Quagmire

Henry had been in this place before.  Or had he just been there for a long time?  He couldn’t be sure. The place looked comfortably familiar, intimate to him like the contours of his hand. But at the same time, the place felt inhospitable, a place one could not quite settle into.

While he got his bearings, he shifted the weight of his pack from the inside to the outside of the shoulders by sliding the straps ever-so-slightly away from his neck.  His curved fingers rested there, jammed between the strapped fabric and his protruding collar bone.  He wondered how long he’d been standing there alone.

He had followed someone to this spot, hadn’t he? He must have because he couldn’t recall the way.  But there was no one around. There was hardly any sound actually, just a periodic whisper of a breeze.

His voice felt oddly out of use.  When he tried to speak a questioning, “hello?” to recall to life anyone who might be in the area, the sound was deflated, atrophied, and weak.  Somehow not his own.  No one answered.  He cleared his throat, and tried again, this time louder.  Still nothing.  Not even an echo of his own shout.

His pack was heavy, so he concluded he couldn’t have journeying long if his supplies were still in such ample stock.  Yet, his legs felt like they might give-way at any moment.  He determined he better get a move on, but wasn’t sure where to move on to.  And, the idea of shrugging off the weight, and sitting down for a while to rest, or even laying down to sleep was so alluring.  Impossibly tempting.  The waring choices of sitting or moving raged with equal ferocity inside him, and he ended up just standing as he had been instead.  The internal argument felt a bit of deja vu.

As he glanced around he marveled at how neutral everything was here.  The ground was the most non-notable sort of brown, barely a color but color enough to distinguish itself from nothingness. 

The atmosphere was neither hot nor cold, so he was perfectly comfortable in his pocket-adorned hiking shorts and breathable button up shirt, but could have also added another layer if he had a notion to.  Maybe he would later.  Or maybe he wouldn’t. 

It wasn’t dark, but it also wasn’t exactly bright either.  Somehow the amount of light was just enough to see, but not quite enough to reveal all that was around. 

There was not any noise but there was not silence, there was some sort of something there that was playing around his ear drums, he just didn’t seem to be able to define it to himself nor find the direction of its origin.  He couldn’t resolve if that should disturb him or not. 

The weight of his pack began to pull mercilessly on his neck, so he let his chin fall to his chest to stretch it out.  Looking down at his feet he realized that he was standing 3 inches deep in some sort of mud.  How had he not noticed that before?  It wasn’t entirely unpleasant to be so, he mused, and his socks didn’t feel sodden yet. 

Catching a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of murky water on the surface of the mud, he saw, an old man. He was, he was? Old?!

He didn’t remember being old, but now that he mentioned it, he felt ancient, past due, too long exposed.  But, he didn’t remember aging, he seemed to have memory of youth, an age he could not articulate, but certainly not white haired or wrinkled or worn.

The illumination of his age felt like being shook awake.  But he had started this whole process of observation sometime before, so who or what had stirred him to life? Or, perhaps the better inquiry : what had submerged him into unconsciousness?

There was no answer to that at the moment, so he tried to get his bearings instead.  There were no footprints leading to his spot or away from his spot in the mud.  This seemed to suggest he might have been here for a while, and had been here alone for a while, because the murky puddles had sufficient time to swallow up all evidence of direction. 

As he looked far off, the horizon seemed empty of any notable features.  He couldn’t decide if that was a pleasant discovery or not.  He also couldn’t decide if the emptiness was void in fact or whether the features of the landscape were shrouded in a thick fog.  He squinted into the distance, but this did nothing to clarify his vision.

His shoes were some sort of canvas sneaker.  And, it seemed strange to him that he would be wearing shoes too large for him to fill.  Why would he put on shoes that didn’t fit properly? Feet shrink with age, perhaps that was it.  As he contemplated how he was going to get out of here  (wherever ‘here’ was) he realized that within a few steps the interior of the shoe would be waterlogged and blisters inescapable.  He would have to take them off.

But he couldn’t crouch down to untie the shoes with his pack still on.  But, to take off the pack would mean laying it in the mud and thus permitting the muck about him to despoil its contents.  He would need the contents for the journey.  Right? 

He couldn’t sit down anywhere with the pack still on because there was nothing but sludge around him.  And he realized that the mud was intensifying, growing in depth, and he was beginning to sink.

In sudden decisiveness that comes with a wave of panic, he let his pack fall to the ground.  The absence of the weight felt so impossibly good that he paused for a moment in wry appreciate before he remembered that he was sinking in a quagmire and needed to untie his shoes so he could move away from this spot.

No sooner had he gotten both feet out of the shoes, they were swallowed up by the bog, certainly unretrievable.  His pack was sinking fast too and he realized he was now up to his knees in the black sludge around. 

He began to walk, or rather slog, through the sea of softness around him.  The first steps were on the edge of futile.  He told himself to move and his legs tried but failed.  But after several repeated efforts he successfully advanced a fraction of a centimeter.  He rejoiced aloud.  There was nothing to do but simply keep trying to move in the same direction he’d recklessly chosen.  That direction was as good as any other, it was better than standing still.

An uncertain amount of time passed, and after reflecting on his past, first step he realized that the movements were getting easier.  He could move an inch or so now with each step, and the mud was only ankle high now.  He looked back at where he’d come, but he couldn’t see where his shoes and pack had sunk and when he looked down at his feet he realized that in the idleness he had become to sink once more.

But he paused for a hair-of-a-second longer to marvel at his reflection.  He was no longer white haired, but now salt and pepper.  And he had fewer wrinkles around his eyes.  He wanted a closer look because surely he couldn’t be aging in reverse?  But, he had to move on, he was beginning to sink at a rapid rate.

The first steps were nearly impossible when get began, as they were before.  But this time the progress to greater speed and ease seemed to happen more quickly.  One step in front of the other. One step. One step. One step.

That was all the thought of for hours, perhaps days.  And, without warning, he nearly stumbled and fell.  He was on solid ground.  Not only that, but there was a cautious carpet of grass beneath his bare feet now, a bright hue of green that proclaimed it as freshly sprouted. 

The past lesson of "pausing leads to sinking" kept him moving but he stared at the ground as he walked.  Amazed at the green, amazed at the treasure of solid ground.  Without deciding to, he realized he was following a stream.  When he hedge a glance ahead toward’s the streams direction, his heart nearly stopped at the joy of seeing what unfolded in front of him: a gently sloping valley, lush in pine trees, the stream leading into the grove.  And far beyond, but not discouragingly far, was a mountain peak.  How had he not seen it before back in the mud?  He had looked that way, hadn’t he?

Motion was somehow all that mattered, and the stream the only friend he needed, and the pine grove and peak beyond the only call he need respond to.  He caught his reflection in the stream as he walked alongside it, and he was. He was? Young?!  His hair was a ashen blond and not a wrinkle to be found around his eyes.  But, he had been old. Had he not been old?

He didn’t paused to ponder this.  He began to run towards the pine trees, to the mountain peak.  He seemed to have too much energy to contain.  He didn’t stop to contemplate what kind of threatening creatures might live in the forest.  He didn’t stop to worry about how he would summit the peak barefoot or how he would survive the night without a sleeping bag, without a pack of food.   He still did not remember where he’d come from, and he hardly knew where he was going.  But he was running to get there.

Bikes

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries. Making a living.  Living?

The camp grew quiet quite some time ago.  Summer season is in full swing and all the bloody Lord of the Rings fans are making their mass exodus to Matamata.  Most funnel through this camp on the way.  There are not that many route alternatives in North Island to get anywhere, even to most popular of attractions.

Oliver has always had mixed feelings about summer (Kiwi summer that is, which is winter for all you Northern Hemisphere folks).  On the one hand, summer brings tourists, and tourists mean money.  On the other hand, summer brings tourists, and tourist mean young people.

Oliver isn’t old. But he’s not young either. So, he’s not anything. He’s not sure when he stopped being young. When does ‘old’ being?  The past two decades have felt like hardly anything at all. He has settled into a familiar numbness in the camouflage of routine that is inherent to all who run their own business in the tourism industry.  

“Tourism industry” over glamorizes it a bit I suppose.  Oliver runs a ‘holiday park’ on the North Island, a bit west of the famed ‘Hobbiton.’  When he was young, the shine and sheen of running your own business was the dream.  It was an exciting and lucrative prospect at the start.  Ever day was an adventure: new and interesting people from all over the world came through, trekking and camping from Auckland down to Wellington and on off to South Island. People his age. People with a bright sense of future, people on a high of uncertain tomorrows. His people.

Now caught somewhere between young and old, he didn’t feel like much a tribesmen anymore.  People came and went through his motor park, same as always, same as before, but, in a light too bright to avoid looking at, he could not help but see himself as an alien among the adventurous.

Earlier on that Tuesday night, Oliver is preparing the month’s deposit for the bank in the security office that doubles as a registration point for campers and triples as his own quarters.  The interior is splattered with postcards sent by campers who had stayed a night but continued on to Fiji, Australia, Thailand and beyond.  He has a small bookshelf filled with travel guides of various exotic locations, tabbed with neon post-it notes with notations for the trips he’s planned for the future.  He has a small pile of camping gear in the corner: forgotten possessions of those who ventured onward without double-checking their packs prior to departure.  Right behind the desk, Oliver has put a map up with pins of all the places he plans to go soon.  Soon.

A solo-traveling and pristinely-suntanned Californian wanders in to give his payslip for the night. He has all the golden glow of “fresh out of Uni” and the swagger of “I’m traveling alone and make new friends with ease.”  The Californian makes pleasant small talk, as Californians do, while Oliver processes his paperwork.

The Californian’s eyes glisten as he takes in the collection postcards and examines the titles of the travel books. And, all in a breath, he rattles out in excitement,  “Dude! Look at all these books!  Lonely Planet is the best, don’t you think? So! What is the wildest place you’ve trekked in? ”

“Um, well...I’ve done some hikes a few hours south of here that were rather memorable...and not without a decent challenge,” he says reflexively.

The Californian looks a little deflated. Glancing down at the pile of camping gear and back at Oliver expectantly.

“Yeah, but the better hikes are in South Island, right?”  

Oliver sputters, “Um, well yes...so I hear.  I, uh, haven’t made it there myself yet.”

An awkward silence filled the room. The Californian looks both surprised and sad, “You mean you’ve never been to South Island?  How long have you lived here man?”

“Well…always, actually,” Oliver replies painfully.

He begins to feel hot and with a sweaty palm he hands the Californian his change.  “Enjoy your stay at “Camp Just-off-the-Motorway,” he says with a tone of finality to end the conversation.

The Californian leaves, slumped in the disappointment of not making a friend with ease in this case.  Oliver stews in the thickening silence of his office.  He can’t get the Californian’s questions out of his head.  It was harmless, but it has shed a blinding light on his life.  He had never gone anywhere.

He spins around on his swivel chair and looks at all the postcards.  Pretty pictures of pretty places seen by others.  He looks at the worn bindings of the travel books, full of dog-eared pages of his thoughtful intentions for a “soon” that never came. The map’s pins have a noticeable layer of dust and long strands of spider’s webs - signs that the “want to see” locations have not been updated for quite sometime and that none of the pins have been removed for “having seen” either.  And - the pile of camping gear. As he pilfers through it he realizes he doesn’t know what half of the stuff is or what it would be used for.

He is undeniably no longer a tribesmen.

He never was one of the tribe.

Suddenly, it is too much.  Oliver, not normally a volatile man, stands up from his chair and rips all the postcards from the wall.  But, taking them down is not enough, he rips each into tiny pieces, destroying the glossy, non-representative image of each.  The books are next.  He flips through the pages, removing each post-it note, flinging them in the air like confetti, and the books land with periodic thuds on the floor.  The camping gear is gathered in a heap and tossed into a trash bag.  Finally that idiotic map.  He uproots it from the wall in one motion, tearing it in half, pins scattering across the room, a few pricking him spitefully as they went.

In the stillness following this massacre of dreams,  his office is transformed into a hollow, haunted grave.  All blank walls and swirling dust.  He can’t stomach it.  He grabs his keys and flees the scene of the crime for BurgerFuel.

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries.

A small compact car pulls down the drive.  It idles near Oliver’s office, which has its door closed tight: he doesn’t want to talk to anymore guests to night.  The car continues on, stopping at the communal bathroom.  

Four silhouettes emerge, outlined by the bathrooms fluorescent glow and go inside.  Their cheerful sounds have a sickening, positive echo. They are high off of the travel trill.

They know nothing.

Oliver is up in a second, flashlight in hand, knocking his uneaten fries to floor to join the rest of the mess there.  He half runs out of his office towards the bathrooms.

He spots one of them.

“This ain’t for free mate,” he said furiously. (Waiting costs too much.)

It’s a girl.  Librarian glasses and hair piled up in a mess under a ball cap. A rat could be sleeping in such disarray.

“Get on your bikes and leave!” he almost screamed. (Please! Take me with you.)

The girl looks confused, they came in a car and don’t have any bikes.   

“What are you doing here?!” he demands, acidly at the girl. (Why have I stayed here?)

She is so taken aback by his anger that she stutters out the first thing that comes to mind, “we were...we were just using the bathroom, but…”

Before she could explain more, Oliver cuts her off.

“But, nothing.  Go on - get!” (Make me leave this place too.)

A boy emerges from the shadows to stand beside her, hand out in a gesture of supplication with the intent to calm.  He begins a polite apology, but Oliver is in no mood for polite. He is lost in a fever.

Oliver brings out his iPhone to snap a picture of their license. (All I ever do is look at images of a life I want).

He glares at the two as they call out to their travel mates and begin moving towards the car doors to leave.  

The girl looks back at him. Her eyes are wounds that he inflicted.  But there is pity there too.  Like she sympathizes with him or something. They become a challenge, a calling, a conviction that his anger is his own doing.

She doesn’t say anything, she just starts the car when the other three companions are in and drives slowly off into the night.

Oliver stood there listening to the sound of tire on gravel until there was no sound of anything at all.

He looks down at his phone with the image of the license plate and deletes it.

***

The next morning Oliver isn’t in his office. No note. No notice.  The floor is still a mess of shredded postcards, discarded books, and aggressive thumbtacks.

But the black trash bag with the camping gear is notably missing.  And one of the travel books too.