I must admit that I found this piece quite difficult to read, never mind the tiny font it is presented in. That, I could do something about. But the account drifts in space without reason and loses much of its effect as a result. The reader is thrown into the journey towards somewhere (we're never told where) for reasons that are not stated. This makes it hard to care what happens.
I feel you need some sort of short introduction to explain why you are in this place and what you hope to achieve, before launching into descriptions of place. If the piece is to have meaning for a reader, you have to establish some sort of link with him from the outset. As it is, nothing is known of the narrator or the purpose in the journey and its object.
The piece is, essentially, one description after another and it becomes tedious in its lists of adjectives and metaphors. You pile too many of these on the reader so that he is left with a picture so overburdened that it results in confusion. Tone it down. I know you're trying to get across the feelings the place has for you but you'll not achieve that by pouring out too much description all at once. Just as great tragedies need occasional moments of comedy to allow the reader breathing space, so description needs time for action, reason, and reflection.
The trick is to be selective in description. Don't try to desribe the whole scene in one go. Pick out important or vivid details and make them stand out by being surrounded by your thoughts and actions. The sounds of the night may be like a symphony (although, to be honest, that seems a little over the top to me), but it's the hoot of the unseen owl that really provides atmosphere to the scene. You can mention the crickets and cicadas but leave out the orchestra and go straight to the owl. Throw in some unusual words for the sound of an owl - we all know that an owl hoots - use words like dark haunting in the night, the low boom of an owl's call, something like that, to establish atmosphere and feeling. Find the unexpected words and you'll keep up the interest of the reader.
What I'm really saying is the old "show, don't tell" adage - don't tell us how we're supposed to feel, make us feel it. And the way to do that is fewer words but words that count because they're unexpected.
Then we come to the problem of tense. For something like this, an account of something you've experienced, the present tense is quite valid but more difficult to achieve than the past tense. Unless you're sure you can do it without errors, don't attempt it. And you make several errors during the course of the piece, swapping into the past tense without reason, sometimes in the middle of sentences. It's very distracting for a reader. I've made some notes that point out a few of these errors and I'll list these at the end, but you really need to throw the text into a grammar checker (try a free one like Grammarly) to catch all of them.
My advice generally would be to stick with the past tense for most things. We're so used to it that we're less likely to make inadvertent mistakes with it. There are situations where you can suddenly revert to present tense, in scenes that you want to make more immediate and exciting, for instance, but it should be a good reason for doing it and not too often or too lengthy.
So the two main problems are overdescription and errors in tense. Apart from that the piece has potential. It's hard to identify exactly why it is so while the problems remain unfixed, however. I don't want to discourage you from writing but I have to point out faults where they exist. Understand that some judicious cutting of adjectives will help enormously and give you a very different piece. At that point it will become possible to decide what exactly you're trying to achieve with the account. If it's for public consumption, you need more of a goal to be communicated; if it's just for you, it's fine as it is.
Notes:
There is large pieces of rusty steel littering the ground. should be "There are..."
The tall honey-colored grasses sways in what are almost waves and seemed to go on almost forever. "Sways" should be "sway" as you usde the plural "grasses" - but note how you switch to the past tense in "seemed to go on..."
The river is split apart then is met with streams and are obstructed by islands. More confusion of singular and plural - the river is the subject of the sentence and so it should be "is obstructed..."
The symphony in my ears has grown louder and there were new rhythms and melodies... The change from present tense to past in "there were new rhythms..."
the mystic creatures as they brake the surface of the water In this context, the word should be "break" and not "brake."
 
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Beholden
Nominated for Quills Best Reviewer, 2023
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