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.