First, you go into the woods with your small child. You have to go at just the right time of day, late afternoon, and you must make no sound; you might have to remind the child to be quiet, no talking.
Your footsteps are silent because leaves and needles cover the forest floor thickly. The landscape must be exactly right too. You walk through the trees and rocks. The forest floor slopes upwards from the small, clear creek on your left, sloping upwards away from the flat spot the two of you are standing on, finally turning into a steep, sheltering hillside.
This is a forest of profound simultaneity. There is no chronology here. It is a cool forest, it is hot and humid. Condensing moisture drips from the canopy far above; in fact the only sound is made by those drops of water on their way down striking big leaves like drumheads. You can observe the water cycle at close range; it evaporates almost before reaching the ground and rises back to the dark green canopy as steam.
The heat feels buoyant. The air is so thick with water vapor it feels as cushioned as the soft floor of the jungle. It buoys you but as it does so it condenses on your skin and you begin to perspire. You push your way through an enclosed passage, you push a thick waxy branch out of your face and something large and many-legged scurries away to safety. Your vision blurs and you wipe sweat out of your eyes with the back of your hand.
The trees look ancient, but could merely be fast-growing, and they are wound with vines growing upwards and laced with more vines hanging from them, some as thick as your arm. The jungle darkens as night falls, and the canopy seems to be growing together into a sealed black dome overhead. The air is still, but the vines sway slowly with some vibration of this place, and you realize this jungle is not as still as you had assumed.
In the dying light, your vision blurred by heat and the rising tropical haze, you see a distant flash of orange in the undergrowth and hope it is a bird. You want to warn your child to stay near but your child is no longer by your side. You are claustrophobic and exposed at the same time, trapped and naked. You are filled with panic the size of this place, this jungle not a forest, with its monstrous trees, a jungle-sized fear until you spot the child fifty feet away, calmly poking a stick into what looks like skunk cabbage, some fleshy plant with large green leaves and a solid-looking blossom the color of raw meat. Then you see the child, and the fear is joined by love so big and strong it feels like the invisible framework holding all this up. Love and fear.
The tiger watches you all this time, from the darkness uphill. Big cats stalk their prey patiently before claiming it. As you watch your child play, poking holes into big green leaves, the tiger is watching the two of you. It is a tiger, an elemental animal, so who knows what it thinks? But somewhere in its mind, it is deciding in which order to take the two of you and you know this. It can take the small one first, after which it would still be hungry, then it could take the big one. If it takes the big one first, the small one might get away. Escape is not an option in this quiet, timeless place, not for you.
The child does not see the tiger. The child continues to poke the plants. It looks over at you mischievously and you motion for it to go away, to hurry down the hill, away from here. As children sometimes do in serious situations, even the most recalcitrant ones, it obeys and jogs off downhill. The tiger watches this. You only have a second. It begins to move, but it is not until you speak that things are really set into motion.