We came down from the mountains of Monte Verde in a mist of stone and limited road. The borders of visibility were cold and white, a metaphor for the edge of an expanding universe, as seen from the clarity of space, although we were in atmosphere and heading through fence-strapped, yellow fields toward an earthly destination - the volcano at the eastern end of Lake Arenal . Scenes passed in the mist like winding galleries in an open museum - a series of slightly altering pastoral oils, the light dull but golden in intermittent rain, high grass the tendrils of unravelling tapestries covering the floors, and the only changes from frame to frame the position of cattle or the fold of a hill.

The volcano stood encircled by clouds. We turned from the west side of the lake to the north, watching the wind on the water press toward the high crater, a distant form of steam and orange light on the horizon, which seemed to fall into an empty eastern sky; as if the edge of the world, under grey space, spread just beyond its mass: a vast, living fossil, gripping the earth in tranquilized rage.

We had been in the cloud forest of the reserve for three days, hiking obscure paths in the deep green of strangling vines and fallen palms, touching bromeliads and watching the breathing bird life - toucanelles and flights of iridescent hummingbirds. The rain and leaves wound deeply into the foliant hills, trails tying the land with slight erosion. The energy that bound the life of Monte Verde was palpable, a chromatic vision of sound and motion within the reserve, beyond the first few miles of trails. We had come upon feathered totems hanging from the trees on the first day, difficult to notice if one was not looking for them. They hung in the vines and branches unobtrusively, as warning to any entering with ideas of discovery beyond the simple tour of the fringes of this domain. I was already feeling the pressure of a touch after the first sighting of the coloured feathers in the leaves of a strangler fig.

That third day, I was hiking alone on a ridge, mist flowing in the valley below. The weather threatened to turn to rain, and I was soon enveloped in white vapour. The radiance of the sun was diffuse and dissolved into transient chambers of twilight. The mist seemed to grip the foliage around me, and slid over my body slowly like currents over a marine reef. Suddenly, I felt the touch of warm skin on my hand, without visibility. A face developed out of the cold breath, flat and scarred, painted with blue marks on cheeks and forehead. I was deep in the forest, and had not been particularly searching that day, merely looking for any evidence of the jaguar which I had been told lived and hunted somewhere in the mountains north of the first trails, said to haunt territory near the presence of humanity, occasionally. I had not expected to find anything; was casually walking the foothills, drawn on by the calls of howler monkeys, which were said to inhabit old ruins. My heart began to beat heavily, and he motioned for me to follow.

I walked the trail behind him in partial blindness, higher onto the ridge, along the flow of a small stream, which flowed over low falls into calm pools, the mist hanging over the surface of the water like my cold breath, seeming to freeze in the air at the high elevation. I believed I was entering a world in reversal from the one I had inhabited minutes before, as if submerging into the cold rush of ocean without sight, all senses confused and numbed, not knowing why I followed, except that I had been directed to, and that the totems I had seen had drawn me into a spiralling desire for the mystery of colour and form which must have come down from an entirely ancient mystical way. The forbidden shattered my sense of linear time and geometrical space, and I felt shadows and dissolution into primal vision. We walked for what seemed like hours, winding through the darkness, as if enclosed in the womb of the earth. Moments were lost to me, and his form blurred into multiple reflections.

I lay in a hot spring, at dusk the next day. We had spent most of the previous night walking through trees and the strange sounds of the dark rainforest. I had stumbled behind him for an interminable time, lost in minutes which expanded into hours and hours which passed without my awareness. My only determination of time had become light and dark, and in the morning we stopped in a place with a smouldering fire, a clearing within which was the hot spring and a palm leaf shelter. He began to laugh and smile in a strange way, his eyes huge and black in his face, and directed me to the shelter. I went within. Flowering plants hung from the ceiling and small insects crawled and flew inside. The birds had become silent. He gestured to me, attempting to communicate something which I did not understand. He drew his hands across his face, tracing the scars and paint.

As I lay in the spring, everything around me, and my body, vibrated and melted. Heat became frigid cold, and then passed from awareness. My head seemed enclosed within a metallic, spined headdress, needles pressing through my skull, causing extreme pain. I could not separate this illusion from my experience. I was encased in a steel coffin, which eventually began to fade from my feet to my head, until only the crown remained, draining thought and energy from my sense of reality until an implosion of all light and substance.

I subsisted on the feeling of one hand, left warm, without attachment to the rest of my body. The image of the flower I had eaten during the fractured light of before rose and coalesced within that hand, turning like a spectral wheel in the last light of my being.

A corridor of dust and faded colour opened before me. A serpentine form flowed out of the darkness, vivid in its own light, covered with feathers; eyes like jewels, framed in a sensory deconstruction, a river of time in itself, as all other motion and passage were lost. It approached me, stopped close to my face. I felt wind, and the corridor collapsed while the fringe of feather brushed my skin, returning the sense of touch to my body. I felt wind again, and the feathered serpent dissolved into a sensation of warmth and red light.

A shape of yellow and black patterns emerged from the leaves around the spring, which had re-formed to sight, the painted mask hanging in air without body at the edge of the water. Reality was still difficult to perceive, the space around evolving continuously into diffuse and spinning colour, shadow and light bleeding into one another, over a streaming fire at the centre of the clearing. The pattern of yellow and black merged into a feline shape, shifting from position to position as it approached. I felt tears begin from my eyes, and did not know the reason as I felt nothing but a dull terror holding my heart. The shape was in the water with me. I felt the ripples that it caused, the touch of fur, and a gentle push, and heard the sound of its voice, like the wings of a large bird rustling.

The stars of early evening began to fall from the sky, and everything faded into another cold mist.

I stumbled out of the rainforest close to sunset the next day, still seeing shifts of light and shadow, still trying to control my sense of time. I was glad of the sunlight, although it was painful. With the dawn eruption of light, I had managed to perceive the trail I found myself on, headed south and out. I could not remember how I had begun the journey away from the clearing, but assumed I had been put on the path in the final moments of night. I found my way to the car I had driven into the mountains, found my companion, and began to drive to the lowlands, looking for signs of civilization without really desiring to find them. My experience in the forest still gripped my perceptions, and the sun seemed to skip rapidly through the sky.