Where the River Hides Below

by Anna Boshka (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Guatemala

Where the River Hides Below An Adventure with My Daughter, by Anna Boshka Clutching a rope in the middle of the Kan-Ba water caves, a twenty-seven mile underground system in the deep rainforest, in Semuc Champey, Alta Verapaz department, Guatemala, and trying not to crush my six year-old daughter Harper Daisy’s hand in mine as our group leaves us, I wonder at my parenting choices. My husband and nine year-old eldest daughter, Mae, move ahead, chest deep in milky silt current. Mae bobs along the rope, holding a lit white taper like an Indiana Jones heroine in one hand, waving goodbye to us with the other. We are left in a dark so absolute it hurts like brightness. Earlier, Harper Daisy surprises us when she says she’ll enter the caves. We’ve had a full day: a bumpy ride in the back of a Toyota Helio, clinging to the roll bars with fifteen German and Dutch twenty-somethings, a swim in the natural infinity pools colored Barbie-eye-green by calcium carbonate in the river Semuc Champey, a big hike up a deceptively steep trail to the astonishing lookout El Mirador, and another jostling twenty-minute ride to the place our guide calls Where the River Hides Below. She ought to be pooped. I see her fear as our guide explains that the water might be up to her neck. Then, I see her decide to be brave. We hike a hundred feet up an ancient rock staircase, past an aquamarine cascade, to the caves’ entrance. We’re learning the native plants—there’s Sweet-Scented Lycaste—a low-growing yellow orchid that looks like a cross between a glacier lily and a daffodil and smells oddly of pineapple. She points out the avocado-ish fruit hanging bulbously from a jade vine. Holding hands, we grasp the rope bolted to the caves’ wall and step into the cool water up to our knees, then our hips. When the water is at my waist it reaches just under her neck. It smells like hothouse roses. The walls sweat. She moves confidently, unafraid in the dim candlelight, until we come to the ladders. Oh, the ladders. Metal bars bolted into rock, straight up and slippery. Water rushes loudly on both sides of us. She climbs ahead of me, boldly up the first ladder, but by the second her legs are shaking and her six years on this planet are serving her well; it is not safe to be underground in the candlelight, in this hiding river, and her human-animal brain knows it. “I want to turn around,” she says with such gravity that I don’t try to pep-talk. “I hear you,” I say. But I don’t know how to turn around. The group is going ahead; a rope swing and a water-worn slide to conquer yet. “We’re staying here” I say firmly. “Here” is a tiny spit of a rock we perch on, bent slightly at the waist because the tunnel’s smooth limestone walls are so low. We watch as they take with them the candles’ lovely orange raceme, leaving us in a darkness made darker by the silence. Harper trembles. “Tengo miedo” she whimpers. I have the fear. Me too, little one. We name sounds: our heartbeats, our breath, the middle-school waterdrop sound, rhythmically soothing. We talk about the first sounds we’ll hear when we get out: cicadas, birds with great names (Green-Throated Mountain Gem! Azure-rumped Tanager!). My mombrain imagines all kinds of cinematically-tragic ends to this story. But we don’t get lost in Moria, doomed forever to the depths. We don’t become translucent, sightless cave-people, or need rescued by a SEAL team. Instead we learn a life lesson. If you need help, stay put, and you will be found. The staying put isn’t hard, because in this underearthly dark neither of us can begin to move. A German man and his son join us, speaking irritated words. Just a few stretchy minutes later another tour comes along. They have candles, and offer to lead us back the way we came. Emerging, Harper gets high-fives from the beautiful young travelers. “You are brave” they tell her. “Yes” she says, nodding. “We were afraid of the dark, but we are very brave.”