Rain

Rain. It just never stopped here. And it was not the kind that you could bear; it was the kind that beat you down.

We had started at The Mouths of the Amazon on a small river boat. There were three of us.

We thought the Amazon was one big long river. “Just follow the river!”

All was well for the first 30 minutes. But we came up to an intersection worse than any highway junction I’d ever seen.  We picked whichever route we thought would take us straight.

Three days after that we ran aground due to carelessness and we were stranded in the middle of the jungle. Snakes, spiders and all the other things you see on TV. It was like a nightmare.

So we hiked.

Sixth day in, the young girl who had convinced us to take her on the trip had hurt her leg quite badly, so she couldn’t walk anymore. I tried to carry her, but we were moving too slowly. And we were running out of food.

So I went on alone while the remaining woman stayed with the girl to look after her. I told them to stay near the river so that I could find them again once I had gotten help.

It took days before I found anything. Tired, hungry, scraped and bruised, I stumbled into an Amazonian camp. Through drawing in the sand, I managed to get them to take me back up river on their small boats.

We searched for days. Eventually the Amazonians gave up, so I convinced them to let me take one of their canoes. And, alone, I searched harder. Where was my wife? My daughter?

I found the place where I had left them waiting. But all that was left was my wife’s wedding ring.

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