The Urubamba River

Two years had passed since John Gregory disappeared on the Urubamba River. Now, excited and eager to embark on his first significant expedition at eighteen, Ed looked at his aberrating reflection in the same river. He slapped his hands together to start the day. On the opposite bank, birds hidden in tall grasses fluttered and rose. Looking up from his reflection, he grinned as the birds weaved into the sky.

"Ed!" His friend Art yelled. "We're ready!"

Ed quickly turned with a wide smile as he nodded and began walking over large rocks to his two companions. A tall, strong, sinewy man, with sharp facial features, Ed responded quick and loud, "The morning greets us favorably!" His friends, Art and Gain, nodded in agreement, grinning as they stepped into their canoes and shoved off. Art, a little shorter, with rosy round cheeks and a young glow, beamed down the gushing river. Gain, stocky and rugged, with a serious scrunched face, took a long deep stroke with his paddle.

The river quickly spun their crafts as the current steered them toward the jungle's entrance. Ed guided the other two men through rapids and around boulders. Aware of danger to ability's limit, Ed pushed comfort to a sharp edge. Moment after moment, he anticipated, reacted, and conquered. Every bend navigated served as accomplishment; every effort praised, and every fortune taken, without question.

Often stopping, the expedition recorded the flow of the river. Weeks passed as the men progressed toward the jungle, meticulously mapping the Urubamba River's mark. Ed, always conscious of the dangers they faced, relied on his limited experience to lessen risk, determined to push through any obstacle unforeseen. Occasionally, dire moments found the expedition; all could have ended poorly, but none did. The men welcomed every morning with renewed drive, felt their spirits light through the day, and joyously celebrated their achievements at night. Then, after traversing rapids through the last Andes' pass, the river changed.

The jungle had crept up on the men, concealed by mountains on either side, hiding the expanse and funneling their focus onto the raging river. The gorge then opened up, water splitting around islands and giving way to sky; cut no longer by rock, but by the trees they drifted so close to. At first, the men felt relaxed, continuing their path while allowing their attention to ease as they started to reflect more on their surroundings. As they progressed deeper into the jungle, new, foreign sounds and sights began to emerge, and as the days passed, an uncomfortable sense of vulnerability developed. Animal calls, both low and shrill, ricocheted through trees, escaped the jungle and spread out over the water, as sunlight, reflecting off the river waves, fired beams of light on and past them, back into the jungle.

The glints, in particular, felt unsettling and somehow amplified, piercing their vision and leaving persistent tracers to linger uncomfortably long in their minds. At first, flashes would momentarily catch an eye, a curious illusion in minds adapting to new surroundings. But as time continued, and the men settled in their environment, the glints would not settle in their thoughts. The way the light twisted and turned around rocks and grasses, the way a glint would suddenly race up a tree into the canopy, would always seem to accentuate some sort of mystic attraction beyond their sight.

One hot afternoon, drifting down the Urubamba, Art looked out onto the wide and welling river. Sitting at the bow, he lifted his paddle and rested the shaft on the gunwales. Leaning forward, pressing down on the shaft, he spoke quietly. "Ed." Ed, shifting his focus back and forth between river banks, let out a grunt. Art grimaced slightly, shook his head and took a deep breath as he struggled to express his apprehension. "Ed, the lights go far into the trees." Ed's eyes opened a little wider, involuntarily catching another glint race and weave into the forest and mirror off tall grasses. He swallowed, took a deep breath and lifted his paddle out of the water and into the canoe. Art continued, "Ed, we're weeks from the mouth of the Ucayali. Maybe we should -" Ed quickly slapped his hands together. The clap radiated out, and the whistles of beating wings echoed back, as tiny birds pushed their way up from the banks. Art jumped in his seat and turned toward the fluttering sounds sweeping over as tiny dots spiraled and disappeared into the sky. Ed leaned over the side of his canoe and spat in the water. Wiping his nose and pushing his paddle back into the river, he spoke flatly, "Keep paddling."

As the men fought to progress down the river, the persistent lights in their minds began to mix with their vision. Glints, racing up trees, would linger at the tips of leaves, locked in their wavering movements, caught in eddies of the wind. Flashes of light would race and skip along the water, then congregate atop the crest of a wave, flickering and growing in brightness and height, and then bursting and dissipating, soaking into the mist. The hot humid air, wavering above the river, bending the sky along the surface, mirrored flashing tracers, causing the men to look upwards as they struggled to sift through their senses. Constantly distracted, taking deep breaths through the day, all three men attempted to settle their minds, wondering how such unexplained visions felt so natural. All the while, the fantastical sights grew more elaborate and intense the further they drifted down the Urubamba.

One clear, calm day, with an early morning stretched out under an afternoon sun, the quiet river carried the expedition around a slow wide bend to the left. A sandbank sat in the middle as Ed guided everyone around the wider, northern side, stretching their turn out even further. Everyone's hearts started to pump a little harder as the familiar sounds of rushing water began to echo off the jungle walls toward them. Slowly, the view from around the sandbank opened as the canoes turned. Ahead, directly in their path, an island appeared. As their canoes progressed closer, a mist, saturated with smells of clay and grass passed over the men, cooling and almost calming their racing minds, if not for the unrelenting and intensifying draw of the jungle. The glints, amplified by the churning water, pierced through the mist, and focused on a foreign looking object. At the island's tip, a glittering spire rose thirty feet above the river on four stilts. Ed squinted in confusion, Art's eyes stretched open wider, and Gain's scrunched face relaxed in awe.

A large wave hit the sides of the canoes, breaking tension built from weeks fighting a formless draw. Unable to resist, without a word, all finally relented, frantically paddling and riding the waves to the ornate spire. As the men approached the island's bank, their crafts bobbed up and down. The river's waves hid and exposed the base of the stilts, causing the bleached wood to appear to rhythmically sink and rise, pumping in and out of the river. Reaching land, the stilts suddenly shot up as the canoes sunk into clasping wet sand. The men clambered out, dragged everything onto shore, and ran, splashing to the base of the stilts, which they wrapped themselves around and climbed. Upon reaching the top, they rolled onto a deck surrounding the spire. Exhausted, they lay on their backs. Eventually, their strength returned as a cool fresh mist rolled over, glistening their skin, and they rose to enter the spire.

The structure felt sturdy as they moved while the river constantly eddied around the the stilts. As the men passed through the door, the reflections off the river grew brighter. They shielded their eyes with their arms and squinted while surveying the small room. A bench protruded out from the west wall, and a table sat next to the east wall. Beside the table stood a chair, positioned to look out onto the last breath of the Urubamba. The men, squinting against the light, caught a flash off a metal clasp, attached to a small black notebook, resting on the middle of the table, under a large glowing orb. Light surged out from the globe, emitting a stream of glints upward, flooding the ceiling, and spilling out to feed the river.

Ed reached out, hesitated for a moment, then quickly picked up the orb. At that moment, the constant churning sounds of the river, sounds that had found a home in the men's minds for months, stopped, and gave way to a soft whistling wind, pushing back their matted hair and washing away the glints, and the glittering spire with them, leaving the men in a old, abandoned wooden hut, and Ed cradling a stone in his hand. He dropped the rock, which bounced with accelerating staccato clacks out of the hut, over the deck and into the river. He then reached out, unclasped the book and lifted the cover. The page read ``Secrets of the Urubamba. John Gregory". The men stood transfixed, the draw and their want for the jungle ebbing from their bodies. Ed closed the cover of the book, latched the clasp, picked it up and slid it into his pack. Silently, he turned and walked out of the hut as water from mist began to drain off his stretched face. The men soon followed as they all slowly worked their way down the stilts, calmly returned to their canoes, pushed off, and steered to an encampment set up for their arrival at the mouth of the Tambo River. The mist grew, clouds formed, and a light rain began as the jungle's draw faded from the men's minds, replaced with the satisfaction of successfully mapping the Urubamba River.

After handing the new maps over to the Peruvian government, Ed and his crew returned to America where they presented their findings. During his presentations, Ed described experiences through the Urubamba River's rapids, the soaring mountains, and the expansive jungle. He did not talk about the glints, but did mention the hut and John's book. The fact John's name appeared on the first page seemed a curiosity rather than a mystery or revelation. Although the handwriting matched John's, the contents read as fiction, every story describing fantastical adventures. The prevailing theory for the origin of the writings eventually settled on an anonymous author, someone whom John may have befriended in Peru.

No one knew if Ed ever read the book in entirety; the only public knowledge of the contents came from the random excerpts he read aloud in a humorous manner, stripping any possible intent of significance. However, the significance of mapping the Urubamba River drew certain people to Ed's talks. Incan descendants secretly listened, intently and quietly. They brought what knowledge they received back home, and the stories seeped into their culture.

One day, after a presentation, an older man with dark weathered skin, dressed in a slightly oversized black suit, walked up to Ed and introduced himself as a representative for a private collector, wishing to purchase the book. Ed had worked so hard to dismiss the book, yet still could not imagine parting with a symbol of his accomplishment. The man, sensing Ed's thoughts, spoke to him. "Mr. Strong, the Urubamba holds you until you let her go." Ed caught a glint in the man's eye as a flash of the spire passed through his mind. The man then handed Ed a folded piece of paper with an offer of $20,000 written in black ink. Ed swallowed and nodded, agreeing to the price.

After one week, the man arrived at Ed's home to take possession of the book. For Ed, the glints, and the draw of the jungle had faded away. For the remainder of his life, he continued to seek and experience adventure. Occasionally he would reminisce about the Urubamba River, but always about what he accomplished, never again about the book.