 312
25 Dian's Foe	p. 328
26 Going Bush	p. 339
27 Gray Winter Home	p. 362
Epilogue The Ruins	p. 373
Acknowledgments	p. 377
Index	p. 381

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