I wrote one email, then another, and another—several. They all said, No, don’t do it! or, Do this, it’s safer. Each one I deleted, struggling to warn but not discourage him. While he was my son, at twenty-seven he was also his own man, capable, experienced, careful.

Roman, that way to El Mirador from the west, from Carmelita, looks better. I don’t think you should go from Uaxactun. It looks too remote and without a GPS it’ll be really hard to know where you are and not get disoriented in the flat karst jungle. Maybe you can find somebody to go with you. It looks like a long ways and it’s really remote. Remember that guy we met who was out with a friend in Peru and he got bit by a bushmaster? The friend died before they could get help. I don’t think you should go the way you’ve planned. It seems too dangerous.

I can’t send this. He knows what he’s up against. He speaks Spanish. He’s young. It’s his trip and he’s there because of me. I’ve always resented people who warned me off my plans with “No, it’s too dangerous” or “No, it’s impossible” or “No, do this instead.” Roman even joined me on many of those trips. How can I deny him his own adventure? Shouldn’t I feel satisfaction he’s adventuring instead of fear?

I deleted the discouraging email and wrote instead:

Be careful with the machete. Clumsy me almost cut off my toe once when it went through the shoe, the sock and into the toe. Also watch for the snakes that sit and wait, motionless, hard to see. Don’t want to step on a fer-de-lance or the other big bad aggressive one, bushmaster! And thanks for thinking of your safety. So is your plan to essentially look for trails heading NW from Uaxactun? Off trail jungle walking can get pretty disorienting.

Dad

I pushed send and hoped his trip would go well.

What else can I do?

Chapter 16

El Petén

Volcano climbing, Guatemala, March 2014.

Courtesy of the author

Roman had dug into the Internet to uncover an ambitious M-shaped route through El Petén. A traveler named Frenchfrog described the route on an online forum: “[It] is almost impossible to do it by yourself unless you have been trained by the Marines or Navy SEALs and you have a perfect knowledge of the jungle, how to find your way.” Frenchfrog added, “This is the best adventure I had of all my adventures,” but warned, “You must be very careful otherwise you can be easily lost.”

In an email to me on the day that he left, Roman described the M’s three legs. The easternmost portion started on an unmarked jeep track that weaved below the jungle canopy to Dos Lagunas ranger station. The route then continued northwest on seldom used trails to the most remote Mayan site of all, Naactun (pronounced “Nash-toon”), near the Mexican border. The middle of the M dipped twenty miles to another ancient city, Nakbe, ten miles from El Mirador—Roman’s “undeveloped Maya ruin in the jungle.” The final leg led to the road at Carmelita, which Roman hoped to reach after dark to avoid its armed tourism cartel. To navigate the M, he would use only a compass, a crude sketch map, and his Spanish.

While Roman was on his traverse, I finished my attic remodel and treated his absence like that of any other adventurer who left me with the responsibility of taking action should they not return by their out-date.

An out-date is the day that we adventurers request a loved one, friend, or some other responsible person to initiate a search to find us, should they not have heard from us by then. In Alaska, this means contacting the Alaska State Troopers, the U.S. Air Force’s Pararescue “PJs,” the pilot who flew us into the wilderness, or the local mountain rescue team. Besides an out-date, we provide our destinations and route descriptions; the colors of our shelter, pack, raft, and clothing; and any general information that would aid them in a search for us. We strive to be responsible for ourselves and our actions. If we need help, we want our helpers to find us and bring us home.

Roman emailed me his M-shaped route description with an out-date: April 18. If he had not yet emailed me by that day, then I would initiate search and rescue. Tomorrow I am heading to el remate to try and leave details with a gringo guide so you guys have contact info in case I go missing, he wrote. El Remate is the jumping-off point for Tikal. The guide was an older American expat named Lou Simonich.

Ten days later on April 16, two days before his out-date, Roman emailed three sentences: 200km in Guatemala’s wildest jungle, only lost for two days. I’ll write you more later. Have to find accommodation and wash gear.

It was a relief to hear from him. The full story came the next day. I read it twice, then forwarded it to my own dad and a dozen friends who had watched Roman grow up and done trips with us both. I wanted them to read in his own voice what he had accomplished.

Roman explained why he’d written the six thousand words: There’s a lot of stuff I want to record, to see how I remember it right now and how I’ll remember it later, and because if I give the brief summary, it sounds not only super badass, but kind of foolhardy. It wasn’t really either of those things, just walking for 8 days and asking people where to go.

Before he set off, Roman had spent the night with Lou. A guide and experienced jungle trekker himself, Lou cautioned Roman against telling locals his full plan. Like Umnak’s cowboys twenty years before, they would raise an eyebrow at a gringo who took the long way to El Mirador alone. The two stayed up late studying maps and watching Quentin Tarantino movies.

In the morning, Roman helped Lou bake bread. He sharpened his machete and packed away a hand-sketched map of his route. Lou drove Roman to Tikal, where he caught a bus to Uaxactun, a ruin at the end of a dirt road. He camped there for the night. Lou’s advice not to mention anything about El Mirador was good, Roman noted, as the reception I got from the locals was to discourage me walking there.

Anticipating the jungle to be hot, and looking to save weight in order to carry water, Roman had left his sleeping bag and extra clothes behind with Lou. Carrying only his jungle clothes and big Mexican pack for insulation, he would sleep cold most nights of his trek. Chilled and stiff hours before dawn, he’d wake to the lion-like roar of howler monkeys, climb out of the backpack he’d pulled to his waist like a bivy sack for warmth, then spark a fire in the dark and hunker over it while boiling the day’s drinking water.

He left Uaxactun at dawn following directions he didn’t know were bad, checking his compass and sketch map relentlessly as he passed side trail after side trail. Eventually, he left the rolling wet hills of karst and entered dry, flat scrublands with an overstory of short palms. The road straightened out. A gallon into his water reserves he came to his first aguada, or water hole, next to a well-used campsite. He stopped there and boiled up a gallon in the afternoon heat.

It might seem ironic that Roman saw the crux of his rainforest crossing as water, but it was the dry season on an enormous limestone shelf, porous as a brick of Swiss cheese. Frenchfrog himself had run out of water mid-trek.

Water wasn’t his only concern though. Being alone in a foreign wilderness left him nervous. Traffic on the jeep trail could include narcos, thieves, or belligerent locals, as well as friendly campesinos, archaeologists, rangers, and even tourists. His apprehension increased as a guy with a long gun slung over his shoulder zoomed by on a motorcycle.

I could barely return his bemused greeting, Roman wrote, as my eyes were fixed on the firearm. It was old and rusty and looked like a break-barrel 16-gauge. Not a narco weapon, but a poacher’s. He was smiling when he went past, though. Roman relaxed but not for long. As dusk settled, he upset two huge birds in the dark. The pair erupted in honking, clumsy flight, startling him. From his description they sounded like long-necked, long-legged, turkey-looking guans.

On his second morning, he woke cold, boiled water from the aguada, and left before the sun had risen. Despite his heavy load, his feet felt fresh, his spirits high. At dawn, warm, welcome light spilled into the forest—then something crashed out of the brush and onto the trail.

Before I could register that the barking, charging blur was a terrified wild pig and not a ferocious feral dog, my machete was out and pointing in the right direction. Later, a puma stepped into view, looked at him, then loped down the trail and slipped back into the forest. I didn’t pull my machete out that time, he said.