Writings By Phil

Thoughts On This And That

Foster’s Folly

September 30, 1978

To avoid the bad jungle, we walked the riverbank. The sides were steep and coated with sticky mud that clung to our shoes and made walking difficult. If that was not frustration enough, waist-high cane grass grew from the gook, impeding our progress even further. It was grass with a heavy stem brandishing blades that could cut our hands if we were not careful. We walked a couple hundred yards in the muck and the grass before giving it up as a bad idea.

Alan had read some survival books, recently. He shared with us plans on how to make a canoe from tree back. We were bummed out from our bad experience on the riverbank and hacking our way through low lying jungle did not appeal to us, either. Paddling down the river sounded like a luxury cruise. As crazy as it sounded we got excited about making a canoe.

We located a balsam tree close to the river. It was one of the biggest ones I had seen, but was it big enough for what we wanted? It was hard, just using machetes, to strip the bark from the trunk in one piece, That was especially true at the twelve foot mark which was way above my head!

The instructions said to build a fire and hold the bark over the heat. Perhaps that was to make it more pliable and easier to mold into the shape of a canoe. I did not know, but we did it, anyway. With a knife point we drilled holes across both ends and close to the edge. Using binder twine, we sewed the bark together to make the ends of the canoe.

We cut tall saplings from the jungle to make the gunwales and cross pieces to hold the canoe open. When all that was done, we packed clay into the ends to make our craft water tight.

The canoe was finished! It floated, but to our disappointment it would only float one of us. We set up camp for the night. In the morning, we would decide a new strategy to take us to our goal.

My supper consisted of a can of sardines and some crackers. Eating that was the closest thing I had to a real meal all day. I had snacked on handfuls of raisins and peanuts, mixed with cake and cookie crumbs, the rest of the time. Really nourishing! Yea, right!

After eating, I went swimming in the river to clean up a bit. The matiwi were ferocious! That was a biting insect that was smaller than a mosquito, but bigger than a no-see-um. All three would suck a body dry if given the chance! Their bites itched to high heaven, but that of the matiwi left a little blood blister on the skin. I hung my jeans and shirt over a bush to dry, knowing in the humidity that would never happen over night, and crawled into my tent.

It was only 5:30 and still a long ways to dark. I didn’t care. I just wanted to escape the bugs. I already had little purple blisters all over my body. My skin itched and I feared any more bites would drive me insane! Early to bed also revealed that I had picked up three hitchhikers during the day’s hike. There was enough daylight left for me to see and remove three tiny ticks from my skin. To boot, I didn’t have to use my flashlight to see the notebook in which I wrote my journal entries.

The worst thing about the whole trip was that our clothes were always wet. I carried only two changes. I could change tonight, wear my dry ones tomorrow. That would be nice, but tomorrow night all my clothes would be wet, and worse, one would be souring inside my backpack. This nomadic life was not for sissies!. No wonder the Indians went naked! Ha!

October 1, 1978

Early in the morning, each of us sorted through our packs picking the barest of accoutrements needed for a two day hike. We had to decide how much weight we were willing to carry over difficult terrain, and what we were we willing to give up of the few comforts we carried in our packs.

We stashed our packs in the woods and made small bundles of what we would carry. I took three tins of sardines, raisins, peanuts, hard candy, my toothbrush and my llama wool poncho to use as a blanket at night. We took one four-man tent to share. It would be crowded, but if we divided the weight between us, not too heavy for any of us to carry our fair share. I left my sleeping bag, extra change of clothes, camera, journal and everything I held dear that was with me. I had to keep reminding myself that the separation was only for two days!

Traipsing through low jungle still didn’t appeal to any of us. We decided to try the riverbank, again. Alan and I started walking. Matt had other plans. He wanted to paddle our one-man canoe down the river, He gingerly settled himself into it and started to paddle. Almost immediately the canoe sprung a leak! He quickly pulled it to a sandbar and emptied the water. He found more clay and patched the leak. Barely had he started down river again when water started pouring in from another washed out area of clay. Clay patches did not make our homemade canoe river worthy! He abandoned it on the sandbar and joined us in the mud and tall grass of the riverbank.

Like yesterday, the bank was just as steep and just as slippery. We slipped in the mud and tripped over the grass. Carrying lighter packs was not making it easier for us to walk! All that sliding and twisting was putting undue stress on my bad knee. I could already feel the strain building inside of it. If it started to swell and became painful, I wondered if I could limp the five or six hours back to Puerto Grether.

None of us like walking the riverbank. Fortunately for all of us, especially my knee, Alan came up with a different plan. We carried with us a topographical map of the area. It was already marked with the coordinates of where we found the nomads on our helicopter survey. If we could determine exactly where we presently were in relation to that, we could count this difficult excursion a success. So, we began walking, looking at the map and comparing the curves of the printed river to the actual river. In just a few bends, we knew exactly where we were. Our survey was over!

On our way back to where our backpacks were hidden, we left the slopped riverbank to walk on sandbars where available. Of course the sandbars switched sides of the river every time the bend in the waterway changed direction. If the water was shallow we walked across. If it was too deep, it was back to the riverbank for us until the next sandbar. It was easier walking in the sand. In wading across from beach to beach, we got soaked to our waist. Nothing like wet jeans to enhance or a long day of hiking!

We refilled our backpacks with the stuff in our little two-day bundles. I was asked to set the pace and lead the way back to Port. I paused and gave a final look around our campsite and down the river. On the sandbar, way downstream where Matt had abandoned it, was the canoe we had made. From the distance, it looked forlorn and out of place. Maybe if the river was kind to it, come next high water, it would float down the tributaries all the way to the Amazon River! Maybe, but I doubted it!

The canoe was fun to make, but in the end, those hours of labor were wasted. Alan’s idea might have worked had there been a bigger balsam tree close to the river. There wasn’t, and for our failed endeavor, we had to razz him a bit by christening our little watercraft, “Foster’s Folly!”

Without regret, I led the way down the trail, dreaming of a big bottle of cold pop at the Pension Beni. We made good time and walked into town a little after two o’clock. A soccer game was in progress in the schoolyard and quite a number of tourist were visiting for the day. People stared at us. Dirty and bedraggled as we were, they probably thought we were crazy gringos! Maybe they were right!

More Tales From Green Hell

Something Different

Phil Burns

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