Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
without a thought to risks and consequences. It was exhilarating.
But would it last? In any case, she reasoned, she should continue to
be prudent. No use letting herself get so giddy that she turned stu­
pid. She reached into her pack and took out a bottle of antibacterial
hand lotion and doused both palms.
“What’s the plan?” she said as she saw Vera coming over.
“The plan is to make one,” Vera answered.
Within the hour, they group had discussed two courses of action.
The first was to cut their way down the rainforest, staying along the
crevasse as much as possible, until they reached another village.
They would borrow a machete and take the boatmen, since they
needed to get back down as much as anybody. Perhaps one of the
Lajamees might also accompany them, since they were knowledgeable
about the jungle. This sounded reasonable, until Roxanne brought up
tales of people in the Galápagos who were lost and tried to make
their way out in a similar manner, only to be found thirty or forty
years later with scrawled notes tied to their shoes, the rest of them a
scattering of bleached bones. Wyatt added that an adventure maga­
zine had recently run a story about two guys who had gotten lost in
Peru and survived. Of course, they were expert mountain climbers
and had had pitons, and knew how to rappel with ropes.
The group settled on trying to signal for help as their first course
of action. At least with that, they weren’t risking their lives. They
simply had to use their intelligence. They emptied their rucksacks on
a mat in the clearing. Heidi’s, of course, held the most possibilities.
She had a headlamp with possibly ten to twenty hours of light left.
Marlena had the other, and there were extra batteries as well. Amaz­
ing. They could aim the lamps up at night when planes flew over­
head. The Space blanket would be excellent for creating a flash that
people in rescue helicopters could see. But how would they spot air­
craft overhead when they could barely see the sky? And why would
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