The Jungle

A Chapter by Meghan Rose

Until it was time to pack up for the voyage back, Lucas planned on spending his morning drinking the coffee he bought off the old tradesman yesterday and poring over his journal entries from the past six months. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to read his own notes. They originated in his brain, why would he need to see them again? However, if Lucas had learned anything here, it would be to trust his instincts.

At 6:17 the sun parted the silk white drapes and placed a warm beam on Lucas’ forehead. He sat up with a sigh, swung his legs onto the bamboo floor, and padded towards the porch. When he pushed aside the drapes, the entire jungle lay out before him. Lush greenery extended as far as he could see to the south, and the beginning of the local mountain range jutted towards the east. His treehouse perched atop a wiry balboa, perhaps twenty feet above the forest floor. The house wound about the tree’s many levels, accessible by a clanky wooden ladder that folded up at night. Lucas used a steady branch smoothed from overuse to swing down to the kitchen area below. Concave cubbies had been carved into the thick trunk, storing tin pans, some odd preservatives, and the coffee from yesterday. After bumping his head on the bag of fruit dangling above the entrance for the umpteenth time, Lucas lit the bunsen burner and lightly set the dented kettle on the makeshift table he made out of thin sheets of petrified eucalyptus bark. Sighing, he reached underneath the alcove of leaves to unhook the water pouch from its hiding place, the coolest part of the tree he could find. Once the water was on the burner, Lucas let his feet dangle over the curved bamboo.

He only had one more day in this place. Despite his devoted journalling, the whole thing seemed like a blur. He couldn’t even remember his thought process behind buying a one way ticket to Panama in the first place. Suddenly he was at the airport, on the plane, then on a smaller plane, one that bounced up and down in the air. Seeing the jungle from his minuscule plexiglass window sent a thrill of fear through his veins and underneath his fingernails - was it fear? He was going to be totally isolated, removed from the world he had known his entire life. No more exhausting phone calls from his mother, no more long-winded faculty meetings at the university, no more seeing her across the street, curled in her usual leather chair in the window at Green’s. So it wasn’t fear that bit underneath his nails and made his heart sped. It was pure excitement, spiked with something he hadn’t experienced before: relief.