Writings By Phil

May 13, 1978

A flight came in today. On board were Dun and Harriet Gordy and their son Michael. They were from the same church as my coworkers, Wally and Barbara Pouncy, and both families came into the mission about the same time. Gordys would be visiting our jungle outpost for a few days.

I was disappointed that I only received one letter on the flight. Okay! I was wishfully hoping for a letter from CJ, but if I did not write her first, I could hardly hope that she would write me back!

However, I was happy because I got my lock blade knife back. I broke my brand new Craftsman knife my second week in the jungle. Sears replaced it free of charge, but I waited almost four months for its return. Dun and Harriet brought it back to me.

I also got a hat with my name on it. Gordys told me it was a gift from my good friends, Jim and Pat Edwards. It was even my favorite color, blue! I was thrilled and humbled by their generosity and their thoughts of me even though I was thousands of miles away from them in the middle the vast Bolivian jungle. 

May 15, 1978

We traveled up river this morning. Dun Gordy went with us in the boat. Our plan was to make it as far as where the logging road crossed the river. Then some of us would walk back checking to see if someone, hopefully a wild Yuqui Indian, had taken any of the gifts we had hung out along the way. We stocked our gift racks with items that would prove useful to the nomads: small cooking pots, spools of thread, a knife or machete, and hands of plantains, or cooking bananas. We brought along a stock of green bananas to replace any fruit that had started to rot.

Navigation was difficult. The river was so low, sunken logs and leafless tree branches were exposed to the sunlight after months of being underwater. There were places where we had to maneuver through a forest of dead tree branches and sometimes pull the boat over half submerged logs. In stretches where the water was too shallow the propeller plowed the river bottom, churning the silt and mixing it into the already brown water.

As we motored upstream we saw a capybara, the world’s largest rodent, jump into the water to escape any perceived threat from us. They have rodent teeth, coarse hair, and webbed skin between their toes that aids them in swimming on the surface or even underwater. They can hold their breath for up to five minutes and can swim six mph.

On the way upriver, I also saw a puma or cougar standing nervously in the mottled shadows of dry season jungle. It stood almost motionless, watching us pass, but a twitch of muscle beneath its slick coat, or a flick of its tail proved it ready to flee into deep forest if it felt the slightest threat from us.

At last, we deemed the river was too low to go all the way to the crossing and turned around, homeward bound. On the way, Dun was the first to spot a large jaguar. It was standing in the open on the trunk of a big tree that was toppled and swallowed by the river months before. When the tree fell, the angry waters had stripped all the leaves and bark from the trunk and branches. The weathered grey color of the wood, now, fully exposed by the low water, was in stark contrast to the black-spotted, orange fur of the giant cat basking in the morning sunlight.   King of the Bolivian jungle, the jaguar truly was a beautiful and majestic animal! We all got a good look at him. Sadly, nobody carried a camera today.

Back at home, I tried to write the day’s events in my journal and play the game of “Life” with Joe Ed Pouncy and Michele Gordy. Matt and I were watching the boys for a few hours so their parents could catch up with each other on current happenings within their families, or whatever else they wanted to talk about. Being young, the boys were rather silly in their playtime. I could not concentrate at writing and play at the same time and my dilemma was driving me crazy. I decided to put away my notebook and pen, ignore the silliness, and concentrate on playing the game. I never was good at multitasking, anyway, but for me, that’s life!

Fin

This story was from the category Tales From Green Hell. If you would like to read more of my experiences in the jungles of Bolivia, please click on that link below.

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• Uncategorized (1)