My eye followed the canyon walls upwards to a jagged and remote crack of pale blue sky. We were lodged deep within the earth, where time had slowly unwound. The green waters of the river slid languidly through the canyon and the air felt like wet velvet in my lungs. The stuttering purr of the motor boat and the strident voices of the sun-burnt tourists, disappeared, were absorbed into the unfathomable depths of the primeval walls. Canopies billowed outwards, thick and round, like the clouds of an atomic bomb captured in a photograph.
We roared past the incomprehensible stillness, wanderers through a prehistoric jungle. The dark, twisted trees leaned into the river, their boughs heavy and full. The dense, wet canopy waited, poised above us in thick rolling waves, ready to blot us out. I stared with awe and the forbidding depths of the jungle gazed back with mute indifference.
As the boat continued to slice through the river, I saw a small field carved into the mountain side. It cut into the wilderness with precision. As I looked further down I saw great pale swathes slashed into the canyon edge. The wilderness disintegrated into subdued farmland. The river swelled upwards toward the canyon rim as deep greens faded into dusty pastels. The river slid around a corner and opened onto an enormous pool of green water. Strung across the horizon was the cement wall of a hydroelectric dam. A string of floating barrels bisected the pool and dozens of thick cables sliced across the pallid blue sky. Mounted floodlights shot upwards, segmenting the sloping skyline of the distant mountains. Piercing the horizon was an enormous grey statue of four laborers looking down at the whole expanse of the land (the river, the cliffs, the rolling jungle) with hunger.
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