The ground around the edges of the paths was filled with greenery, a few patches of grass, the summer ferns and even the nettles that grew all had their own shades of green that absolutely shone in the stray shafts of sunlight that made it through the trees above. The paths themselves were dry and dusty, even the less well worn paths had spent the last month or so drying out and making themselves more appealing than during the wet and dark autumn and winter months. Jack looked up to the tree tops following the line of one of the stray sun rays to the roof of the forest that was high above him, the blue sky was mixed in amongst the mesh of branches, each tree seemed to have its own limbs reaching out to try and snare the sky itself, where the branches held more leaves the green and blue seemed to be so close together that they were one thing, it was a strong illusion that Jack watched in fascination. Following the stray sunlight further back Jack caught a glimpse of the sun shining through to him, his eyes were not adjusted to the bright light as the forest was always just a little darker than it seemed it should be. He closed his eyes and looked away, for that one moment though he had seen nothing but a white burning sky with a net of trees trying vainly to collect every drop of light that came their way, for that split second the forest had seemed more alive than ever. He turned his eyes back towards the path ahead and carried on his way.
After a while he found the first place he had hoped to visit, the lake. The forest, hill and much of the surrounding area had once belonged to a rich estate that had in its heyday been host to many an old countryside event. Fishing, shooting, hunting, all of the old world activities that had defined a class, now though the area sat quietly with just a few farmers making their living from traditional farming means. The lake was known to a lot of people, but not really visited by many of them, it sat in silence with a great feeling of stillness. The water was almost flat, the small shimmering ripples that made up the evidence of waves barely altered the waterline as they hit the edges of the lake, surrounded by trees on all sides it was a spectacular sight with the bright sun reflecting off the surface. Jack walked onto one of the old and crumbling jetties, as it creaked he paused not daring to go further than the few steps out onto the platform that he had taken. He crouched down and reached out with his hand to test the temperature of the water, it was a shock, he pulled his hand back from the cold surface, compared the summer air temperature the water seemed like it should have frozen over. He had come here to see if it would be a place he could jump in quickly for a quick wash rather than having to go all the way back to town for a shower on his days off, the temperature had just shattered his illusion of swimming around in it basking in the sunlight, he would have to think about it before coming back here. Before he left he took the opportunity to grab some food and then read a little more of Frankenstein.
The day passed with Jack searching for other potential camping spots with all kinds of views of the landscape around the hill, he decided for the time being to stay where he was as he knew that the more he could see from the campsite the more chance there was of him being seen and his plan rumbled. For another night Jack set up camp, had some beans on toast for tea then milled around the campsite until sleep took him. The routine had already started, this was the life.
For the next two weeks Jack really did settle into the lifestyle of what he now referred to in his mind as a ‘Chronic Camper.’ On days that he did not have work he would walk around in the day and see how far he could go in different directions, or just read as much as he could. Frankenstein had taken him almost no time to read compared to how long it would have taken him normally, with no internet connection or television to distract him he had very little else to do, sometimes he was a little bored but when he thought about what he would be doing if he was back at his house he realised that it wasn’t really that boring in comparison. He continued to make his early morning pilgrimages into town on work days and took these opportunities to take a shower, get more supplies and sit down to a proper meal. He had been eating regularly out on the hillside but they were all simple meals such as his beloved beans on toast, soup, sandwiches, tortillas and other straightforward easy to make things that could be thrown together in a few minutes.
When payday rolled around Jack sat down at the flat in front of his computer to do some serious thinking. It seemed like a sudden jolt out of his life from the last few weeks to go from an almost daydream life to having to take time to consider how he was going to live with the constant threat of his money running out. The bills were once again going to relieve him of all the money that the rent was kind enough to leave him with, it was going to be exceptionally tight by the end of the month. Looking back at the last two weeks Jack could see that his lifestyle was having a positive impact on his finances, the simple food was keeping his costs down and pitching his tent every night was costing him nothing, he smiled, as long as the farmer didn’t find out! With these figures in front of him Jack knew that the tent adventure was not only a great personal challenge and experience, but now becoming a financial saviour. He took a long time to think about this and a few days later made a phone call to the landlord.
It had now been four weeks since Jack had first slept up on the hillside and he felt better than ever, life was not just going well but seemed to be at an all time high. After the phone conversation with his landlord nearly a week ago he had no financial worries at all and had even spent a little on adding himself a luxury or two to his camp. He now had a lantern style camping light that gave out light three-hundred-and-sixty degrees to light up the little area around his tent as well as a slightly more substantial gas stove to make cooking easier. In a lengthy discussion Jack had explained the predicament he was in and expressed that he wanted to leave the property, the landlord had agreed to allow him to give only two months notice out of the four month notice he was obliged by contract to give him, as well as this he had agreed to give Jack a third of his deposit back now and the rest when he had left. The up front deposit had been a huge blow and burden when Jack and Ian had first moved in and the landlord insisted that after recent experiences with young people in the area that it was the only option to ensure the safety of the investment of the property. This did not go down well but with a guarantee of it back after a twelve month period of peaceful living had passed it seemed less of an issue. Now that he had a third of the money back already it was as if he was a millionaire, rent, food, bills were no longer of concern. He had over two months to think about what he wanted to do as well, go live with his parents again and accept the silent but implied mark of failure, try to find someone else to move in with on better financial terms or just live in his tent forever. Jack really didn’t have any idea of what he was planning to do, but now he had established that he could just about survive up on the hill for a while he felt more secure and now that he knew he would be leaving the flat soon enough he felt like the town was less his home than it had been. His thoughts on the topic only seemed to surface during the evenings and never really gathered themselves towards a definite answer.
The next weeks were bliss, Jack even took the liberty of cutting his hours at work as he had no need to try and scrape every penny together to see him through to the next month. He had considered cutting down to just two days a week but thought that it was important to keep seeing people regularly and not become a recluse, this was a possibility Jack only half joked about in his mind, with his quiet nature and lack of interest in the general socialising that people around him seemed to love he could easily see himself slipping into obscurity. Now though he found himself with all the free time he could ever want, at first he had been lazy and used it as an excuse to put things off to the next day and then the day after that but once a week had passed in this lazy way he thought it best to keep motivated and go out exploring.
To break the monotony of the setting up camp ritual Jack started to move around the hill top sometimes he would set up late in the night in a more exposed area and wake early to sunrise views of the town before quickly hid
ing his makeshift home, sometimes he would camp on the opposite side of the hill and wake to a cool blue sky and damp grass in the shadow on the back of the hill. It was all so perfect that Jack started to keep a diary of everything that happened due to the worry that he would forget how lucky he had been, he didn’t know what was going to happen in the next few months and felt it important to have a reminder of how close to a dream life could be.
At this point Jack had been in the tent every night for over six weeks, the boredom of so much free time without the modern day distractions he was used to had been and gone and his days were now filled with exploring ever further a field, writing both in his diary and a few short poems when the mood took him but more so now his days were filled with attempts to find things to eat and live off the land.
One Christmas he had been given a book that listed all the forgotten foods in the wild that could be eaten, he had picked it up on one of his trips back to the town and been studying the pages carefully hoping to stumble across some of the more unusual and common but overlooked foods. Being the summer blackberries were a given and he often chomped away at them when he passed a hidden little crop, but now he kept an eye out for elderberries and field mushrooms, red-currants and chanterelle.
This attempt to live off the land went well at first, or at least Jack liked to think it did when he remembered that a few miles away towards one of the small Welsh villages there were a few fields of potatoes growing, he set off one day with an empty backpack and two plastic bags and filled them as much as he could with dusty potatoes, when he thought that he had grabbed enough he soon learned his mistake as the weight ripped one of the bags and the backpack slowed him down to a near standstill. With a cheeky smile to himself he had to empty out some of his ill gotten burden and then rush to put as much distance between himself and the field as he could. Walking back with the loot as he thought of it he kept telling himself that the farmer would hardly miss a few potatoes out of the countless thousands he had left to sell, he still felt a little guilty though, especially when it came time to eat them.
Living off the land started to become far less successful once he was searching for things that other people had not grown for their own business. On discovering some wild chanterelle for the first time Jack was horrified at the prospect of eating one. The sickly looking yellow growth was tucked away in the shade of a hedgerow in one of the neighbouring fields to his tent, was it a mushroom? Was it actually a living, growing thing that had developed from a spore? Jack couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just a piece of melted plastic morphed into an odd shape but he could be sure of one thing, he wasn’t even going to touch it let alone eat it.
Elderberries left him with a similar poor experience, amidst a group of trees growing closely together at the road side on one of his walks jack found the elderberry jackpot, or so he thought until he grabbed a handful and threw them in his mouth only to discover on chewing them that they had one of the most unnatural chemical tastes he had ever experienced. He had spat them straight out onto the road to see blood red liquid stain the tarmac as if he was taking part in his own horror film, he had never tasted anything quite so disgusting in all his life, never again would he take a handful of berries without a tester first. If something looked like an elderberry from now on it would need to prove it before he ingested them in any great quantity!
The novelty of trying to eat as much naturally growing food soon wore off when Jack started to feel hungry after making a bet with himself that all he needed was one cooked meal a day and the rest he could make up from foraging. He did however pluck up the courage one day to fetch some snares up from town with him, his friend had taught him how to set them up and what sort of place to leave them for the best results. Jack was not a big meat eater and was a little scared of catching something alive but in his heightened sense of being a back to nature kind of chap he thought he would take the plunge. One night he set one up a few meters to the back of his tent just inside the forest where he had an inkling some kind of rabbit track lay.
He cut a small stick from a tree and drove it into the ground in order to have something solid for the snare to hang from, sticking up at about a forty-five degree angle it seemed pretty solidly set in place when Jack knocked it with his boot, to this he attached the snare. A short length of thin string was used to tie it to the stick, attached to the other end of the string was a metal wire loop, Jack put his hand in the loop to make sure that the slipknot style motion would work, as he pulled down on the loop simulating a potential rabbit’s movement the wire loop closed up tight on his hand, it would work perfectly. The last stage was to ensure that it was at the right height, his friend had told him that if he could just about move his hand freely between the ground and the snare then it was a good height, he used a few small twigs to secure it in its position and then spent a few moments looking down contemplating whether or not he was going to leave it there.
That night Jack was unable to go to sleep in his usual peaceful and near instant way, the snare seemed to plague his mind and he was constantly listening out in case something happened while he was still awake. As he started to finally drift off he heard a commotion at the back of the tent. He jumped up with a start, listening intently for a few seconds he wasn’t sure if it was something digging or a potential meal he had caught, it was definitely the sound of scratching claws on the ground though. Jack slowly left the tent and walked around keeping low so he didn’t startle whatever the creature was.
As soon as he saw what it was he knew it was one of his worst nightmares. He had caught a rabbit. He rushed over to the creature still struggling a vain struggle to free itself from the snare, it had worked perfectly and was choking the rabbit in its panic. Jack picked it up and gripped it tightly so that it didn’t scratch him, he put his hand around its neck and then moved his hand in a sharp motion to end the suffering as quickly as he could.
He popped the rabbits head out of the snare and set it down relatively unharmed, the rabbit needed no second thoughts and ran off into the dark. Jack stood in silence for a moment his heart beating faster than it had done for quite a while. He had done the right thing, the rabbit was free and he would never set up a snare again. The experience gave Jack something to think about and he decided that it was better to just keep on buying his usual bits of food from the town, his wild man of the woods image of himself was damaged but at least he did not feel any guilt for eating ready made noodles. Food was his only real expense out in the wild so he decided that he could bare the feeling of not living off the land in exchange for easy food at a few pound a week.
Friendship
Who is a friend? Who is a stranger? How can you tell?
Jack had been in the woods for two months before he finally realised that camping on the shores of the lake would be a perfect change of scenery to wake up to. It meant a day of trekking back and forth between his existing camp and the lakeside and it had been a while since he had been to the lake for any reason other than to give his cup, bowl and pan a quick rinse in the water. He had tried washing some clothes in the lake once but soon learned his mistake when they took two days to dry properly. Summer had just passed its peak and Jack believed that after spending so much time out in the world that he could feel a very slight change in temperature, this was probably in his mind he thought but at the same time it was a strong enough feeling to know that he wouldn’t be jumping in the lake for a wash anytime soon. He did feel a little regret that he had not just run and took the plunge on some of the more blistering hot days that had passed but there was always next year he consoled himself.
Between the shade of the trees and the water of the lake there were a few grassy patches that were suitable for pitching his tent. Jack chose a large plain patch and hid his things nearby ready to set up later. The day passed in yet another blissfully uneventful way and Jack decided that he would set up the tent earlier than he would normally, by six o’clock everything was ready for a quiet night by the water. Jack
didn’t fancy much to eat in the evening and filled up on a few cereal bars. As he lay in the tent he heard people approaching.
Fear was his first reaction and he prepared a short plea to be allowed to stay where he was for the night in the event that the voices belonged to any of the local farmers. Jack lay still listening to the approaching footsteps, he could make out that one was a male and the other female and that they seemed to be walking directly towards him. As they reached easy earshot Jack heard the male voice make a comment regarding their usual spot being taken, were they fellow campers? Sticking his head through the front of the tent Jack startled both himself and the newcomers as their eyes met only paces away. Surprised exclamations were passed on both sides and Jack knew instantly that there would be no trouble from what he considered his own kind, campers.
A brief hello and introduction was passed around the three tent-mates as Jack tried to make sure that it didn’t become a weird or awkward situation where no matter how far away the tents were pitched neither side would feel they could be truly free to act as normal. In the event the newcomers asked if it would be okay to set up their home for the night only a few meters away on the perfect flat grass, Jack agreed instantly and even helped out with the setting up of their tent. The conversation flowed easily and Jack learned that the couple had come from one of the small villages about five miles away, they were a friendly youngish couple in their late twenties and seemed to love the outdoors as much as he did, the lake was one of the spots that they frequented over the summer due to its usual lack of people.
They had parked a mile or so away and walked up immediately after the husband, who called himself Ez, had finished work. Jack assumed that his actual name was Edward but as he was a pretty strong looking chap didn’t stray from the shorter preferred name. His wife, Angela was quieter but friendly and cheerful when she spoke but she soon disappeared into the tent to sort out the inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags while the two new friends sat outside preparing some beans on toast, Jack still wasn’t hungry but felt it important to join in the meal so that he didn’t appear frosty. It had been so long that Jack had had a proper conversation that wasn’t at work talking about what did and didn’t need doing during the work day that he found himself shocked at how little he had to add to the conversation.
The Sweet Forest Page 3