<strong>On Deck</strong><br/><br/>The Red River stretches onwards as the three on deck survey the coastline, and watch it slowly change.<br/><br/>Around the environs of Kumyurt, lush foliage spills from the hillsides in a thick broth of green, pouring from supple boughs into the river.  It strokes at the passing water as if to sip from the bloody flow.  In places, the long mane of the hillsides settles into gory marshland and cultivated tracts.  Patches of ricefields and of lotus have been planed from the natural overflow, glistening like false mirrors of lapis, azure and burnt sienna.<br/><br/>Like many battlefields in this kind of insurgent war, it is excruciatingly silent.  Occasionally a procession of herons or a single spinning songbird can be seen, but otherwise the life of this place seems tucked away beneath the sinister shifting of the endless vegetation.<br/><br/>As the River flows eastward, the floral thins dramatically.  The groves no longer seem a seamless mess, but thin in vast stretches of dry ground.  The change is abrupt, with the teeming trees and undergrowth suddenly vanishing for miles around as though some great blade had once descended and sheared the flesh of the land away to the bone.  In these stretches, there is just the gristly knobs of the hills, looming into the sky.  The dryness grips the river in a chalky desperation, and the river flows onwards, unsympathetic.<br/><br/>After a time, evening begins to settle.  Clouds are tugged in ragged strips over the bleak face of the sky.  The absolute blue of the heavens blurs, darkens and runs.  Soon the perfect blue has been muddled into a mess of thick paint, the heavens' canvas spoiled.  And as though those running hues were dripping down over the deck of the barge, a chill reaches its fingers through the humidity, grips the travelers, and holds like the promise of a lonely grave.<br/><br/><div align="center">(http://www.matthewfunk.net/onlinepic/kizilevening.jpg)</div><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>