SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT MORE MARLBOROS

The top two thirds are leaves, the trunks are below that. Big rigid clusters stick right up out of the mass, the others droop over. There is shade under the trees, and in the darkness there, huts can be seen. A cloud of smoke billows amid the wooden stripes, cooking fire backlit by the dawn light.

Languages and dialects morph as you go upriver.  And water is the easiest way to get here. But you know that it would be madness to stop.
Something is wrong, there is too much silence.
There are parts here where the PC has gone over to the side of the loggers, and some villages bear permanent witness to that transformation.
Clean upstanding Christian boys from the Cag valley become different here. When they finally go back north again, their wives and sweethearts help them dream.

The colours are intense. Yellows, orange, green in a hundred dark shades, brown, and black.
Grey where the smoke rises above the trees.
Remarkably, there is no red.
There should be.

What expensive American equipment does is miraculous. Neat lines like zippers, or the perforations along which you might tear the scene apart.
It all looks frightfully clean.


In silence we head further up the stream. Praise be, we make scant sound, and hear even less. A few miles further on the heat drives thoughts from our minds and the temple pillars of the forest beckon with cool black shade.
But do not stop. Not now. This isn't a good place. Still too moist.
There's a whup whup whup from a long way away.

We'll know when we get to regular plantings of coconut palms. Distant fires are friendlier there. They might even have tinned fish.

There's crud on my face.
First shave in five days.

No more aspirin.


1985.



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