02. Keel Hauling
“Quest for Air”
1,400 words. Approximate reading time: 7 minutes. Audio version here.
I’ve got nothing.
I need to find some peace, some solitude, some time to be on my own, with myself, away from the pressures of daily life. I can’t find inspiration amongst the laundry and the dishes and the errands that seem to be ever-present, pulling my mind in too many different directions. I need to be centered.
I take myself to the forest alone, to the place where I’ve always been able to find inspiration before. I hope to come back from this exhausted and rejuvenated. I hope for that ache of loneliness to solidify the words in my mind. What I find instead, is the death of solitude by a thousand cuts.
The trailhead parking lot is full when I turn in and I grumble a little internally. If there’s one thing I dislike, it’s seeing other people on the trail. It kills that sense of being one with nature, and (if I’m being completely honest) I hate having to throw on a smile and shout, “Good afternoon!” with a cheery tone to someone who is just starting their hike after I’ve already gone five miles and am on my way back.
I shoulder my pack and start along the trail, already annoyed at the fact that there is a group of people maybe twenty feet in front me and a group of people maybe twenty feet behind. Does anyone enjoy this, seeing a bunch of random strangers following them on the trail? It kills the whole experience for me. Still, I press on, because I know that at a certain point, less experienced people will give up and I’ll finally find that peace I’ve been looking for.
The mood, then, becomes set by the first family I pass on the trail. A mother and father with two elementary-school-aged girls are just standing as a group in the middle of the trail while a third daughter climbs a tree that has fallen across the path. They see me coming and move to the side, and just as I am stepping over the fallen tree, the father tells his daughter to come down, and she screams. Right into my ear.
I’m still walking. When I hit a fork in the path, I go left, hoping that maybe everyone else will go right. Moments later, I am attacked by a dog with love; he’s jumping on me and begging for attention. This certainly seems familiar, since I have to go through it every evening with my own dogs.
“Sorry!” his owner says as she makes the barest of efforts to pull him off of me. “He just gets excited!”
I smile despite myself (the dog is pretty cute, after all), and I reply, “Oh, mine are exactly the same way,” before continuing on the path. I take a few deep breaths and try again to find my center.
Behind me, the scream of a baby (like, someone thought taking a three-month old baby out on a hike was a good idea; wonders never cease) peals out like church bells, interrupting my thoughts again. The lilting soprano of the baby’s mother joins in, “You’re okay, Andrea; you’re fine. It’s okay, Andrea; don’t worry.” I chuckle for a second at the thought of a baby named Andrea, a name my mind typically reserves for thirty-something-year-old women and not adorable little babies, but the universe is determined to stop any thoughts.
While baby Andrea screams in the background and her mother does nothing to rectify the situation, from somewhere beside me comes the temper-tantrum screaming of two young children. I don’t even know where they could be, these two children, seeing as how I am on the path. Their voices seem to echo throughout the woods, coming from all directions. The rumbling basso of their father starts up, “This is why we don’t ever do anything! Because you guys always want to do stuff and then you throw a fit when you don’t get your way and you stress us out!”
I don’t know where these people are, these players in this unholy symphony. I feel like I’m trapped in a horror movie; no matter how much I pick up the pace in an attempt to get away, the screaming of baby Andrea seems to come closer and closer, while the father and his temper-tantrum children surround me from all sides. Where exactly are they? It’s driving me crazy. This is not what I was looking for.
Still, I must press on. I’ll find it eventually; I always do. It would be quite a bit easier to find it if I could stop passing people every thirty seconds. People, dogs, babies everywhere. I don’t understand it. What are all these people doing here? I’ve never seen this many people in the woods before. I’m starting to feel like they were specifically placed for me, at these specific intervals, just to interrupt my thoughts every time they begin to coalesce.
Honestly, I’m a little sick of it. Is it too much to ask to have an entire state park to myself for a few hours? Really? Is it?
I feel like I’m drowning here. I come out here for peace and quiet and solitude and I find screaming babies and unbothered parents and adorably annoying dogs and their equally unbothered parents. But then the thought crosses my mind that maybe drowning is what I’m supposed to be doing right now.
When I go out into nature, it always finds a way to give me exactly what I need. I came out here wanting to be alone, but apparently I need to be bothered, I need to have my thoughts interrupted, I need to pee and I can’t risk stopping off of the trail because of all of these people.
There’s a moment of quiet and I step off the trail to take care of that last thing. No more than a few seconds after I finish and get back on trail, a lone hiker walks by and gives me a funny look. I sigh internally and hope that he enjoyed the show, then I decide to just give in. This is what I’ve been given; I might as well let myself experience it.
So I close my eyes and plunge under the water, holding my breath and waiting for the inevitable drowning. I let my concepts of peace and solitude by torn apart piece by piece, with every excited dog and every shrill scream of a child, with every couple that is clearly completely unprepared to be out here (seriously, they’re wearing jeans and long-sleeved black t-shirts in 84-degree weather), that was obviously dropped here without warning by the universe to keep me underwater.
I give myself to the water; I give myself to the rope that pulls me through it. I let the universe take over and stop trying to force it, hoping that I’ll emerge from the other side and find air, and life, again.
Two-and-a-half miles. That’s how long it takes me before I’m wrenched from the water, coughing and spluttering. I’m in a beautiful open area, the sun is shining, no one else is around, and things are finally, blissfully quiet. Conveniently, there is also a covered bench here. I whisper a small prayer of thanks to the universe for finally giving me exactly what I’ve been asking for this whole time: just a little peace, just a little quiet, just a little room for inspiration to come in and give me something beautiful to put down on the page, something awe-inspiring, something funny (but with just a little bit of heart), something real about the human condition and the things that we all experience in our lives, you know, something relatable.
I stop for a rest on the bench, and pull my notebook and pen out of my pack. I breathe in deeply, feeling the air filling my lungs for the first time in miles, and feel the inspiration wash over me. I open my notebook and put pen to paper as I feel my creator side take over. It’s almost automatic, when I can feel myself getting into a groove. The pen drags itself across the paper and I just know that I’ve got the perfect opening line for my newest insightful and beautiful little slice of genius. I read it back, almost excited to find out what my mind has come up with after all of this torture. And there, in bold black block lettering, reads:
“I’ve got nothing.”
I wrote this for Survivor: LJ Idol, which is taking place over on Dreamwidth. Voting is now open, and every vote for me and for my tribe helps bring us one step closer to a challenge win. If you liked this piece, consider supporting me and my by voting at this link: https://www.dreamwidth.org/poll/?id=24810
My tribe consists of the following contestants:
bsgsix
eeyore_grrl
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impoetry
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wolfden
There's a lot of good writers this time around; as much as I'd love the support for just my tribe, I would really encourage everyone reading this to go over there and read and support any of the contestants! More readers is a good thing for anyone!