Prompt Entry 3

On one rainforest excursion, I had set up my tent and slept adjacently to a biological field station in a very pristine swathe of lowland jungle known as Corcovado. The night was very humid, and I slept only in a thin pair of shorts. There were many sounds in the jungle night, but one grows accustomed to them anyway and eventually I fell asleep. I awoke sometime later to the sound of the most horrific shrieks. They were not quite human, but clearly belonged to animal being killed in the night. I felt as if electricity had surged through my body. I was suddenly wide awake, and I needed to investigate the screams.

I strapped on my teva sandals, and slipped out of my tent. Although my boots would have been a safer option, considering there are some venomous snakes like the fer-de-lance and bushmaster that are more active at night in those areas, and feet are particularly vulnerable to them, I was in such a hurry to investigate that I only had time for the tevas.

I was practically naked, robed in only my thin blue shorts and sandals, plus my flashlight, and like that I set out on a trail I had explored earlier in the day that seemed closest to where the screams had come from, which had by now ceased. I suspected that they belonged to some primate, four different species of which occurred there, and were quite common. No doubt the aggressor was some jungle cat, of which there were also many present.

There was little or no moon, and of course no artificial light, so the night was almost impenetrable. The way my flashlight, which was quite powerful (I'd brought it for these occasions), only illuminated a small area further magnified the grandness of the forest. Death was fresh in the air. Everything was hot and humid, and in truth I was quite exposed to an environment that, while not being directly hostile, is not without its dangers, especially in the night.

I searched in the canopy with the light, hoping to illuminate some foreign eyes that belonged to the killer. I was fairly certain I stood near the spot of the monkey's death. The trees were several stories tall, as one might expect, and loomed over me. They were not menacing, but they were imposing figures.

Not seeing anything, I decided my final hope was to conceal myself in the darkness, and perhaps the cat would be lured into exposing itself. I turned off the light. It was incredible how quickly the darkness swept over and all around me, completely enveloping everything. It evoked the strongest sense of insignificance. I couldn't see anything at all, and the little bit of hum and distant noises I could hear only added to the intensity of the moment.

I consider myself a fairly intrepid visitor of the forests, but it was impossible to not feel some fear in that moment. There is something incredibly unnerving about the sensation of one's eyes being wide open and seeing only black. It was primal human fear, and although I was not overcome by it, I felt it keenly. It was exposure. It was vulnerability. It was biology. Truly, it was genetic memory.

I tried my hardest to count to ten before turning the light back on and searching again, but I always fell short the few times I tried it. The darkness was too much, too debilitating.

I did not see the cat, did not see anything at all, but the experience ranks highly among my most cherished rainforest memories. After much contemplation, I've come to understand that the reason for that is because of the magnitude of my exposure, my vulnerability, which was perhaps never higher in a wild place. To some degree, my actions were a little reckless, although I do not think terribly so.

By exposing myself, I achieved an incredible degree of intimacy with a location I'm terribly enamored of. Just like love, it seems vulnerability is a prerequisite to any sort of real connection to a place.