The right path was obvious, not from the road, but obvious once I turned down it. It had paved cobblestones and a bizarre bazaar courtyard feeling. The kids inside watched me and the woman said I could park my scooter there and continue on foot. Obeying, I emerged from the courtyard into this rice field world at the base of the mountainous jungle on foot. 

Three dogs made their way, stopping and waiting for each other across the raised grass boundaries within the rice. One lone dog, an older puppy from the looks of its soft fur, bounded up and down like a bunny in a patch of long grass and flowers. Dragonflies whirred about. The blue meanies were kicking in. Would dragonflies eat me if I died here? One landed on my shoulder with such force it felt as if it was a large bird. I calmly reached into my bag for a selfie. 

The jungle drew closer as I walked towards it on the narrow path. A house appeared next to two large blue posts that turned out to be a suspension bridge across a river. The house was secured by a fence of living trees and a moat of wet rice paddies. An inordinate amount of papayas ladened a small tree about as tall as me in a large intersection of the rice paddies. A woman came around the house, if you could call it a house. Yes surely it was a house, by all dreams and definitions, with a front yard and a mountain backdrop. The walls were thin planks overlapping each other and so much lichen aged the exterior it appeared light green. The woman seemed cool. Some kids hung around the blue suspension bridge entrance, as kids do. They held some red berries in blue plastic bags. “From the mountain?” I asked. They nodded. “Where do you want to go?” they asked. “To the waterfall,” I said. They nodded, knowingly. I had passed, and walked by them. 

The bridge was made up of the same wooden planks that built the house. There were big gaps and the bridge bounced up and down as I walked, even though I thought of myself as small and nimble. I looked back to see if the kids were bouncing one end as a joke. What is this Western skepticism we have? Where is the trust? Of course they weren’t, they had long since disappeared. I glanced around. The up-the-river, down-the-river views of clear water tumbling over smooth rocks filled all my senses. I breathed in deeply. Straight ahead and above lay the jungle. I dismounted from the bridge and began up the steep path, putting my hands down a couple times since it was slippery. Lichen, they say in Indonesian. What a good word for it. As I left the rice fields and entered the jungle, I put my hands together and bowed my head. The great trees greeted me, taller than I could have imagined. Big tribal eyes were carved into their bark, getting smaller as they went up, up, up. Before, I thought the trees here just looked like that, mystical and significant. Later I learned that people bore the holes for the sap. Someone said it is to make glass, and it looks like glass, seeping out, but I wasn’t sure if they were for real.

The entrance to the jungle is always like that—the urge to keep a hush of respect for the tall trees and the small trees. It’s darker as you enter. You also feel the wetness on your body, instantly. It’s like entering a new room, or rather happening upon a massive hotel banquet hall with the lights off. 

I waved at the two guys sitting in a makeshift wooden outpost and one guy waved back. “Halo," I said. “You speak Indonesian?” he asked. I nodded and he launched into some directions that I did not understand. He signaled to go back down. He started walking toward me and I walked towards him too, as you would a shark or a bear. “It’s that way,” he indicated. I was Western skeptical that he didn’t want me to enter and see something, and I peered over his shoulder into the dark jungle. But he sent the other guy over so I reluctantly followed him back down. He had a large bundle of kindling on his shoulder and wore rubber slippers that looked like Vans slip-ons. He had reached the bottom and I expected him to point me in the right direction once he reached his scooter. Instead, he kept walking, leading me further. Exhausted from the day in the jungle he had just come from, he still tried to walk more steps than he needed to in order to help me, me in my blue dolphin sarong and tank top, eat pray loving my way to a waterfall in Sumatra. I was grateful when he accepted my refusal of him to walk a step further, and I continued on my own. 

The grass rice field borders wound at right angles, and at each intersection I followed the sound of rushing water. At one point, a water wheel stood in the way, implanted in the earth. I turned to go the other way. Sometimes life guides you and shows you which way is wrong. I think I could walk through those rice fields on a new path every day, for the rest of my life. My roommate used to take 48th down from the T streets all the way to turn up Ortega, when we lived in the Outer Sunset. I preferred zigzagging right, left, straight, depending on what the universe threw at me. My ex-boyfriend would do the same in his manual Tacoma, gliding into each four-way intersection without stopping.

Anyways, I reached the waterfall, with a little stream to bathe in at the bottom. It was beautiful. I looked up and wondered what magic world lay at the top. I decided to check and then come back and dip in the little pool. Placing my bag on a flat rock, I started climbing with feet and hands up the strangely square and diamond rock face. As I started, I spotted a boy walking along the stream towards my bag. I stared, mid-cliff face. He stopped a ways down and entered the stream to his knees. I realized he was just pausing for a bathroom break. Western skepticism. I continued up. 

My jaw dropped in glee. I had emerged over the top into the most enchanting, bewitching lagoon I could ever imagine. Apparently I had to leave my phone behind to enter this place. I looked around and realized that I was hidden in this magical spot, raised and inset in some dark stone world before time. I had left my bikini in my bag as well, so I dropped my sarong and pulled off my tank top. I pulled off my plastic flower hair clip, and plunged into the cool water. I kicked across to the rock half-submerged in the cavern. My heart was pounding as I pulled myself up. Could there be crocodiles in here? My friend had just told me a story about a girl in a lagoon who almost got eaten by a crocodile. She had the scars to prove it. I had left without telling anyone that I was headed here today. I didn’t mind the idea of dying up here in this world but I didn’t want to be missing for days. I counted to twenty and didn’t see any sign of a croc. They can’t hold their breath for that long, I presumed. Okay. I dove gingerly back in and swam to the original spot at the entrance. I looked back. Fuck that is beautiful. I started to put my clothes back on. 

My mom had instilled in me an instinct—this feeling that as the sun moves past its zenith that I had to start thinking about going home. She always rushes from place to place, power-walking through the grocery store and across the parking lot. I looked up and sucked in some lagoon air. I had plenty of time, even though the clouds looked like they were building up grey color and moving from the edge of the sky towards the center. I plopped back down on the rock, still naked. I crossed my legs and quickly fell into a meditative mushroomie existence. Meditating was easier high. Or maybe that’s not that point.

I opened my eyes, five minutes or two years later. Fuck the lagoon looked beautiful. There can’t be any crocs in there, I reasoned, and I was warm from sunning myself on the rock, feeling ready to slither back into the cool water. It was a milky aquamarine and I could only see the bottom if I unfocused my eyes, and only then in some parts. Something about freshwater pools, lakes, ponds made me shudder. I edged my way boobs deep to the rock I’d conquered before and craned my neck up towards the falls on the opposite side of the lagoon. I sighed a big breath out. If something happened to me here, it’d be okay. Everyone would get on with their life. My parents’ suffering didn’t cross my mind, just my ex-boyfriend’s. I dove headfirst into the water and calmly stroked to the other side. I tried to reach my feet down and didn’t touch the soft silky sand. It was deep. I gracefully shifted into pure panic mode, splashing and kicking towards the black rock shelf across the deep cave lagoon. When I got there, the closest thing to me was a knobby brownish rock, half submerged and more long than wide. OMG was that a massive crocodile? Massive crocodile head or a rock? Bumpy lumpy rock or a four-meter crocodile, with its gleeful teeth clacking underwater? As I swam against the waterfall current, my only option was to grab onto it. My heart was pounding out of my chest. 

As I stood on top of it, I was pretty sure it was a rock, but I knew it could turn into the crocodile again at any second. A meaty spiderweb was strung just above my head so I couldn’t stand up all the way. 

Well, Katie, you did it. I was deep in the lagoon-cave in the jungle, alone and free. I gave a little call to the wild, “Yeeeehuuuu!” I dove back in gleefully and doggie-paddled, head out of the water, letting myself be swept all the way back to the other side. I’d have to come back again with my ex-boyfriend and have him take me, upstream further. If the croc attacked he’d come save me, for sure, and at least we’d be in it together. I wrapped my sarong back on and pulled on the tank top. I emerged and clambered back down. My bag was still down at the bottom on the stream bank. The clouds above looked heavier with grey weight at their bottom edge and the waterfall was flowing faster. Yes it was time to go. 

On my walk back, I waved at the dogs again, who seemed to have followed me at a distance. At the end of the path, just before the courtyard where I parked my scooter, I noticed the most vibrant wall of rainbow color I had ever seen. Then I saw a man, white-blonde, tan, and old, burning the dead leaves from the rainbow hedge. I smiled a big smile and told him the colors of the plant were beautiful. He was stoked that someone had noticed. He smiled back with genuine joy, and I think I happened upon God. I walked back to my scooter, which the courtyard people had moved to be more protected under the tree. The woman said, “Good, right?” “Yes," I said. “I will come back here.” She smiled and I waved goodbye to the kids, entering back onto the main road and shaking out my hair, letting the lagoon water dry in the breeze.