He was determined not to give away his secret lifestyle and yet had absolutely nothing apart from that to really talk about, television and internet trends had passed him by and Jack felt somehow free that he had not even realised that he was missing it all. He made sure he had an early night as the conversation grew a little laboured as the evening passed. As he lay in his tent with the sound of friendly voices nearby Jack felt safer than he had done during some of the nights and maybe a little relieved to have been able to speak to people who understood the appeal of camping. He slept soundly once again.
The following morning he was relieved to discover that his new friends were packing up early and wanted to get away into town to do some shopping before the crowds came out, this meant that Jack didn’t need to wait long before he could dismantle his camp for the night and hide it without being asked questions on why he wasn’t taking his things with him. As a parting shot the three exchanged numbers and Jack was invited round to their house for a film and pizza night. The idea of a takeaway pizza filled Jack with hunger, it had been a long time since he had eaten a real pizza made from scratch to order and there was always something about the way the takeaway places made them that set their pizzas apart from any home made efforts he had been a part of. There was no way Jack wasn’t going to follow the offer up.
Another week passed without any real excitement except one particularly windy night that had resulted in Jack picking up his possessions from all over the field the following morning still tired from being kept awake by the sides of the tent rattling agains his face in random bursts of activity from the wind. It was on that morning though that he received a text off Ez asking if he wanted to go and watch a film and have the much desired pizza one night during the week. Jack jumped at the chance and it was decided that a Thursday evening would be best, the address was confirmed and in the late afternoon on the eagerly awaited day Jack set off on a walk to the small village of North Tethering. He arrived early and was pleased that the journey took only just over an hour.
Taking his shoes off and sitting down Jack felt a little uncomfortable at first, the conversation did not immediately pick up in the flowing manner it had been left in the woods and Jack cursed his lack of anything to say other than recent camping anecdotes. He told the tale of the rabbit he had caught to an initial reaction of horror and shock and then hilarity and relief at the end, after this the conversation perked up and an hour passed in a moment. It was now time to order the pizza, a moment Jack had waited for all day, maybe even all week. He decided to keep things simple and ordered his classic order, a large margherita pizza with a small portion of chips and two cans of cola.
The pizzas arrived in their tell tale red boxes with a silhouette city skyline decoration on the front and sides, the smell made Jacks mouth water before the delivery driver had even got back to his car. Placing the box on his knees it brought back all the memories of delicious meals gone by when he felt the heat of the box sting his legs, he lifted the lid and took a moment to enjoy the sudden burst of warm and fragrant steam that rose up. Jack had missed this sort of thing. He tucked in without delay and it seemed the most flavoursome, satisfying and perfect food he had ever eaten. It made Jack realise how poor his diet had really been, even though the pizza was no benchmark for healthy eating it was such a huge pleasure to have something properly made and not just warmed up on a camping stove that for a brief moment jack did not want to go back to it. The healthy meals that he tried to make for himself when he went back home on his way to and from work certainly helped him get the various vitamins and goodness that experts claimed everybody should have but that seemed like boring food compared to this. After finishing the portion of chips just as swiftly as he had done the pizza Jack sat back, his new friends laughed and commented on how quickly he had devoured it.
Feeling full and content Jack had a moment to think about everything, the pizza had brought back all his concerns over his diet since living in the woods and his lack of any conversation to make that didn’t involve a tent concerned him on the bareness of his social diet. As his friends finished their own meals Jack plotted all the potential ways that his adventure could turn, ultimately he decided that with the moment that he would officially become homeless approaching with alarming speed he would attempt to continue in the woods for as long as he could but really make an attempt to socialise more and eat out more often. What would happen if the camping was forced to come to an end for some reason? Jack did not know, only one way to find out he thought.
The evening passed in a merry way, they half watched an old action film talking through most of it, as time wore on Jack became aware that he had to walk back and set his tent up for the night and on attempting to leave Ez apologised for not giving him a lift back as he had had a drink but insisted that he at least ride back on his old bike. Jack thought about it and decided that it would be interesting just to see how it went so after a few adjustments to the seat Jack said his goodbyes and arrangements were made to do the whole experience again the following week.
It was almost midnight when he arrived back at the camp and his legs were like jelly, it had been a while since he had ridden a bike and the hilly terrain had stretched him to his limit and then beyond it, he had had to walk and push the bike up the final hill to the woods at the top and then bring the bike with him to the hidden safety of the camp just at the edge of the trees. He lazily threw his camp together just wanting to rest his legs, when the tent was up he sprawled out in a perfect moment of relaxation, looking at his phone he saw that he had managed to do the trip in barely more than half an hour. He couldn’t believe it. It had taken him less than half the time of walking and it was more uphill on the return journey than it was to walk out to is friends house, suddenly Jack was over the moon, he had halved his traveling time with nothing more than a borrowed bike he had never ridden before.
The possibilities that this opened his mind to seemed epic, as he fell into another contented sleep Jack’s mind explored the possible distances he would be able to travel in any given day with his temporary new transport. His legs the following day reigned in his ambitions though as they ached beyond belief, Jack decided to leave the biking idea a few days before attempting an expedition over the border as far into Wales as he could get in a day. When he did it though he was introduced to a whole new world of aching legs. Thirty miles even broken up by lengthy breaks and rests knocked Jack out of action and left him staying in bed for hours the next day. At least he knew he could do it if needs be though. The bike became his new and incredibly fast way to get to town and back on work days, mornings were less rushed and the trip downhill was both exciting and terrifying in equal amounts. Jack repeatedly asked himself why he had not been doing this the entire time.
Homeless?
Does a key to a door make a home? Are four brick walls just a house?
The final day of Jack’s tenancy approached. In a panic he listed all of his bulkier possessions such as his bed for sale in the local newspaper, what else could he do with the larger items? His now weekly pizza friends agreed to store some of his surprisingly few remaining possessions in their spare room for a while, Jack told them a story of moving in with a friend temporarily and the limited space they had, this also had the positive effect of stopping any potential questions of them wishing to visit him at his home. By the time the landlord took back the keys Jack was well prepared for what he believed to be genuine homelessness, prepared on the outside and physical world at least. He had a few more things hidden out in the woods than he would have liked but thought it best to keep some of the things that he may need with him just in case.
When the keys were finally handed back though Jack’s external preparations seemed irrelevant to the immediately internal panic that gripped him for the entire day. He was homeless, he had no home, nowhere to go that was behind a locked door, nowhere that wouldn’t be rocked by the wind or sniffed around by wild animals. The more he thought about it the more awful and po
orly thought out his whole life to date seemed, he stayed in town all day having both his dinner and tea in the local chain pub. It was an indulgence that he knew he could afford now that food and drink were his only expense, this did little to comfort him and he made a very slow and lazy path up the hill to his camp. He set up the tent in the same spot that he had first pitched for the night over three months ago, looking back he started to feel better.
Three months. It really struck him and he sat down with tears in his eyes as soon as the tent was up. Three months. He had not slept in a house for over three months, he had seen only a couple of hours television and barely seen anything of the internet at all for a quarter of a year. Times and trends had moved on and Jack had missed it all, he had been literally living his dream instead. Waking up to nature, going to sleep with nature surrounding him, moving around the hill top and waking to different views whenever he felt like it, working less than he had ever worked and yet becoming wealthier than he could have ever imagined. Not in the sense of money in the bank, although this was rising with his simple lifestyle but wealthier in life. He flicked through the book that had become his diary it was bulging not only with pages filled with memories of perfect days but filled with other scraps of paper he had written things on in the spur of the moment. Reading these recent scribblings he was filled with a sense of how good his life was, a feeling he had forgotten entirely only hours before, he realised that his life was not good at all in many respects, he had had to give up so many of the luxuries and even some of the more basic elements that he had always thought a necessity. Contemplating it for a few minutes Jack realised that his life was not great or wonderful, it was just simple, he soon realised that he could not tell the difference, if there was a difference at all.
He was not homeless in the traditional sense, he was here voluntarily, he was a renunciant if anything. Giving up everything he had believed he needed and becoming a happier person because of it. No this wasn’t accurate either, Jack’s mind was running a mile a minute trying to figure out what he was doing, justify it to himself and find its calm again. He looked at what he had with him, clothes, food and a tent and sleeping bag. Food, warmth and shelter, the fundamental things he needed. At first glance it seemed he had given everything up but considering his whole life he realised he still had most of the creature comforts. He washed his clothes at the launderette, left his work clothes to change into in his locker safely away from the woods and had a sneaky plan to shower at his friends house in the village, he would tell them of the ongoing water problems in his current residence and hope for the best.
He was now eating out more often than he had ever done in his life, this had been very positive for his diet though and was something Jack intended to do more often regardless of his adventures status. He had almost created two lives, the real one out in the woods everyday eating blackberries as he found them and scoffing sandwiches while looking twenty miles into the magnificent views he came across, and then there was his fake life that was what he had considered important for all but the last brief months of his existence.
Sleep finally took Jack after hours of mental debate, he did not know what he was going to do in life and for the moment he did not care.
That week Jack lived everyday to the extreme, squeezing every drop of walking, riding exploring and eating that he could. He had a resurgence in attempting to eat as many new wild foods as he could but once again found himself unable to bring himself to eat any of the few mushrooms he discovered, sometimes they looked too disgusting to eat and then other times he was outright too scared in case they were not the edible ones he believed they were. He stayed up late every night and watched the stars appearing, the few constellations that he recognised had now moved across the sky to an incredible extent compared to where they had been when he first saw them months ago. The bright object that he had at first thought to be a star had turned out to be Jupiter was now in what Jack thought was almost the opposite side of the sky compared to when he had been amazed at how bright it was all that time ago. Just after sunset he even saw what he had learned was Venus, low on the horizon it had often been obscured by clouds for the few hours before it set, even brighter than Jupiter Jack was amazed to be looking at planets that were millions of miles away with nothing but his naked eye.
The sky was growing dark much earlier than it had been though and it was now more often filled to some extent with clouds than the perfect clear summers days he had experienced. Autumn was definitely nearing. Jack lived on in bliss though. With the aid of the bike that Ez had allowed him to borrow for an extended period of time Jack had become a regular dinnertime visitor to a few of the pubs in the larger towns with a ten miles radius both in England and over the border in Wales. He had made a few more friends in the last weeks and was ridiculed for never having an alcoholic drink with his new favourite pub meals, comments on his ability to ride a bike drunk had become as much a part of the experience as eating fresh home made meals with that classic homely smell that so many pubs seem to share.
The following week Jack had three days to work at the supermarket in a row and then had one of his weeks booked off work, it had fortuitously worked out to give him ten days off in a row. Jack decided to make it not only a holiday from work but from his old life. It was time to once again Jack felt to really embrace the woods.
For the first time since they had started jack gave the pizza night with his friends a miss, attempting to go for a full week of doing everything from his camp, his meals went back to the simple but pleasant beans on toast, noodles and jacket potatoes. He had sandwiches for dinner everyday even though he had no longer got any butter with him. His diary book filled with new memories and he recorded in detail each walk that he took, travelling a different path each day he had walked over one-hundred miles by the end of the week. His feet were nearly as tough as his boots and he smiled to himself at a week well lived on the seventh night. The stars were out until about midnight and Jack had just seen his fourth meteor of the evening when the first clouds appeared on the horizon. Jack watched as the roof of starlit shapes disappeared into darkness, the moon had set in the early afternoon and as the cloud engulfed the sky only the slight orange glow of the nearby town kept the world from total darkness.
The next morning Jack awoke and knew that something bad had happened, everything seemed cold and clammy as he let his eyes adjust to the light before he opened the tent doorway. When he did his worst fear was realised. Everything was dripping wet, the rain had stopped for the moment but there had been a major downpour during the night, grey clouds still lingered as a warning that it was not yet over. Looking around the camp Jack could not believe how poorly he had been set up, his shoes, new camping stove and backpack had been left out over night, they were all soaked through. Disaster.
Jack put his sodden walking boots on first, his trainers were also wet through and his backpack dripped a steady stream as he picked it up, he immediately set about hanging his various damp belongings on branches of trees that were in sheltered spots just inside the woods, the camping stove was not looking very good as he poured water from it as he turned it upside down and left it leaning against a dry trunk. The tent although damp was not too bad as its very thin, but not perfectly waterproof material allowed the rainwater the either run away or evaporate quickly. He left it as long as he could before packing it away, the tent ironically was the only thing that had seen the worst of the rain that was still going to be usable by the evening.
After having a fantastic week out in the woods Jack now found himself feeling utterly miserable again, if this had happened only a week or so earlier then he would have just taken his stuff into town to the flat and then let it dry out in the warm. Now though with cold feet in every sense of the term Jack was unsure what to do, he packed up his camp as usual and stored it all under the trees protection. He knew he wouldn't be able to walk far with shoes in such a wet condition so he headed towards where he kept the bike hidden away and rode d
own into town, the wind on his face as he went down the hill chilled him and his damp feet felt like they were about to freeze but getting to town locking his bike to a lamppost and then heading into a nice warm pub for a meal he settled himself in both mind and body.
The warmth of the room slowly worked its way through to his feet as Jack tucked into his second jacket potato leading Jack to eat as slowly as he could to extend the experience and try and dry out his feet a bit, he had made the mistake of sitting at one of the tables in the centre of the room and cursed himself for this as he had the idea of taking his shoes off only after sitting down at one of the most publicly viewable seats in the building. He resigned himself to sit with wet but warm feet for as long as he could though.
It was early afternoon when Jack finally finished his pudding, Belgian Waffles with chocolate sauce, it was a luxury he didn’t usually indulge in but on this occasion he needed a pick me up. Emerging into the cold damp streets he looked around, despite his awful start to the day and his still wet feet he had a strange sense of calm and a strong feeling of happiness. Somehow he felt like he was already back on top of the hill with that feeling of looking down on the distant town with a sense of separation from all the problems and hustle and bustle it contained, this time though he was walking the very streets he usually looked down on, he was physically a part of the hustle and bustle but his mind was not disturbed by it at all, he walked at a slower pace than usual looking around at all the things that he would never usually notice. The few trees planted periodically down the main street had just started to lose their pure summer green colour, the chewing gum that covered the pavements seemed to make their own constellations, something spat on the ground utterly unwanted and trodden down was mocking the mighty night sky with its vastness and greatness that looked down on all things, mocking or mirroring. Jack was not feeling himself, or was he? He just didn’t know for those few moments. He completed a circuit of the town’s main roads before heading back to his bike at the front of the pub, the threatening clouds that seemed to promise more rain earlier on had turned out to be filled with nothing but empty threats and passed quietly away.
The Sweet Forest Page 4