The Tepui Chronicles: South America, Part I

Te·puí:

noun \au̇-ˌyän-tā-ˈpwē\ Land of the Gods

We were mapless.

Chucking our battered suitcases in the back of a touchy four wheeler, my Aussi friend Jess and I whizzed down the streets of Ipis, Costa Rica. The lush, humid air was so dense it felt as if it were combing through our hair. 

Flashes of green bombay shoots whooshed past as I veered along the winding, crooked streets of this model-like village. Locals walked along the mossy canal waterways, disappearing into close-quartered colored houses. 

It was the beginning of our love affair with South America.

We were sitting cross-legged in a small seafood shack on the corner of the street, catching glances and sometimes smiles from passerby's as we feasted on crab legs and calamari. And I realized that this was it. Wholesome living. Caught in the fear of missing out, I had forgotten that at the root of it all was something as simple as deep breaths, fresh food, human connection and, if necessary, words. 

The rest of the night was a blur of faces and spanish phrases didn't understand. It was a mingling of conversation over hymnals sung in a local cathedral, followed by stops at exotic fruit stands and latin dances with men whose hips shake better than any lady I've ever seen. And then I again took the wheel. Where to? The wind would be our compass, our intuition our guide. 

As the miles under our wheels increased, time was measured by thoughts rather than minutes. We ventured into the rainforest terrain. It was pitch black, but beyond our car window there seemed to be a vast unknown something — something that seemed to suggest we were cradled in the palm of some mysterious, immense natural wonder. We drove through tall vegetation and across what had to have been towering bridges. Under the guise of nightfall, the vast rainforest was untouched by the prying eyes of tourists. And at that moment I swear we were in an undiscovered ocean of foliage that was neither East nor West. 

I felt a sense of possession. I wanted to lay claim on it, call it my own, without the dictates of paperwork or the convention of bills. 

The road took us completely across the country in one night, to the Pacific Ocean, where we ran headlong into the waves. We breathed in salt that stung our noses and cleansed so much more than our air passages. We fell asleep in our car, to the gentle lap of water at the edge of this continent.

We had determined it would be our little secret, this place that remained hidden from a cheap brochure. This place touched by the gods — or rather, as I would believe, one God. 

Rachel Lowry, The Tepui Chronicles Part I

Image via

Sprekensy English?

I have kept some sort of journal or notebook or Moleskin since I first learned to spell. From time to time I revisited old journal entries and reacquainted myself with the frozen specimen of my former, less developed self.

With endearment, I turn to the sloppy, awkward letters I scrawled in writing my name for the first time. There is nothing more than my name. Just my name. And yet, so much exists between the spaces of a little girl's first written creed of identity. 

I humor myself, unintentionally, as the swirl and swing of my pen next engages in the telling of sleepovers, fashion and boys. Though unwieldy was the affair, popular was the game.

then came the era of the bold. the battles i was constrained to fight at home were shouldered with the preoccupation of varsity football game chants, school musicals, choir tours, prom date nights.

I next find the pages strewn with a quick handed grappling between prospects and fumbling through the guesswork of what to be. The answer would come, if not swiftly, with emphatic power. And once given, so began the subliminal exhaustion of involvement and study. 

I just finished my chronicles of europe, cramming the pages beyond the point of closure — passport punches, ticket stubs, photographs, items of memoriam — remnants of one girl's momentary utopia bulging between the covers.

And now I write for a very different reason than any of the reasons before. A new passion is whirling from within. I write to trace the patterns of thought, to dissect the mechanics of the mind, prodding at what it means to participate in the human experience. Until now, I could never have known how the power of the word would become congruent with breathing. And it is very likely that these pages, these different fonts of my life may be all I leave behind. 

@ 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved.

little letters series: dear reader

page one is always the most exciting and terrifying to mar with the ink of my impetuous hand. within these first crisp, white blank spaces before me, at the head of so many blank pages, so much unmarked terrain,

i pause.

what, dear reader, do you wish to hear tell? what portion of knowledge, what mode of perception can i ascribe to you in the telling of a tale - my tale?

my filled notebooks have, at times, satisfied their purpose as a mirror of my thoughts at many specific moments. they carried my secrets, those unfrequented ruminations that belonged only to me. absent from all exteriors were the confidantes to whom i mouthed the secrets that would have a cynic dropping his pretenses in a need to know more, an intrigue that cannot be stifled. i carefully spun my string of austerity behind the closed doors of my worlds.

i hold that secrets should be kept. yet, i also hold that they should be probed, examined and, as these soon-to-be-filled web pages will denote, articulated.

and so. this, this portion of my words is going above ground, to be exposed to the light and oil of third-party fingerprints, as i relate to none but my readers, all my secrets.

here i confess with a lowered voice and quivering lips all i dare not whisper aloud.

lean your ear closer, reader, and i will tell you all.

© 2008 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved.