The Explorer

...and then just as suddenly, constellations appeared in a daytime sky, framed by white pines crawling with multicolored caterpillars. So from this day forward, they would search the sky for more star pictures. They then would draw pictures of what they saw with a mixture of ash and spit on their fingers on pink leaves that fell to the ground. They would all participate in the gathering of pink leaves, which they stitched together forming blankets to cover their humble homes, and their village had a pink glow. Their homes were as nests, or more similar to large hammocks, consisting of branches and bark lashed together with vines suspended from the heavy limbs of the tree canopy. Their homes swayed in a light breeze, creaking as they moved, and were festooned with blue, red, yellow and purple feather plumes, floral chains, sea shells and gemstones; along with the pink leaf blankets they resembled some extraordinary species of giant hanging flora, which attracted a variety of butterflies, and many small rodent-like creatures ran about. There was much activity in the trees above as they would hop from limb to limb, and home to home, visiting with neighbors and conversing through animated head, facial, hand and body gestures, with much whooping, or whistling sounds, their whole person seemed engaged in conversation. It was a wonderful and amazing sight to behold, I found the scene so engrossing that I immediately wanted to leave all that I've known behind and immerse myself in their uniquely intimate culture. I felt as though I'd discovered a new home. Throughout my journeys I had completed several small drawings and paintings of the various sites that I'd seen, and reasoned that this might be a fine way to communicate and introduce myself, as I was sure they would recognize what I had put down on paper. I set down my pack and retrieved my paper and pencils from within. I settled against a tree and began to sketch the scene before me. Soon the noise and activity from the trees above grew quiet, and as I looked up the entire village had come out to the tree limbs and watched in silence as I worked on the drawing. Then, as if on command, they all descended from the trees and surrounded me in an instant. The speed at which they moved in unison startled me, but I soon discovered there was no threat. As they huddled around me, softly whistling to each other, they held open one hand to reveal a wriggling brightly hued caterpillar. Then they each blew a light breath over the creatures, and it melted into a moving, shifting pool of color in the palm of their hands. They each dragged a finger through the color, and raising their arms, with a colored finger extended; they held it to the sky. In the next moment they each bent over me, and wiped the color on the drawing that I had begun. To my astonishment the color moved across the page completely on its own. New worlds opened up, revealed to me, as their spectral markings merged together into watery pools, then formed drips, streams, rivers with rapids, waterfalls, and gorges emptying into estuaries, seeking their own path of least resistance as gravity pulled this way and that, and then churning, and bubbling up in clumps, oozing off the surface in a tremendous mountain slide. I saw the opened shape of a mouth, or a great hole in the earth, which I looked deep into and could feel and see myself looking back, then puckered, shut tight, blending and separating like ever changing oil on water, flares would rise up from below and burn for a time until they subsided; then cracked into an infinite array of minuscule fissures becoming a frozen ocean, solid and immoveable in a kind of death. As I watched, it seemed as though hours had drifted by, which I soon realized were mere seconds.