March 5-25 1993 / South Florida and Belize: Looking for Bitterns, or What's Hidden in Plain Sight
Wandering the Tropical Trails of Florida and Belize
Part 4 - At Chan Chich
22 March - Chan Chich Lodge - Near the Guatemalan border
Early morning and I've seen the group off with no regrets. I'm a little nervous about my plans the next few days, how it will really work out and how I'll do, and cope.
I also wonder a lot about my ability and interest in doing this for work. Well, actually, I know I can, that I have the skills, but do I have the emotional and social stamina? My guess is--oh, I don't have one. But I'll give it a try. [Some years later I did indeed become a tour director/guide.]
I have been very good about writing, on this trip. Even though the writing, like the trip, is diffuse and sketchy, I've done it. Made time for it.
I shared my reading on my porch yesterday with a large iguana. We regarded one another gravely. He is used to, and indifferent to, my kind, though not I to his.
The stiff palm leaves tick and tack, ticketty-tacketty, in a light breeze. They are wonderfully handsome plants, cleverly adapted for their difficult life of wind and water.
Later. A fine day. The very best part, I have to say, was flying here. I the sole passenger, sitting next to the pilot (who would have imagined I'd get to do this twice, once in Papua New Guinea)--in a tiny plane with room for a total of four people. We took off as easily as a butterfly, floating gently into the sky. I sat in silence, filled with a deeply kinesthetic joy. We flew over jungle with not a road in it.
So here I am in another of these strange enclaves Americans are so good at making, all over the world. And Brits. I have yet another spacious thatched house to myself, this one built amid the grass-covered ruins of Chan Chich, now manicured and to some extent tamed. As soon as I got here I went out for three hours, creeping in whispers through the forest with guide Gilberto, who found me a lot of birds, several white-tailed deer, and showed me the termites' tunnels on trees, and the termites. He also touched me a good deal more than was necessary. And I finally got a good look at a butterfly--brown, with blue stripes on the hindwings, and some red spots.
Then I walked by myself, after lunch (where I'd found some attractive people I'd met in the airport in Miami). I saw little, not being good at it, but I did hear howler monkeys in the distance. I returned as the sun lowered, all my senses at highest pitch.
A night walk tonight, and early morning tomorrow.
But I'm just as glad the time's coming to an end. I think I've learned a lot, my body's learned a lot, but I'm ready to go home.
23 March - Chan Chich Lodge
A good evening, last night. Much pleasant company. It's a relief to be away from the group.
In the dark we crept through the jungle. Every little while our guide turned off his light and we waited in deep silence, hearing our own breathing and digestive workings, the sounds of dropping fruits, frogs, insects, owls. Waiting, hoping to efface our presence and thus permit some creature to approach.
Our guide spotlighted a pauraque nearly at ground level. By keeping the light shining in her eyes, we were able to come gently closer and closer to her. She cocked her head from side to side, trying to understand what was happening. At last, we within a yard of her, she flew softly away.
The concentration of sensory attentiveness and watchfulness because of the unknown--this is exhausting. I must look, listen, and smell for creatures I want to see, I must be aware of where I put my feet and hands, I try to learn what the guide attends to--and because not only it is all new but vastly, vastly more complex than anything I have walked in before, the amount of energy required is enormous. And the expending of this energy, seductive beyond words.
In the night, the roaring howler monkeys awoke me, and everyone here. They roared for a long time, quite nearby.
I think I am learning a lot. Although I'm not very good at spotting birds, I have learned well, I think, what to look for: the slight intentioned movements of leaves and branches, cryptic colorations, fruiting trees. Bittern habitats.
I have also learned to my surprise that the forest, or jungle, is actually a quiet place. The heavy silence is ideal for framing the slightest sounds, of leaves constantly falling, bats chirping as they eat fruit, animals moving, drinking, eating. Lizards scuttling.
I have learned about the leaf litter, how leaves are falling all the time, quickly recycling the nutrients of the landscape. I have read of this, but now I see it in front of me on the trail.
This morning I went out early with Gilberto again. But except for birds, we saw nothing. I mean, no other animals. I knew he wanted to find me a cat or some other large animal. And they are indeed here. But I guess I won't see one.
Last night, outside the main building waiting for my night walk, I saw something large ambling across the path. A tarantula, I thought, and put my light on it. It was very large, four or five inches across, with a reddish orange abdomen. It sat in the light, lifting a leg now and then. Finally it contracted its legs, froze for a second, and took off.
24 March 1993 - Belize City
Suddenly, suddenly without warning, after I had given up hoping, yesterday, my last full day here, it all dropped into place. How did this happen?
I found my very own tarantula. He was in his den in a hole at the base of a tree, three quarters out, large, hairy, dark. He had what seemed to be a large white rock in his front legs, and as I peered closer, he pulled it into the den. Maybe it was an egg case. We watched each other for a long time.
At the river's edge, I ventured onto a log. For a long time I stood and watched a basilisk lizard, dark with yellow stripes, hunting. He was long and beautiful, with large feet and alert eyes. I could see, but he could not, a spider on the other side of his log...
For some reason I can't seem to write of things now. The other lizards the colors of leaves, the trot-trot-trot that Gilberto told me means "An animal is there", the feathers of the captured turkey, killed by a jaguar--and I in that place of the cat--my very own dusky walk with Gilberto, met by chance, who says he is not afraid in the jungle, anywhere, any time.
The exhaustion of senses.
On the night walk, the coral snake in the grass, scorpions on the road, as astounding mass of army ants, from which the scorpion fled.
Scents of musky invisible or unseen animals.
A look back the way I'd come, and a sudden understanding of it as a temple, a sacred place. I greet it thus, finally having found it.
Gilberto brings me to the road, leaves me, a brief touch of fingertips. I must be alert to my own words and body, so as not to encourage him.
I feel totally saturated now. I hardly slept. Much activity took place just outside my little house. This morning I enjoy finding the faintest indicators: a flower, a small orange fruit on the decking.
Trying to see birds this morning, and the not-seen but heard deer, I filled up to overflowing with the mystery of that which is hidden in plain view.
Yesterday, creeping by the river, I heard the wind rise swiftly. Then came a hard rain, white curtain of water drawn over the trees seen through the green curtain all around me. Visible curtains, invisible curtains. In joy I stood within the forest in the rain, rained upon like the other animals, connected at last.
Why am I drawn to natural history, asked the woman at cocktails the other night. I am sensual, analytical--and I wish to know that of which I am a part.
The leaves and branches and fronds lie athwart each other. When one moves, they must all move. It's an elegant metaphor for the jungle.
Two little boys are playing ball, a few houses over. The Mayans played ball here too. I can't hear their voices, though. But now I hear the voice of the forest, faintly, but unmistakable.
I'm going to pack. Then read. Then go out one last time.
Later. Here I sit now in the little inn in Belize City, in my cozy mosquito-netted high firm bed, fan overhead, slatted tropical window aslant, to let in the moist air, one last time. I've managed this all quite well, I think, and only a little left.
I've left quarts of sweat along the jungle paths of Chan Chich.
I searched out the tarantula one last time, and found her, and her egg sac. I crept to the river bank in total silence. Time passed like water, I in my naturalists' trance. A slaty tailed trogon, red-breasted, red-eye-ringed, orange beaked, flew to me, not more than three yards ahead. He and I watched each other. I took his picture. He sang to me, softly cooing. Then he flew to another branch, where he showed me his back, green-blue, in the sunlight. We contemplated each other, greeted each other. I felt met, present, real in this tangled reality. A bittern to be found.
The small dark man named Gilberto, the tracker, hunter, gave me a window--no, a door to open through which hesitantly to enter this place. I tried to thank him, and a gift of money, but in public the roles changed, he could not look me in the eye any longer. It's all right. If it was a game, he played well, and it doesn't matter, for I was a serious player.
Tomorrow night--I sleep in my home bed. But now I've seen the jungle, that really is there, on my little planet. Suddenly I want to go back. All that I imagined is true. And more, much more, more, more, more. A place of extravagance, intimacy, intense reality.
25 March - home to Boston
So, finally, then, why is it so difficult to catch this travel in words? I came at it in bits and pieces, a glance into a green river, logs lying below its translucent surface; passed dreamily through darkened forest, stunned by trees and leaves and fear; paddled slowly through powerful air as if through heavy water.
People walk singly along the street in front of my Belize city lodging house, this morning. There is a faint, unmistakable odor of garbage, the smell of Kathmandu. Dogs bark in eager frustration. Piles of lumber lie next to a shed across the street. A few hundred feet away, past palm and casuarina and white shuttered buildings, is the unhealthy gray of waterfronts everywhere. An unfinished cinderblock structure, an irregular ladder laid against it. A man carrying a chair.
So then why have I not grasped the images of this trip?
I saw them I think through noise, or through the latticework of the group, the guide, the plan, the schedule and its requirements. I looked but could not see, I heard but could not listen.
Perhaps when I am putting this narrative into the machine, I will play the tape I bought, A Bird Walk at Chan Chich, and it will help me to reconstitute the days. I'll be able to hear the great howler monkeys again, and perhaps the slaty-tailed trogon, who conferred his grace on me that last morning. Cocked his head from side to side to peer down at me, unafraid.
I had been so sad, at the end of the tour, that I would miss everything, had missed everything. But I didn't! Small dark thin alert Gilberto opened the door, pushed away the lattice, so I could see.