The stream ran on for miles, forcing me to hike uphill along a rocky shoreline that twisted and turned and occasionally intersected other “dry” passages. I ignored these auxiliary routes as they were dark and offered little promise of food. Somewhere up ahead was an exit to the forest, and I had little choice but to find it.

Daylight became a speck in the distance, then a narrowing funnel, then finally a hole in the ceiling where the water rushed in. Working my way up to the exit by way of stalagmites and boulders, I crawled through a four-foot slit in the rock—emerging beneath the root system of a massive tree that fed from a swollen river, the overflowing banks of which were surrounded by wild ferns amid a backdrop of lush greenery.

The sun was high in the sky, filtering through a swaying canopy of treetops located several hundred feet above the fertile forest floor. Shrill chirps rented a woodland air still damp from a morning rain. Somewhere up ahead the thicket reverberated with sound and I moved toward it, readying myself to rush back to the stream at the first sign of anything resembling a hungry ant.

It was not ants that I heard thrashing in the bushes but a snake, its coiled seven-foot oily black body entwined by the crimson red legs of a three-foot-long centipede. The spotted yellow and violet caterpillar-like insect was adhered to the serpent’s midsection, the smaller attacker’s fangs having already delivered their venom.

With every slash, the serpent found itself deeper in a sticky quicksand of appendages, which held fast to its dying meal. I watched until the slurping sounds from the feeding centipede sickened me, then, distancing myself from the scene, I withdrew the serrated steak knife from my still-intact zippered pocket, intent on fashioning myself a weapon.

Ten minutes later, the lone survivor of the subspecies Petroleum Man emerged from the thicket armed with a pointed stick, ready to take on anything from a bag of marshmallows to perhaps a squirrel or small rodent.

Deciding against the latter, I returned to the river, hoping to spear the first fish that swam by.

My ears buzzed. I swatted and caught half a dozen grape-size flies in my palm, sprinkling their still-twitching remains along the calm surface of a pool of water formed by a horseshoe of rock, attempting to lure a fish out from beneath a submerged ledge.

Poised on an outcropping of rock above the floating bait, I held my breath as a pair of thin snakes emerged from beneath the slate. It took me a moment to realize the creatures were actually barbels—the tentaclelike protrusions connected to the dark flat head of a catfish. The surfacing creature was a big boy, its skull as large as a shovel, its girth five feet from its whiskered mouth to its lobe-shaped fins and tail.