Jungle Running

There is a movie, I think, where a fairy or a dryad is running through a forest or a jungle. In her footfalls, a momentary light lingers, glowing before it fades away.

I've been two months now in the tropics, hiking trails that would be considered, by most metrics, strenuous. They are beautiful, and there are easy stretches, but they include elements that could not be steeper without being climbing, places where it helps to grab trees and roots, and long stretches through running water over variable and slippery rocks. There are six of us, of different heights, shoe sizes, and walking styles but similar in fitness, who easily keep pace with one another. We hike in single file; it's easier to keep a narrow path worn.

I learned to gauge the color of slippery rock surfaces, the depths of the stream beds, which tree falls are stable, which are rotted clean through. I realized, even though we all walk the same trails, sometimes literally in each other's footsteps, we each see different paths, suited according to our balance, the length of our stride and the strength in our legs. I felt as though I could see six strings of lights, footfalls picked out in the jungle glowing and then fading away.

As we have progressed, together as a team and individuals, our collective and personal confidence has increased. Now for fun sometimes and for efficiency at others (someone's got to finish work and get back in time to to drink all those beers), racing daylight or darkness or each other, we go jungle running.

It's a fluid and dynamic feeling, leaping from root to rock, jumping down slick mud slides and hurdling small obstacles, delicately tap dancing across fine point rock surfaces sticking like blunted knives above the waters surface, skidding out on a clump of leaves and landing your next stride before you even have time to fall. It's a feeling of complete confidence not that you won't fall but that you certainly will, trusting your strength and balance to find the next footstep before your body hits the ground, a process of falling forward so quickly that you find yourself flying instead.

Something just caught my eye, pulling my attention out into the room- one of the bats roosting under our porch eves just flew through the common room, availing himself of the complete lack of screens or glass in the metalwork doors. I wish him great success hunting mosquitoes.