Member-only story
A MOSTLY TRUE SHORT STORY
David’s Tale — My Life Among The Waorani
Father’s letter to his daughter
Dear Daughter,
When you wrote me last, you asked me to tell you once again about the time we met a local, fierce-looking, Ecuadorian guide while embarked on our great adventure deep within the Amazonian rain forest. His name was David. As you recall, your uncle and I had traveled far into the jungle to photograph the unusually exotic wildlife indigenous to such a special and secluded place, but you said that you do not clearly remember the story that I later told you — the one that David shared with us late into the folds of one pitch dark night — although you do feel like it was perhaps overly frightening to your innocent, childhood self. I am quite happy to recall that fascinating event for you, and to relate again the story that he told us during that particularly imposing evening. Two things first, however. He pronounced his name the Spanish way — Dah-veed, and he was keen to set us straight that we were not locked inside a jungle, but under the protection of the forest. He made it clear that the Amazon was not a single forest, but just like the Eskimos of the north have a myriad of names for ice and snow, so the rain forests of the Amazon have many separate labels — attributed primarily to locally-defined conditions and the…
