Just below the summit, I settled down with my back to a boulder to pull out the binoculars and enjoy a slow pan. Tracking quietly over the unpopulated rough, I almost missed them—a small flock of miniature brown owls with enormous yellow eyes. Guarding the mouths of their burrows, they stared right at me, unblinking, with a resolute intensity, a glare to keep predators at bay. It was a fantastic standoff, a visual showdown.

With no shade to interfere, the descending sun exposed every feather, the ear tufts as they swiveled to listen to me, the tawny yellow claws. Their shanks were a creamy mahogany, the bodies a duff golden brown. If I were to name them, I would call them prairie dog owls since at first glance they looked exactly like the rocks they live among. It was wonderful just to be in this strange company at sunset on the coastline of America.

The horizon to the north became a white, wet, rumpled tin foil, a hammered sheen that magnified and scattered the horizontal rays of the now red sun. There was one flame dancing in every wave. And the dimming of the evening light didn't quite calm down the world here on the cliffs among the owls—if anything the night seemed to amplify the otherworldly sound. One by one the stars emerged, and soon they too were jumping on the face of the water, abundant as the whitecaps, like fireflies a million miles away. It was Nietzsche who prophesied that the earth itself would become a place of healing. There is a deep emotional cure to be had out here, far from the lights of any town, where, even at sea level, the Milky Way seemed to be an extension of the blown salt spray. Time didn't so much pass as dissolve.

The edge of town is where the poor people live. For the most part, they are farmers and fishermen, but many take advantage of the seasonal migration of European windsurfers and other tourists; they run little cement-porch restaurants. I pulled up short at a café with precisely one table. The stereo was blasting Bob Marley into the darkness: "My feet is my only carriage." I sat down and ordered precisely one beer. Before I could pay for it, mysteriously, Senhor Ramos drove by in the washed Land Rover. The café belonged to one of his friends. He introduced me. Smiles. Good feelings. The beer was free. Whenever I travel, I get this impression: Total strangers are your true family. Your family is everybody in the world.

In the morning, everywhere people were raking, sawing, fixing things. Fishermen stood near their beached boats, talking about this very day. One or two of them soundlessly set sail.

Senhor Ramos carried "Imagens de Sattélites," and combined them with tide charts to determine the best times to travel up the coast. The images looked like slides of human tissue under the microscope. They showed the green puckerbrush agricultural plains of the Nordeste, which are fissured with blue rivers: Rio Ubatuba, Rio Camurupim, Rio São Miguel, Rio Parnaíba. Also visible were the white fringes of sand, a substantial foam riding the long, sweeping wave of the land, beaches wide enough to be photographed from space. "Senhor Anthony," said Senhor Ramos, "they were formed four hundred million years ago. No matter what, they will be here four hundred million more after we are gone."