June & Anne: Travel Writing - The Wilderness

One morning in the middle of the jungle, I opened my eyes and looked towards the treetops. As I got up, a high pitched scream reached my ears and I ran towards it. A young girl had apparently fallen into the river, and she was fighting to get up. I ran towards the slope above her and saw her using a screwdriver in the attempt to climb the slope. I rapidly grabbed my ‘rambo’ knife and cut down a liana which I tossed down to her in order to help her up. As she tumbled on shore, I said ‘smile, smile it makes you look more pretty’ to lighten the mood. She looked at me and said ‘GIVE WAY, no trespassing here mate!’ Confused, I started cutting my shirt into pieces with my scissors in order to make some bandages for her leg, as she had cut herself badly on a rock in the fall.

I wanted to break the bad mood by asking her where she was from and what her name was, while I handed her a Pepsi from my bag. She said her name was Lucidia Anseris and that she lived in the jungle not far from here. Though she wanted to go home, I requested that she would come to my hotel, the Quaker, in order to get some medical attention. As Lucidia started to get up I said ‘wait, I have to keep left to support you’. After walking for a while she got impatient, and kept asking me ‘are we there yet?’ and I started ignoring her and thinking of the good book, the lovely Bones, which was lying in my backpack in the hotel room waiting to be read.

Suddenly, a huge albatross came charging at us and she told me not to be scared, which was near impossible as I had a phobia for birds. In order to calm my mind, Lucidia started speaking about her parrot Puppy Love, which loved eating red onions and fingerlings. Weird parrot I thought to myself, but maybe it just reflected her personality, like dogs and their masters. Taking a closer look, she was dressed in a t-shirt which read ‘no smoking’ on the front and ‘dead end’ on the back, in her hair she had attached eagle feathers, and around her neck, she had a necklace made of garlic, which by the way smelled very bad.

Finally, The Quaker appeared in front of us, and I brought Lucidia to the manager - the local medicine man. With no anesthesia, I bought her two 10% beers in order to dull the pain while he stitched her up. As the evening came, she was getting sober and reassured me that she was doing fine and walked home. The next morning I was going home to New York, and as I arrived at JFK airport, I spotted the familiar guards with GLOCKS in their belt and at home my parents were playing checkers.