The Walk: Part III

That last walk across the bog before, stretched for eons.   Each step I sank a bit deeper.  I was up to my knees when I was a quarter of the way across.  I kept thinking that I was going to step off the rock shelf that was beneath me, and be forever lost in that stinking, slimy goo.  It stunk to high heaven!  If you think cow manure is smelly, bogs are double that.  All that rotting vegetation.  You see, the bog really looked like a meadow with lots of vegetation.  NOT.  This was the ultimate in April Fools jokes.  And yet I wasn't laughing.  Each step I took, my heart was in my throat.  I was absolutely terrified...and yet the only way to the other side was through that awful, stinking, icy cold muck.  I could no longer feel my toes or my legs.  They were absolutely numb.  And by now the bog was well above my knees.  I was halfway across.  I thought about lying down so my weight would be spread out over the top and perhaps if I did go down it would take more time.  But then the foolishness of that idea came to mind.  I pictured my whole self sinking all at once...being swallowed alive by this terrible woman eating muck.  And all this imagination was remembering all the terrible movies about swamp creatures and the such.

At long last I was just a few steps from a very large stone that sat next to the fence...that was all that was between me and the space next to the road.  Yes, the stone shelf beneath me remained.  The bog reached only to mid thigh.  Gratefully I scrambled up onto that stone and lay on my back looking up at the gray sky which was still spitting rain.  I slipped one sock on a very numb foot, and then the other.  My sneakers were next.  About then I looked up to see a man on a tractor coming down the road from someplace nearby.  I feebly waved at him.  He waved back, turned the tractor around and left me sitting there in the bog muck which was dripping slowly off my lower body.  The smell was spectacular.  Rotting vegetation and cow poop assailed my nostrils with their stench.

One last jump across a bit of bog and I was clinging to the barbed wire fence.  I slid along it for a ways until I could find an opening to crawl through.  AT LAST!  I was through!  I was on solid earth.  I was now on the road.  I was crying in relief and left over terror.

A black car came driving along and I waved it down.  Might have been the end of the story right there, but the driver took one look at me, the monster from the bog, and screeched away.  I only wanted to ask for help!  Barely lifting one frozen leg at a time, I shuffled up a driveway and knocked at a door.  Did I see a flicker at the curtains?  No answer.  I tried three different houses, with the same result.  They were probably there behind the curtains whispering about the sight on their front porch.

Finally I knocked on a door and a woman opened it to me.  "Hello, may I help you?"  Her eyes didn't meet mine.  She told me she had arthritis and was legally blind.  That explained it!  Her name was Dot.  She was very kind.  Brought me something washable that I could sit on while she called my friend Sue to come and get me.  She gave me hot tea and some biscuits as I sat on a wooden stool in the front entryway.  She was too polite to mention the smell!

Sue came shortly and I changed into dry clothing.  She drove me home after a profuse thank you to Ms. Dot.  Sue didn't say much on the drive back to the house.  She helped me inside.  They had been worried about me, my friends.  Had even stayed home from work to look for me. 

I went and ran a hot bath in the big clawfoot tub.  She took my dirty clothes, everything I had on, and put them directly into the washer.  She brought me a robe from my closet.

Lavender tea was brought to me, and I soaked for a long time in the bubbles.  April in New York.  Sounds like a lovely romance, my welcome to New York.

Sue, Peter and Steve enjoyed telling that story about me.

And of course, if you remember from the beginning of my story, those red sweat pants were never to come clean.  The bog had left its mark.

The Walk: Part II

Good Morning.  It is 5:29 at the moment, and I've been awake for about an hour.  I finally gave in and pulled myself out of bed, as those to do lists are still waiting.  Pitty Pat the cat who so often insists on sitting on my lap when I'm on the computer, is actually curled up next to me taking a morning nap after an extra early breakfast.  (Guess who woke me up because she was hungry at 4:30 am?)  A few minutes later Madeline was barking at the car which was coming down the road to deliver the paper.  She starts when they get to the neighbor's house, and continues this morning drama until the car drives away.

So...back to the story.  I believe I had been wandering about the forest for about two hours when we left off. 

There I was, panicky, my heart in my throat, my legs feeling a bit like lead, and the forest seemed to be full of taunting trees.  Usually I'm a tree hugger, but when one is lost amongst them, trees become quite sinister.  This increases the panic.  Even the most experenced hunters have lost their way at times, and have felt the panic of the forest.  I think that's why the god of the forest is named Pan.  Panic derives from the name. 

Finally I took some deep breaths and tried to calm myself down enough to think about what to do.  I suddenly remembered what Steve had said about the area:  If you ever get lost in the woods around here, just head downhill and soon enough you'll come to a road.  I could breath again.  And that's just what I did.  I climbed over a wooden fence and headed down hill.  Soon enough I was in a pasture on a very big hillside.  And off in the distance there was indeed a road.  Glory be.  I started to weep in relief, and headed down the muddy hill.  It wasn't long before I was falling on my patooty.  This happened several times.  One of those times I landed in a cow pie.  Lovely...now I smelled to high heaven.  I didn't care, I just kept getting up and sliding in slow motion righjt back down on my butt.  The smell from the cow pie was bringing back memories from my childhood in Nebraska.  I spent a lot of time out on the farm of my brother in law who always warned me to stay out of the pasture where he kept the bull.  That bull was dangerous as all get out.  Panic was returning as I looked around for the absent bovine.  The pasture was empty creatures, except the one sliding down the hillside, mostly on her backside. 

At long last I reached the bottom of the hill, and realized I was going to have to cross a stream.  But there, on the otherside of the stream, and what looked like a meadow and of course a fence, was that blessed road.  Surely there would be someone who would stop and help me.  I gazed at the cold water that was moving along as happy as can be, impervious to my plight.  I usually loved mountain streams, but the beauty of this one was lost on me.  I hope the reader can forgive the fact that I wasn't quite present to that part of the scene before me. 

Reaching down, I removed my shoes and and socks.  I figured I would want their warmth after the cold reality of that water.  The stream wasn't all that wide, and it was shallow enough.  It didn't take long to cross it.  Happily I set my foot on what I thought was solid ground.  Not so.  It was mud.  I took a step.  Surely this situation was going to change in a moment, and I would feel the strong earth beneath my feet.  Instead I sank up to my ankle.  It was a bog.  I didn't know much about bogs at the time.  I'd grown up in Nebraska where there was occasional quicksand.  But what in the world was this?  I took another step and sank up to my calf.  I twisted uncomfortably to look back at the hillside on the otherside of the stream.  The scene was fairly dramatic looking.  Adding to the sheer size of that mountainous, muddy hill, my imprints from slipping and sliding down it looked for all the world like the fingerprints of someone trying to find a last hold before falling over the edge.  It was not a hill I would normally attempt to climb, and that would be when I was feeling energetic.  At the moment I was so exhausted I didn't know how I was going to go on, much less go back.  There was no way in the world I was going to get back up that hill.  I gave it one last glance before turning around and facing what could very well be my last moments of life.  There was no one in sight...a farmhouse in the distance.  A road with no cars.  And me...at the edge of a bog that extended before me.  (I learned later that the little stream I had just crossed was the headwaters of the Delaware River.)

Hope you're enjoying the suspense.  Of course I'm still here, so you know the story ends well.  But there's still more to tell!