Sacred Monkey River

Flowing across the limestone plateaus and tropical forests of Mexico and Guatemala, the Usamacinta River was the cradle of ancient Mayan civilization, heavily traveled and lined with palaces and huge cities. In the aftermath of the European conquest, the rugged Usamacinta country became a remote afterthought, a place where few travelers dared to venture.

Christopher Shaw, an American writer and canoeist, makes a journey down the Maya's "watery path," reporting his sightings from this broad stream of "pale jade shot with turquoise and slightly clouded with silt." Sacred Monkey River (whose title translates the Maya name for the great watercourse) is a spiritually charged quest into once-sacred geography--but a land profaned in recent years by warfare and ethnic division. Traveling by kayak, a craft he explains to locals as a canoe of the winik, or native people, of the far north, Shaw takes us through forbidding territory, delivering glimpses of rainforest country that is in imminent danger of being felled by the region's expanding timber concerns and dammed by governments intent on harnessing hydroelectric--and political--power. Ironically, his snapshots of the unspoiled Usamacinta may turn out to be documents of a disappeared world--unless, he observes, international environmental agencies find ways to join with the Maya to preserve their forest world. --Gregory McNamee