A famous Apowasi witch doctor lives upriver. He has uncanny powers. He can heal the sick, curse the wicked. He speaks to the animals of the jungle, cajoling them until they walk into a hunter's hands. He knows the proper spells, and how to lift his prayers higher than the stars until they rest at last in the right ears. The gods hear him. They answer his prayers. He can work miracles, I'm told, and I want to find him and ask him what I'm doing here in New Guinea, always on the move, always traveling to one dangerous place after the next. When will I be able to stop? When will I end the searching?

In the village of Ambunti, I run into two backpackers, Rob Hodge and his German friend, Jens. Rob tells me that Jens is a German Navy SEAL officer, a "killing machine." (Jens blushes.) His skills are in such high demand that he's often brought over to the States to help train American Special Forces units. I consider telling him about my childhood fantasy of becoming a female Green Beret, but I don't want to frighten him with the idea.

Rob tells me that they flew here to Ambunti to hire a canoe and guide for their very own trip up the Sepik River. He asks if I'd like to join them, and it doesn't take me long to decide. We'll try to find the Apowasi witch doctor.

We rent a large dugout canoe. "The lazy way," Rob calls it. Joseph, our guide, sits up front, piloting us along. For the first time since arriving in PNG, I'm feeling as if I might just be "on holiday," like Jens. It always amazes me how intrusive beauty becomes when the mind allows itself to rest. Perfection imposes itself upon the earth, and I am gorging myself on the spread of river that twists and glides to the west, to some space seemingly beyond the horizon. Crocodiles, the kings of the PNG waterways, slip into the water as we motor by. Joseph points at them with reverence, telling us that in the beginning there was nothing but water, but then a giant crocodile swam down to the bottom of the sea and returned with mud on its back, creating the world.

We spend the night in a small village called Wagu and wake up at dawn to seek out the rare birds-of-paradise. Joseph has his reservations about taking me, though, because my female presence might emit "poison" which could chase the birds away. He tells me that females regularly give off poison, causing sickness, injury, and death. He's seen it happen, he says. Men who aren’t careful about avoiding the female poison grow weak and die young.

Just as a town would want to separate infectious typhoid patients from the general population, women in these villages are whisked away to menstruation huts—haus meri—at the first sign of their monthly evil because Joseph says they're "full of mischief" and can spread poison. Poison is spread in the most unassuming ways. Maybe a woman sits down on her husband's chair while she's menstruating, and he sits there after her—well, he's just caught her evil and has infected himself, and chances are his health will begin to deteriorate. Food preparation and cooking must be done by another female during this time, to avoid having the menstruating woman infecting the meals and causing the man's body to "rot" from the inside out. But what the men fear most is the vindictive wife who, wanting to get back at her husband, leaves some menstrual blood where he'll walk on it, or—God forbid!—is intent on spreading her poisonous sex fluids on him during intercourse. From the man's point of view, the hazards are many, the risks great, in order to lie with a woman to perpetuate his clan.

I don't tell Joseph or anyone else that I'm currently having my period, and revel in the thought of all the poison I'm unleashing onto the world. Joseph says that one of the worst things a woman can do is to step over a man doing her "blood time." Feeling mighty and wrathful, I make an effort to step over Joseph several times as I get in and out of the canoe during the day. The poor man suspects nothing.

Our local guide from Wagu village leads us up a steep slope into the neighboring jungle. We chop ourselves a path, sweating and cursing our way through the thick foliage. Our guide stops us. He points at the branches of a nearby tree where two bright red birds of paradise taunt each other and fly into the air, their long, frilly plumage flaring about them. Rob and Jens take out their cameras and start to take pictures, while our guide lets out a high-pitched call, hoping to attract more. Instead, the two birds fly off. We sit down and wait, flicking leeches off our arms and legs. No birds are returning. Nothing.

Joseph is becoming increasingly furious. "It's no good. That man—," he points to our guide,  "—was with his wife last night. She put her smell on him. The birds smell her poison and they don't come."

Joseph repeats this to the guide in Pidgin, and the Wagu man looks at his feet like a guilty child. Joseph is spitting and frothing in anger now, berating the silent man. Rob raises his eyebrows at me, and we try not to laugh, waiting for Joseph's tirade to end.

With the birds staying clear of us, we have no other alternative but to return to Wagu. Joseph, still piqued, tells me that if a man sleeps with a woman then goes on a big fishing trip, he won't catch anything. She leaves her evil on him, jinxes him. The animals and fish can smell her poison and they stay away. "Our guide knows this," he says to me. "Stupid man."

Rob nudges me, but I'm not laughing anymore. I'm starting to get really sick of women being blamed for everything. When we get back to the village, I'm determined to step over both Joseph and the Wagu guide a few times. And maybe Rob and Jens, too.

It's the late afternoon when we leave the canoe behind for a hike to the witch doctor’s village. We follow a faint, muddy path through primeval jungle, trees towering at least a hundred feet above us, vines creeping from limb to limb, hugging trunks and hanging from boughs like gigantic tentacles.

The path opens up. We see a small village on the edge of a large stream. Mountains of rain forest rise to the south, clouds languishing about them, the departing sun already warming the sky and jungle with an orange glow. Everything looks softened, as if a god were resting a gentle hand upon the earth, quieting it, preparing it for rest. Joseph calls out. Some kids playing in a stream look at us, freeze, then run off in terror.

"They never see white people," Joseph explains.

A man in a dingy, unbuttoned white shirt, wearing a breechcloth and pandanus leaves around his waist, comes out to greet us. Cassowary claws erupt from the tops of each of his nostrils, and large hoop earrings made from bird quills graze his shoulders. A band of bright red and yellow beads encircles his head.

"This is the Chief," Joseph says. “The witch doctor.”

The Chief looks at us sternly before he disappears into the jungle. Confused, we soon hear a low-pitched, ominous whooping coming from the nearby. Suddenly a man bursts forth with spear held aloft. Bright yellow paint covers his body. Pandanus leaves are tied about his arms and legs. He charges toward us with a sharp holler, and I find myself running for my life. I retreat toward the village but am quickly cut off, the Chief's spear only inches from my face.

He smiles. I try to smile back. Thirty years ago, I may have actually been speared. Now he lowers the spear and shows it to me. He insists I run my fingers down the length of its shaft, touch the sharp bamboo point. Jens comes over, and thus begins a heated discussion about whether the spear is for sale and how much it costs. Rob wants a spear, too, and so the Chief's friend runs off to his hut to get some more. It's the Home Shopping Network, PNG-style, spears, bows and arrows laid out for our kina. Jens pulls off his T-shirt and exchanges it for several arrows.

I wander off along the stream, watching the mountains growing increasingly pink in the declining light. Children hide behind the posts of the stilt huts, watching me silently. An old woman wearing only a grass skirt comes toward me and hands me a few of the mourning necklaces she's made. She pats my hand, says something to me, and smiles a toothless grin. Thinking she's trying to sell them to me, I reach for some kina to pay her, but she shakes her head and speaks softly to me in her tok ples language. She pats my hand again and I watch her shuffle off, back bent, bare feet following the ground's well-worn path. I am beginning to understand.

I walk over to the Chief, and have Joseph ask him about the gods. He may find my question strange: I want to know if the gods are kind.

Joseph translates.

"People want many things," the Chief says. "The gods hear and give them big gifts, but people don't give a payback. The gods are angry."

"Can the gods hear us now?"

The Chief points at a bird flying across the stream. "There. He hears."

I have Joseph explain to the Chief that I know he has great magic, and I'd like to make a wish and have the gods hear.

The Chief tells me to wait. He suddenly points to a large crown pigeon that has alighted on a nearby tree, and nods. I look at it, make my wish. I want to find a way to end my crazy searching. The Chief is smiling slightly. Here in Apowasi village, life is inseparable from magic. The hunter who catches a large cassowary in the jungle has been favored by a god's magic; the little girl who grows sick and dies is the victim of evildoing.

The Chief goes and gets a newly cut sago palm branch, closes his eyes, and says some words in a deep voice to evoke the spirit of the water. He opens his eyes and breaks the branch over the river, the pieces floating away in the current. We all watch as they knock against rocks and bob through rapids. The Chief smiles serenely. He points at me to tell me the gods have heard—I will have my wish.

We wake up at dawn to seek out the rare birds-of-paradise. Our guide, Joseph, has his reservations about taking me, though, because my female presence might emit "poison" which could chase the birds away. He tells me that females regularly give off poison, causing sickness, injury, and death. He's seen it happen, he says. Men who aren’t careful about avoiding the female poison grow weak and die young.

Just as a town would want to separate infectious typhoid patients from the general population, women in these villages are whisked away to menstruation huts—haus meri—at the first sign of their monthly evil because Joseph says they're "full of mischief" and can spread poison. Poison is spread in the most unassuming ways. Maybe a woman sits down on her husband's chair while she's menstruating, and he sits there after her—well, he's just caught her evil and has infected himself, and chances are his health will begin to deteriorate. Food preparation and cooking must be done by another female during this time, to avoid having the menstruating woman infecting the meals and causing the man's body to "rot" from the inside out. But what the men fear most is the vindictive wife who, wanting to get back at her husband, leaves some menstrual blood where he'll walk on it, or—God forbid!—is intent on spreading her poisonous sex fluids on him during intercourse. From the man's point of view, the hazards are many, the risks great, in order to lie with a woman to perpetuate his clan.

I don't tell Joseph or anyone else that I'm currently having my period, and revel in the thought of all the poison I'm unleashing onto the world. Joseph says that one of the worst things a woman can do is to step over a man doing her "blood time." Feeling mighty and wrathful, I make an effort to step over Joseph several times as I get in and out of the canoe during the day. The poor man suspects nothing.

Our local guide from Wagu village leads us up a steep slope into the neighboring jungle. We chop ourselves a path, sweating and cursing our way through the thick foliage. Our guide stops us. He points at the branches of a nearby tree where two bright red birds of paradise taunt each other and fly into the air, their long, frilly plumage flaring about them. Rob and Jens take out their cameras and start to take pictures, while our guide lets out a high-pitched call, hoping to attract more. Instead, the two birds fly off. We sit down and wait, flicking leeches off our arms and legs. No birds are returning. Nothing.

Joseph is becoming increasingly furious. "It's no good. That man—," he points to our guide,  "—was with his wife last night. She put her smell on him. The birds smell her poison and they don't come."

Joseph repeats this to the guide in Pidgin, and the Wagu man looks at his feet like a guilty child. Joseph is spitting and frothing in anger now, berating the silent man. Rob raises his eyebrows at me, and we try not to laugh, waiting for Joseph's tirade to end.

With the birds staying clear of us, we have no other alternative but to return to Wagu. Joseph, still piqued, tells me that if a man sleeps with a woman then goes on a big fishing trip, he won't catch anything. She leaves her evil on him, jinxes him. The animals and fish can smell her poison and they stay away. "Our guide knows this," he says to me. "Stupid man."

Rob nudges me, but I'm not laughing anymore. I'm starting to get really sick of women being blamed for everything. When we get back to the village, I'm determined to step over both Joseph and the Wagu guide a few times. And maybe Rob and Jens, too.