Pig snouts and swan boats.

This one's a short version of a longer piece already on the Homeward Bound site here.

The first night in the village I set up my hammock between a longan and a jackfruit tree in the garden of the ranger station. Why not? No lights and no music; the trees are dark and I dream. I dream that a colleague from the saola conservation world hands me a wooden box. It’s about 20cm square, with a removable lid; not fancy but neatly made. I’m told that what’s inside might just possibly be a new species, or something as remarkable as that. The chance is small but it’s there. When I open it, I find I have been given a slice from the snout of a young wild pig. It’s a typical piece of Vietnamese butchery, made by two strokes of the cleaver, transverse to internal structure. The skin, the bone, the lining of the buccal cavity form rings, but the hair has not been burnt off the outside. In fact the little brown eye is open (it only has one eye because the slice was diagonal) and it still looks alive. And then, with no throat, it starts squealing, constant and pitiful: “mẹ, mẹ, mẹ,” which is ‘mother’ in Vietnamese.

See, this kind of thing is why we’re not talking.

But the next night I have a just beautiful dream; the kind that’s a balm. Wandering through parks that I suddenly find exist along a river that’s both the Hương and the Avon. Great boars and moon bears appear to my delight among the willows. It’s one of those landscapes that seems to reach out, suggesting a connection with other dreams half-remembered. Many people have them: certain houses and vistas and woods which connect.

I have a friend who has an entire dream planet because he’s travelled the world so much and seen so many animals that he’s peopled another Earth with its own versions of the Amazon, the Antarctic, the outback and the tundra. He drew a map of it on Facebook. I seem to remember that there was a place, somewhere in the Indian Ocean which was an urban Kafkascape of travel agencies, bus stations and government offices where you fill in forms, hand over cash and make plans but can never quite leave for the forest. He is someone who pursues his own passion with splendid bravery; the kind of person you end up comparing yourself to. It occurred to me yesterday morning I might literally live in his nightmare.

Vietnam can seem like that. The state control of travellers, the buildings along all the roads, the acid that’s eaten the forest. You can’t just go and walk in a wood. You just can’t. I have a distinct memory from the old days in Hanoi of seeking solace on the water. The city has few parks but it does have lakes and the big one in the northwest had swan-shaped pedalos on it. Well I could take a swan boat right out into the open water, couldn’t I? Into the water which moves continually in the same direction but never goes anywhere. Which is silver, green and black at the same time and advertises nothing. Which is not interested in the colour of my face but only in the colour of the sky. I gave it all the welly that the kneespace would allow and headed straight for the horizon. Of course a guy with a whistle whizzed past in a speedboat as soon as I got to the edge of the flock and I had to turn my swan back inward so everyone could peer in and try and attract my attention. “Hullo!” “Hullo!” “Hullo!” They do it for the same reason people tap on fishtanks. That’s what the Lonely Planet used to say.

But I’m making excuses again. Sunday, May Day, is wet. The little hill is wet. Where the path dips by the red signs something large bounces once on its legs and flaps off through the understorey. I can tell what it was from the bounce and am joyful but not quite as much as I feel that I should be. In the afternoon I go back with umbrella, waterproof trousers and tarp. I push through a brambly something, find a nest in soft pine needles where no-one can come. It isn’t that hard. I tell a story to the black pines, or I try to, but I can’t make it work. So much was irrelevant to finding the saola. I don’t know the paths through this story. I don’t know the names of the weeds.

But to get to the point where I’d even go out, I had to spend Saturday collapsed in my hotel room, listening again to stupid podcasts though I’m not really sick. I refuse to see anyone and I eat melted-together sweets from a bag in the fridge. Or maybe for me to get to that point the sky had to break. For a blessed couple of days the heat is gone and the headache with it and there’s a wind in the streets. Why was all that necessary? What was it that I didn’t want to do?

The third night in the field the dreams got more complicated and I couldn’t hack it. The dreams were like company, like people. I had enough to do with people! I had to get the kids doing interviews, enter data in maps. Had to keep my head through the alcohol clouds and work out how to ask intelligent questions about rabbits.

I think I didn’t want to negotiate. That’s what nature is. The place you don’t have to negotiate.

On Friday I’d still been trying to get work done.

And on Thursday I was handed a box…