I followed just behind her. There was so much in front of me, it took a while to see it. Woody vines wound themselves around trees; plants with spines as long as fingers lined the path. Was that a snake looping down? Not this time; just another liana thick as a man’s arm coiling from the dimness, unspooling across our path.

Unseen parrots squawked as they flew above us, battling something out. Tree frogs tocked in ditches, as eerie warbling cries filtered through the green corridors. Boulders emitted a sweetish mildew smell. Mushrooms like champagne flutes brimmed with recent rain. Occasionally a shadow flickered above us, but what sunlight filtered through was tinted an emerald green, as if it came through water.

Perla made a tinkling sound as she ambled along, loaded down as she was with bags of hand mirrors, knives, little flashlights, and other trinkets—gifts the Frannies offered the Tatinga in exchange for their allegiance to Jesus Christ. Other supplies had been strapped to her sides: sacks of yucca, rice, onions; cans of strange things you’d never think of in a can like tins of honey or boiled pickled eggs; rubberized packages of dehydrated potatoes; and several bottles of rum. I felt a growing thirst, but it wasn’t bad enough yet to halt this odd, clanking parade. Ahead of Perla, Omar chopped with loud thwocks at hanging vines that obscured our path.

I found myself not wanting to talk, a rare state for me. A strange, calm alertness buzzed through my limbs; it felt beautiful, grounding. In my nineteen years I had never felt anything like it. I was walking through another world with its own complex systems that had nothing to do with me; it freed me in a way. As brutal as this place was, I didn’t have to cheat or steal or lie or run away to survive. Instead I had to pay attention, learn, shut up, accept, keep going.

An hour drifted by, maybe two. There was nothing to indicate time, no slant of sun, no change of vista, just a chronic twilight, Perla’s shuddering flanks, and the occasional grassy turd escaping between swishes of her tail.

We began to climb. I watched where Perla placed her hooves, and put my feet there, hoping for safety. Sweat erupted from me, copious. I didn’t think it was possible to sweat this much, the rubber grip of my machete slippery in my hand. My thirst went from mild to overwhelming—my head pounded with it.

A sudden eruption of rain burst through the canopy without warning, as if someone had overturned a vast bucket. Our daily deluge. So much rain dumped down, and so fast, that a small stream bubbled up next to us in a foot-wide, shallow ditch; in it, button-sized orange frogs leapt up in joy. A slender, yellow-headed snake burst up, its throat distended by a still-live frog, the impression of its three-toed feet clear from inside the thin skin; then the snake flopped down, disappearing into a tangle of black roots.