Eyes of nature

We rented a moped for an entire weekend. It was my first time riding one, so my stress had already started building up the day before.

I had heard the road up to Cameron Highlands was the least, a challenging route. So, the image of winding paths surrounded by thick layers of jungle had been quietly haunting my thoughts the night before.

I woke up around 5 a.m., unable to sleep any longer.

I made a warm cup of tea and sat by the window of our apartment on the 11th floor. The horizon hadn’t yet brightened, and the sun was still waking up somewhere beyond what my eyes could reach. Watching the sleepy city from above gave me a kind of comfort sleep couldn’t offer that night—like the world was holding its breath before deciding what kind of day it would become.

A couple of hours later, after a long disagreement about changing plans due to the sudden  sifts of weather, our trip finally began.

Riding a moped is different from riding a car. Like riding a horse is different from riding an elephant. Your head is fully exposed to the wind, each neighborhood passes through you through its smell, and even sunlight touches your skin directly, without the filter of glass. It gives you a sense of freedom I had never experienced before.

For a while, the journey was exciting. The scenery shifted from a crowded city of tall buildings into an empty highway slowly rising and falling like a quiet breath.

We made a small stop at a gas station a few kilometers outside the city. A simple pause we didn’t even know we needed. Inside, there was a vending machine with too many options to think about, so we didn’t. We just shared a classic sausage bun and a warm coffee we had forgotten to have earlier that morning.

When the road began to narrow and the asphalt started to climb, the feeling that had been sitting quietly in my stomach since the night before returned.

On both sides, nature thickened. What had started as scattered forests became dense, layered walls of green. And at a certain point, the trees stopped behaving like scenery. They became presence. If you looked too deeply into them, you were met with an unfamiliar kind of darkness that didn’t feel empty—but full in a way you couldn’t understand.

The moped kept roaring against the wind as we moved uphill.

After a series of sharp turns, small wooden huts began appearing on the right side of the road, scattered in narrow openings between the jungle and the asphalt. Some of them held people lying flat on raised wooden floors, escaping the harsh daylight. Others sat outside on porches and waved as we passed.

Stray dogs appeared every so often. None of them barked. They just lay still on damp pavement or dusty ground, as if waiting—not for anything specific, just for something to eventually change.

Further along, children ran after us, their skin burned by the sun, waving and laughing as we passed through what looked like a small roadside market. Stalls lined the edges of the road, filled with handmade objects and quiet movement. An old woman sat on a plastic chair nearby, her hair braided into two long plaits, her dress bright with color that seemed almost too alive for the heat around her.

For a moment, we thought we had arrived when we entered a small town.

It was slightly chaotic, slightly crowded, but strangely quiet in feeling. At the entrance stood a large, colorful statue of the goddess Kali, followed by a Hindu temple painted in equally vivid tones.

We drove through without stopping. Too fast, maybe. There was no time to explore it properly, only time to pass through it.

As we climbed higher, the houses began to fade again, and a heavier—perhaps the heaviest—presence of nature swallowed the road entirely.

The scenery was beautiful in a way that made conversation feel unnecessary. The distant sound of water and wind became our only company. Then, ahead of us, a small waterfall appeared. The sound of water crashing down the rocks softened everything inside me for a moment, as if the ride itself had briefly learned how to breathe.

And then, somewhere between nature and reality, I heard the words I was afraid to hear.

“For God’s sake!”

A loud grind from the engine. Then another.

And before we could fully understand what was happening, we were in the middle of nowhere—with a moped that refused to start again.

I walked back and forth on the side of the road, making sure not to let my partner out of my sight. The sounds of nature had become something more than whispers.

I didn’t quite know how to explain it. At first, I brushed it off as paranoia in the moment. But the feeling remained. It persisted, like it was quietly insisting on being acknowledged.

Eyes.

You know that feeling when you turn your back to gossip with the girl sitting a row behind you in high school while the teacher is writing something on the board, and after a while you swear you can feel her eyes piercing your back until you have no choice but to turn around?

Not in a harsh or frightening way, but in a way persistent enough that you become aware of it.

That was it.

When I realized I had walked far enough that I could no longer see the broken moped, I turned back, quickening my steps as the feeling slowly faded behind me.

Ahead, I saw a parked bus. My partner and a man I had never seen before stood beside it, both looking over the vehicle with their hands resting on their waists—the kind of posture people take when something refuses to cooperate.

“It won’t start,” my partner said.

“The driver said he could take us up and call the company for the moped—if you came back fast enough. I was about to call you but…” He lifted her phone slightly into the air. “No signal.”

I smiled politely at the old man, and he smiled back as he climbed onto the bus.

The rest of the trip went smoothly. We reached our destination and took a few walks along jungle paths before a heavy storm arrived without warning.

The company eventually took the vehicle back, and we returned home on a long but safe journey in the same bus that had brought us up.

But until we arrived back, all I could think about was that feeling.

The intensity nature creates.

To this day, I don’t know whether it was simply my body entering fight-or-flight mode—my mind trying to interpret danger in the only language it knows—or whether something in me genuinely felt it was time to turn back, buried beneath thought.

Or maybe it was just luck.

But something in me keeps returning to the same thought.

Nature is watching.

And how can she not?

She is breathing.

She is whispering.

She is feeling.

So she must, in some way, be watching.

Not in a frightening or haunting way.

But in a way persistent enough to be noticed.