The First Time She Saw It That Way - Carol Arnold

She hadn’t looked at it that way, that the jungle was a malevolent place where creatures shrieked in horror and vines strangled everything in its path. Before she came there, before she traveled four thousand miles to the Amazon rain forest to escape her dreary life, she had looked at the jungle as a place of abundance and growth. She had read an article in National Geographic about it once, how cleared plants will re-sprout in a matter of days, and in a few weeks or months you wouldn’t even know they had been missing. That’s how she remembered it anyway, that the jungle represented hope, and more than anything, that’s what she needed for herself.

But the first day out on her jungle trek, her thinking shifted. She was last in line as they struggled through the forest, an Indian wielding a machete first, the Shaman second, Hennessy third, the two Danish rastafarians just ahead. The air closed in around them, so hot and humid she could hardly breath. It was like a great wet blanket had been laid down on top of them, riotously green and smelling of rot. She couldn’t see more than a foot or two on either side, nor above. The further they went, the more she felt like she was disappearing down a long rabbit hole, and that when she emerged on the other side, if there was one, she would come face to face with a great grinning jaguar. It would flash its canines at her, and she would have no doubt as to its intentions.

Choking down her fear, Lynne kept her eyes on the sweaty backs of the two boys ahead of her, thinking at least their long rasta coils were now familiar after two days together at the lodge. But could she trust the boys, or anyone else in the line for that matter? She didn’t know.