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Image: The Baliem Valley was a “magnificent vastness” in Michael Rockefeller’s eyes, and its people were “emotionally expressive.” But Asmat proved to be “more remote country than what I have ever seen.” (President and Fellows of Harvard University; Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology)  Smithsonian Magazine. Public domain. “It’s teeming with shrimp and crabs and fish and clams. In the jungle there are wild pig, the furry, opossumlike cuscus, and the ostrichlike cassowary. And sago palm, whose pith can be pounded into a white starch and which hosts the larvae of the Capricorn beetle, both key sources of nutrition. The rivers are navigable highways. Crocodiles 15 feet long prowl their banks, and jet-black iguanas sun on uprooted trees. There are flocks of brilliant red-and-green parrots. Hornbills with five-inch beaks and blue necks.  And secrets, spirits, laws and customs, born of men and women who have been walled off by ocean, mountains, mud and jungle for longer than anyone knows.” Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, by Mitchell Zuckoff (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=audible&field-keywords=Mitchell+Zuckoff) .   HarperAudio (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_2?ie=UTF8&search-alias=audible&field-keywords=HarperAudio) (Publisher).   Audible Audiobook – Unabridged.        https://www.amazon.com/Lost-in-Shangri-La-audiobook/dp/B004XXVSYW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Mitchell+Zuckoff+shanghai-la&qid=1595811909&s=audible&sr=1-1       On May 13, 1945, twent-f0ur American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s best-selling novel, Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals.  But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend’s shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound.  Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside—a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man—or woman.