April 1979 Rio Vibora
Sunlight filters through the trees casting a greenish hue overall. A tincture of night hangs in the air, yet it is morning. Our trail is littered with leaves decaying in the shade of the giants who dropped them. Other giants slain by wind or disease rot with them, their limbs broken, their great trunks slowly assimilating into the humus of death. A bird whistles, breaking the silence of the forest, then nothing is heard but the soft plodding of our tennis shoes on wet loaves.
Suddenly, the stillness is shattered by terrible blasts of rushing air. I look through incredulous eyes as giant wings climb out of the shadows and swoop down the trail towards us. I look, but do not comprehend. It is too big, too awesome! As its coming closes the gap between us, my heart pounds within my chest, and a little voice inside my head screams, “Run! Run!” Instead, my feet are planted in the dirt. The winged monster climbs higher and higher, the great white wings beating the foliage on both sides of the path. High over our heads, they crash through a small hole in the green ceiling and disappear into cerulean skies beyond. Lesser shapes, dressed in black, except for bald heads and naked necks, wing their way up and perch on bouncing branches, spewing vulgarities from cruel beaks–such fowl language!
A waft of acridity fills my nostrils and brings remembrance to my brain. The remains of a boar defile our path. The winged ogres are vultures! Our coming interrupted their lunch. We look without stopping. The pig’s head is all that is left. It stares up at me with eyeless sockets. Lips pulled back in death sneer at me. Its dirty teeth and stained tusks make it look more sinister. My feet blaze a trail through a thousand bussing flies and hurry on.
We pause at a gift rack. White streamers hang lifeless in the stagnant air. The spool of thread bears testimony that the Indians have not come. Our path skirts an old riverbed, then drops into its depths. It is dry, but deep with leaves. Twisted vines, cut from our trail weeks before, run through the leaves with us, their faces glowing, garnished with chartreuse colored moss. White rags, again, materialize out of the gray and green of the jungle, A small knife dangles, dead on a streamer–no Yuqui has come giving it the life of his hand. We walk in shade, but there is no coolness. My body melts in the stifling heat. My shirt sticks to my back and clings to my arms.
A slight breeze, her breath but a whisper, dances through the uppermost leaves. The giants laugh with glee and greedy limbs catch her and toss her above their heads. It is futile to wish that she might walk beside us, blowing a kiss or caressing sweat soaked brows with cool fingers.
The carpet of leaves has become torn and ragged. The giants have poked their feet through it and try to trip us with their toes. Long tentacles run out of the shadows and climb the legs of the giants, leaping from their arms, stringing noose and net to catch the unwary. They lock arms, gripping everything in sight, tendrils hanging on with a death hold. We stumble down the trail, my machete keeping the vines at bay. The stubble of brush and sapling threaten the soles of our shoes, mud tries to swallow our ankles. Our minds plot our course, and with flying leaps and staccato step we pick our way to the next gift. The piece of cloth in a plastic bag hangs unopened.
Our trail runs on, but we do not. We return, wondering where the Yuqui have gone. On two occasions, in February and early March, they took gifts, and now? We console ourselves with thoughts of next time. The sun is almost to its zenith, spraying rays of sweltering heat over all creation. We stop and stand on the riverbank looking across at five months of work, two houses, tin roofed with gray palm sides, stand in the open. Around then, the clearing is pox-marked with stumps trying to regain the dignity of their calling. Their sides burgeon and reach for the sky. Yucca and young banana trees wave from afar. We are home!
I think of the Yuqui somewhere behind the high green wall of the jungle, away from our trails, away from our gifts and worst of all away from God. Oh, that some-day soon they might follow the trail of Jesus, taking His gift of salvation, and come home to God’s house!
The End
More Photos And Commentary
We checked our gift trails two or three times a week to see if the Yuqui had taken any of our gifts. Gifts were often small knives, machetes, cooking pots, spools of thread and later, when our banana plants were producing fruit, we sometimes hung bananas for the Indians to take. Our hope was that our gifts would not only show the wild Yuqui we wanted to be friends, but that they would follow the trial hoping to find more gifts and thus, arrive back to our camp, where a full stalk of bananas hung on a gift rack at the edge of our clearing.
The Yuqui had few worldly possessions. They made bows and arrows, some up to 8 feet long, hammocks, and baby slings. These were the only things they kept long term. They made backpacks, and fans to use to start their next fire from palm leaves. These were disposable items and were abandoned when no longer needed or when they moved camp. Machetes and axes and cooking pots were coveted items, and the only way they got those was to risk being shot and steal them from the colonists, or to get them from the missionaries.
It amazes me what the human mind recalls in seconds of excitement or stress. My mother read us a story when I was 4 or 5 years old about a giant bird that would carry off children, probably ones who had disobeyed their parents. I had not thought of it in years, and don’t remember much about it, but there was a line in the story that read, “Run! Run!” It is the line that popped into my head when that bird took wing and flew down the trail towards us. I’ve Googled the story, but can’t find it, but there are stories from different cultures of birds that can carry away children. I guess Grimes Fairytales missed this one!
Writings By Phil 
Leave a comment