Pierre
points out that all those blue specks of light are the eyes of spiders
catching our headlamps; thousands of them on the edge of the trail.
And then we find this highway of ants, these are the ones called leaf-cutters,
that carry leaves fifty times their weight down a network of trees and
branches and logs. Millions of them collaborate to lay these leaves
into a honeycomb structure deep underground. They cultivate the leaves
to grow a fungus, which they eat.
The
queen, she has wings. The worker ants, who go out and do the dirty work,
are prey to a fly which hatches its eggs on the ant's neck. When hatched,
the flys eat through the ant's brain. So in response to this, the leaf-cutters
came up with a subspecies called soldier ants. These are really tiny
ants that hang out on the worker ant's neck. When the flies come to
nest, the soldier ants fight them off with their pincers.
Getting
to sleep in the jungle requires a lot of beer. So, after an unsuccessful
look for jaguars, that is what we do; drink ourselves silly until we
can lie on the hot, moist canvas of our tents and pass out.
We
decide that in morning, while still dark, each would wake and look for
the jaguar on our own. The few remaining jaguars have been so hunted
by man, that they have evolved quickly to learn to avoid humans. Three
is overbearing in noise and smell. I wake in a sweat, and leave in a
random direction, with my headlamp glaring through the fog and fireflies.
In morning, the ocellated turkeys - the sole domesticated farm animal
of the Mayans - are babbling in an uproar, enough for a troop of Kinkajou
- a type of rainforest raccoon, to miss my presence.
When they finally do see me, their escape is a racket, which pisses
the turkeys off, and then one of the kinkajou jumps on a branch that
cracks and breaks. The branch goes down a cliff and crashes into a swamp.
The kinkajou jumps to the next tree, and the turkeys flip out. And then
I step on a snake. He's pissed too. And now I am. By now the turkeys
have slipped through the canopy and put a whole mess of tanagers and
mluk-mluks into an uproar. And then I wonder, where am I? And why did
I forget my water and deet?
I
theorize that perhaps I had stepped off the trail, and onto the route
to Victoria Peak - a three day hike best suited to a guided expedition.
I don't want to turn around - to face that snake. I decide not to sweat
it, and just kind of walk slowly and listen for the jaguar.
The jungle is
not green - the jungle is green from above the canopies, where nobody
can see anyway. The jungle is the colors of the shadow of green - yellowish
and black, gray and brown and blue. It is dark, and wet, but most of
all it is labyrinthine. It is complex, like the human mind - unregulated,
twisting. A jungle is free thought on caffeine, and looking through
a maze of trees and vines, I cannot help but make the jungle an allegory
for life - it seems complicated, like everything that goes through our
minds and the actions we take because of them. But life and desires
are simple, no matter how hard we make our lives - you know; insurance,
gossip, marital affairs, back-talk, scams - we yearn always for just
the basics; love, good food, comfort and accomplishment. But getting
there is a labyrinthine process, labored with the foibles that make
the world interesting.
When
I return to camp, I notice Vance's back; a constellation of bites, still
fresh with droplets of blood. It's Vance's turn to drive, which means
I have to deal with that giant spider under the floor mat. We take off
for Placencia, my feet crossed over the dashboard.
Vance
proposes, "What if the answer to life is just living a series of
pleasure gathering events? And why not, right? What if we're all just
pleasure-gatherers hurtling towards paradise?" Pierre, who seemed
to see life as a series of sights and investigations would say; 'the
pygmys in Cameroon are quite fascinating!', and might indeed live life
this way. Was he living the answer to life?
The
jungle road to Placencia quickly turns to coastal savannah; a place
of hawks and foxes, oddly shaped trees, and a massive lizard which runs
about on its hind legs. Because it can run across water, it is called
the Jesus Lizard.
Bromeliads grace a buttressed trunk
