The red legged coot with the puff of a tail hurries and stops in the undergrowth, waiting for us to leave for that drink from the pool. It’s cool like the waterfall, where boys jumped stories down as we edged in from the shore. The water was colder and deeper than anything so far, and we watched tiny fish camouflage against rocks unthinkably huge to have come down the mountain.
We were foolhardily late setting off, leaving the carpark at 11 for an hour’s uphill hike. Bamboo the height of houses erupted on the hillside, forcing towards the light in creaking towers, stems wide as side plates. A coati emerged solitarily, one eye watching us as it grubbed in the path, tail poker straight to the sky. A later rustling as we rounded a corner stopped suddenly, and in the darkness a peccary stared us down, snorted and fled. I maybe could have said, in the darkness of the forest, it was a tapir, but I’d know it was a lie.
a year in the garden 