Category: Tales From Green Hell 1978 -1979
-
Melancholy Musings On A Perfect Afternoon
Before dusk I walked to the end of the airstrip. The jungle was quiet, but come darkness, the frogs and night bugs would be belting out nocturnal songs with no attempt to sing in two-part harmony, an all-night concert of dissonance! I liked the quiet, but I liked the discordance of the night, too. Our jungle…
-
Home Alone
After dark, I went river hunting in the boat with Paul Short. It was a beautiful night with a billion stars looking down on us as we slowly paddled backwards up the river. We both sat in the bow so that our weight would lift the stern out of the water, giving us less drag…
-
Home Sweet Home
The night was long! For every blood sucker killed, two more took its place, and every mosquito I smashed was full of blood. My blood! The night was too hot to retreat under cover of my sleeping bag. The persistent buzzing about my head, and the knowledge that I was only feeling a small percentage…
-
Homeward Bound
It was noon when we arrived, and Wally Pouncy already had a meal prepared for us. After eating, we dismantled the camp, loaded our gear into the trailer and headed for the sawmill. Wally was driving and when we got to the river, he eased it down the bank and into the water. As it…
-
And Solitaire’s The Only Game In Town. . .
I did not know where communication broke down, but our best laid plans went quickly up in smoke! All our smog making stuff was thrown on the fire prematurely. There was lots of black pollution spiraling upwards, but the plane was still too far away for the pilot to see it. We kept the fires…
-
Snake In The Grass
Later in the morning, I was writing letters at our crude table when I heard the rustle of leaves. Something was making quite a stir in the weeds in front of me. All of a sudden a little frog broke clear from the grass and started making tracks towards me. Had it not been sprinkling…
-
Wilderness Wanderings
Late in the day, we made camp on the bank of a little swamp. As we built a fire to cook rice for our supper, a tapir walked across the road on the other side of the water. Its meat added to our diet would have tasted good, but we had no way to preserve…
-
If A Tree Falls In The Jungle, And . . .
Sometime in the night, I was still reading by flashlight when I was startled by the mighty rushing sound of a large tree falling close by, maybe on top of us! It was dark and I couldn’t see anything in the blackness outside. I felt trapped by my mosquito net and helpless to run. It…
-
How To Dispatch Mosquitoes When Bored!
I decided to change how I dispatched the bodies of the mosquitoes I killed. Rather than dropping them on the floor, I pinched the carcass gingerly between my fingers and held it up the hole in the log and waited. It wasn’t long until one of the worker ants grabbed my offering and pulled it…
-
Its A Wonderful Life???
About two kilometers from the buggy, we were surprised by meeting two Bolivians coming from the other direction. They carried machetes and one of them carried a 16 gauge shotgun that had seen better days. If fired one more time, it looked like the barrel would split wide open, exploding, and maybe killing, or maiming…
Writings By Phil 