While the floor was covered with mud, the last of the flash-flood had begun exiting, while the rain had slowed to a drizzle and was working to remove that thin silt layer as it did. Tiny rivulets meandered in the dark mass, cutting back to the sandstone floor of the canyon.
I sat bemused by all this, even though soaking wet.
"Help me, please - HELP ME!" A cry shrieked from above, shaking me out of my placid reflections. The calls continued, giving me the urge to do something, anything.
"I'm coming!" I hollered back. Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed vines and sought footholds to get closer to the source of those calls. It was a sheer climb I wouldn't have attempted if it weren't for the dire calls and intermittent sobbing of that unknown and unseen female voice from above. 20 or 30 feet or more, with skin scraping away as I clawed my way up as fast as I could without becoming my own victim by slipping, as the occasional failed footing would remind me.
Finally, I reached the edge and was able to chin up high enough to get a knee over the edge and pull myself over. Rolling on my back to get my breath back, I also listened to hear where that crying was coming from.
It had subdued from shrieking and was now a continual sobbing over to my left.
The trees grew rank up here, much as the same tropical forest I had come in through. Vines traveled up their trunks and the clearing sky was exposing the riots of color in the flowers and leaves of these trees.
Rising to my feet, I started out in the direction of the sound, working as I wove my way through the vines. "Where are you?" I called.
"Here! Hurry!" the voice came back, urgently.
At last I caught a glimpse of light colored fabric through the mass of trunks and pushed to squeeze closer between the branches and tendrils. As I did, I was forced to slip off my backpack in order to fit in that tight space.
Darker here, I could finally see her face, which lit up as she saw my own. "Oh thank God! You're here." The sobbing began again, this time tears of joy.
"OK, alright. Hang on. Just calm down now. Tell me if something's hurt and what's going on."
She gulped and forced herself to relax a bit. "I can't tell if anything's broken, I just can't move. It was raining so hard I went under this tree and the wind must have knocked the top out of it."
I could see that she was in pain, but the problem was a trunk much bigger than she was had fallen down on top of her, pinning her to the tree roots. She may have been protected by the shoulders of those roots and they extended from the tree, but I wouldn't know until we got it off her.
"Let me look around and see how this is set, then. The next move is to get it off."
"I tried pushing, but it's so soft and slimy that my hands only slipped. And the vines are holding it."
The vines were also keeping the massive weight off her as the huge mass of the branch had been rotting for years and took that moment to crash down. I could also see that a lot more was hung in neighboring trees, along with the thick vines it had succumbed to and were now keeping that poor girl alive.
I found her foot, very much attached. As I touched it, she flinched. "Your hand is cold."
"Well, at least we know you've still got your legs. Hang in there. I'm checking out this end over here." As I traveled down the remainder of the branch, I saw that it was mostly balanced on those root shoulders, held there by the vines.
It would need her to move, if she could. "Here's what we are going to do. I'm going to push down on this other end and it should raise up enough for you to slide out underneath. We'll give it a try and see."
"OK"
With a 1 - 2 - 3, I pushed all my weight down on the longer end and it swung up precariously.
The young woman moved quickly and scrambled out, pushing herself flat against another tree as far from the first as she could.
Just then, my foot slipped on the muddy, rotted surface and I fell off the branch, letting it drop and break into heavy pieces where the girl had been just seconds before. The air was filled with shredded bark, water, mud, and leaves for the next few seconds.
Both of us were covered in it, but safe.
Looking at each other for the first time, we sized the other up as we wiped off the goo as best we could. She was a willowy blonde, tall but not disproportionately. Sturdy shoulders told of an athletic youth, while her disheveled clothes only told of the near-death experience she had just survived, but gave no clues to her shape otherwise. But you don’t dress for fashion in this part of the world.
“You okay? I don’t see any blood.”
Laughing, she thanked me, "It was so good you were here. I'm sure I couldn't have gotten out of that mess by myself. Lord knows I shouldn't have come this way, but the weather reports said nothing of a shower. Should have listened. But thanks."
"Well, your welcome. I'm glad I was here too. Is your transport nearby? We should get moving as we don't have that many hours of daylight left."
She shrugged. "Well, if I can find the path I was on, it's not too far away." She brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and then pulled her own hat up by it's drawstring and put it firmly on her head. Looking about, she adjusted her belt and set off around the back of that huge tree.
"Oh, wait, I need to get my back pack." A few steps back, and some wriggling, fished the soiled and torn backpack out of the thin space I could only wonder how I squeezed through.
She laughed when she saw it, dimples forming in her mud-streaked cheeks as she smiled. "Well, that's seen better days. Hope it stays in one piece until you get back."
I brushed it off roughly, smiling as I did so, and shrugged into it. "It's got a few tales it could tell. Now, that path?"
"Over here." She set off around the tree at a practiced lope which had me working to keep up. Surprisingly, her long legs weren't scratched despite wearing only walking shorts above them. I couldn't stand anything except long duck trousers myself, but that was more upbringing.
Her trail wound in and among the trees and she was traveling it like she was going through it like it was her own back yard. Surprisingly, it was clear of vines, almost like it had been trimmed.
"I was lucky to find this animal trail not far from a main road - well they call these things roads here. I know the shocks on my Land Rover are shot for sure with all those pot holes I struggled through to get here." She tossed her comments over her back, lilting in an accent I couldn't place, perhaps formed from traveling.
I only grunted in reply, my breath coming hard enough to come by, without efforting to carry on a conversation as well. To be sure, I never saw much need to exercise, but her pace was showing me my age.
"OK, we'll rest here. Mine is just ahead and it looks like the wind wasn't so bad hereabouts. So we shouldn't have any surprises."
As I sank against a nearby tree and wrestled my canteen out, she noticed my arm was scratched.
"Here' let me help you with that. It must have hurt." She pulled a white handkerchief out of a pocket and first rubbed the dirt and blood away with a corner of it, then tied it tightly in place. "That's going to have to do until we can get it looked at." Her blue eyes looked into mine as she spoke, a smile full of perfect teeth lightening her face up as it did.
"Well, I did bring a first aid kit, but all that's left is a tourniquet now - and pain pills, no iodine." I shrugged. And caught both the scent of her shampoo and my own earthy smell from those exertions.
"If you've gotten this far, you'll make it, then. You look like you've done this type of thing before." She pushed off my shoulder and rested herself now on a tree trunk next to mine.
"I've been around the pike a bit. But it was good finding you."
"I'll say. But I guess I did. I'm just really thankful you were there." She looked down a bit and then straightened her hat and stood. "Ready? We've still got a piece and a bit to go."
"Sure." I stood and stretched, sore from all that running and climbing. But we weren't getting anywhere standing here.
She looked me over once and then nodded, moving off in the lead, leaving me working to keep up and admire her form from the back. But I had to admit she matched the beautiful scenery here.