Courtney Lochner

I used to travel anywhere I wanted in my head, but now I need the airport. Apparently, a lot of people do. Even at 3:57 in the morning, an hour I know well. When I was a kid, my father, the village shaman, served a weekly purgative at 4:00. Followed by ortiga, stinging nettles he slapped against my skin, thorns sharp as knives. I discovered the trick to it early—don’t fight the pain—the pain is just a door. And if you can just get yourself through it, you get to the showstopper—the mind in coalescence with the cosmos. Problem is, I love that door. We all do. It’s the human condition. Hence, I’m here, at the airport: Fluorescent lights, angry people, stinky bathrooms. Worse, it’s becoming something of a hobby. Two times now I’ve gotten this far but didn’t board. I check the burner phone. There are no new messages, nothing luring me to stay. Slipping it into my pocket, I return my attention to those waiting at the gate as they gaze into their phones or double-check their IDs, and ponder where they’ll go upon arrival to Leticia, headwater of the jungle, and the city I once considered the mecca of civilization. All the motorbikes sputtering about, drivers clutching babies, black smoke pluming in their wake. I’d been fascinated by the action yet sure the city was no place for me, I was a jungle kid. To think I’ve lived in Bogotá for ten years now, a place where I wear pollution as if it’s clothing. That I haven’t been home since I was fifteen. The sound of rushed footsteps catches my ear, and I turn to see a man jogging my way, or the gate rather, tugging a big black suitcase and staring into his fancy phone. He’s a foreigner with dark skin, though not indigenous. Indian. Young, probably early twenties. I try to define him the way my husband Rodri would. A side effect of his military training. He says something to me in English and as he speaks, he squints his almond eyes and scrunches his nose but doesn’t look at me, he’s only got eyes for his device. A waft of his amber cologne and sweat tickles my nose. “No English,” I say. It’s a lie. Since taking my mini lessons I can hold a basic conversation. He taps his forehead and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I’m still in Chicago mode,” he says in Spanish with a decent accent. “Is this the gate for Leticia?” “Si, si.” He drops his shoulders and wipes the sweat beads dotting his upper lip, clutches his phone against his chest like he just birthed it. He’s out of his element but trying not to be, donning all white linen, a loose shirt, and billowing pants that brush against his manicured feet and spotless Birkenstocks. A look that implies he purchased it specifically for this trip, like he Googled “what to wear in Colombia” and he’s short only a straw hat and cigar. What business does he have in Leticia? Would he dare visit the jungle? More and more foreigners are coming to do so, curious about our relationship with plants, how we consider them a technology with which to connect to something greater.

1. Story Statement: When a small plane crashes in the Amazon, three triangulated characters must navigate the jungle, Colombia’s political landscape, and their haunted pasts, to reunite with their families and ultimately, themselves. Ch’aska must leave her abusive husband and reunite with her father to tell him the secret she’s held since for ten years: Her mother had an affair, and her brother, whom her father trains to be the next shaman, is the son of a greedy American businessman. As a result of this secret, Ch’aska left her tribe for the city, but is desperate to return to herself, which requires returning home. After a plane crash killed both pilots and her mother, Gabriela must navigate her three younger siblings and herself, to survive alone in the jungle. Vishal travels to the Amazon to work with a shaman’s plant medicine, to make peace with his parents’ rejection of his homosexuality, so he can make peace with himself. 2. Antagonistic Forces: Ch’aska’s husband Rodrigo Garcia: Rodri is a colonel in the Colombian National Army with hopes of becoming a General like his father, the man whose love he’s desperately sought and never received. His inner child leads him to abuse and demean his wife. Gabriela’s brother Mateo: Mateo refuses to believe his sister regarding their father’s involvement in drug trafficking and betrays all her advice in the jungle, leading to them to be held hostage by a guerrilla soldier. Vishal: Toby, a British facilitator at the plant medicine retreat center, antagonizes Vishal with harsh reality checks about the jungle and life. 3. Titles Breakout title: Pintas The Lost Plane The Technology of Plants Visionary Plants 4. Comps: Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik Lost in the Jungle by Yossi Ghinsberg The Hike by Susi Holliday In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez 5. Core wound + super powerlogline with conflict and core wound Ch’aska: Ch’aska turned her back on culture at 15 when she learned her mother had an affair with an exploitative businessman, and that her father is training a son not of his blood, to become the next shaman. She has tried to return home on several occasions, and to leave her abusive husband, a military colonel, but cannot find the courage. When a plane crashes near her tribe’s village, the military requests Ch’aska to assist their search party because of her knowledge of the jungle and languages. Ch’aska must return home under betraying conditions to her family and face the truth she’s hidden from herself: She wanted to become the next shaman. Gabriela: When a plane crashes in the Amazon and kills her mother, Gabriela discovers arms and drugs on the plane, confirming her suspicion her father is involved in trafficking. Lost in the jungle, Gabriela must utilize her ability to connect with ancestral visions to navigate her siblings to survive. Vishal: When Vishal’s religious parents reject his homosexuality, he travels to the Amazon to work with a shaman in hopes of overcoming his sadness. Upon arrival he’s pulled into the tribe’s search party for missing members of a plane crash and thrust deep into the jungle where guerilla soldiers hold them hostage. Logline: When a small plane crashes in the Amazon, three interwoven characters must navigate the jungle, Colombia’s political landscape, and their haunted pasts, to survive, as their journeys triangulate to a crescendo that will forever change how people look at plant medicine. 6. Conditions: Ch’aska feels like a traitor for leaving her tribe and finds herself miserable in her marriage and the city. She’s afraid of returning home to confront her parents about the secret she’s held for the last ten years about her mother’s affair, that her brother and next-in-line shaman, is the son of an exploitative American. This narrative keeps her from admitting her truth: that she wants her father to train her to be the next shaman. This secret has stolen her vitality and keeps her small, snarky, and living in her husband’s shadow. Until she sees the American professor on television proclaim he’s going to patent her father’s plant medicine. Her furious reaction is the driver to get her home. Vishal wants to be a journalist—his only experience is one of nepotism, working for his father at a Christian newspaper. Whenever he wanted to report a real story, he was turned down for conflicts of interest. In the jungle, he vlogs his experience, disgusted with himself for succumbing to vain Gen Z behavior, but comforted by the act as a way of journaling his thoughts and fears. When held hostage by a guerilla soldier he interviews the man on camera and learns he’s not the enemy after all—and develops feelings for him. Back in the States, when the vlog attracts major media attention, Vishal realizes how fake the limelight is, that it’s the driver behind society’s demise, and decides to leave capitalism and return to the jungle. 7. Setting: Putumayo jungle: Colombia The jungle is no joke. You couldn’t even attempt to run without tearing yourself up. A verifiable carwash of florae hosting a circus of shrieking sounds. Mesozoic-era-sized palm leaves and vines swipe against your head and body as you make your way through an endless tunnel of greenery. Insects buzz by your ear too fast for you to swap. Bird calls rise and fall, others sing melodic tunes. There are whistles and screeches, and hollers as if the birds (or are they monkeys?) are poking fun at you. Bird calls emanate from a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, unlike sounds from home which have a clear start and endpoint, like a siren going from point A to B. These sounds are this world and now you’re in it.