Paul Crask

The boatman calls himself Nature Boy. He rows standing up in the stern of his colourfully painted wooden skiff, on the look-out for a boa he saw yesterday that was resting on the pale and twisted branch of a bloodwood tree. I am seated on a damp bench in front of him. The river disappears around a bend, curtained in on both sides by a jumble of liana vines, contorted mangrove roots and the mysteries of swamp and forest. For the most part the journey is silent and uninterrupted, save for the occasional cries of mangrove cuckoos, a jaco parrot somewhere high in the canopy, or the splash of a barracuda on the prowl in the dark margins of the brackish river. (more…)

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