Returning to camp Jack decided to play it safe and pitch the tent as close to the trees as the roots poking through the grass would allow, he had set the tent up unusually early and was surprised at how much more he could see as the afternoon sun battled through the misty clouds to light the scenery across the fields and over to the distant hills, he thought that he could just about make out some of the mountains way off into the distance but the passing rain in the mid ground made it impossible to be sure. A few light showers passed but nothing that concerned Jack enough to look up from the latest book that he was reading, another classic; The War of The Worlds by H. G. Wells. It gave him the creeps to read some passages imagining himself witnessing the onslaught of the mysterious and terrifying Martian invaders, this was not a book that he read anywhere near bedtime.
The time came for Jack to return to work, he dreaded it, yet at the same time he knew it was important not only to keep money coming in just in case he came across an unexpected expense but also vital to keep him from becoming completely isolated and reclusive. It would give him something to talk to Angela and Ez about anyway, riveting stuff he was sure.
He managed to just about get away with one or two showers a week at his friends and as far as cleaning his uniform and the few sets of clothes he regularly wore went the launderette was fine. He had a great routine going and since the day of the downpour he grew in confidence ever more at the prospect of at least surviving until the winter set in.
It was during this period of happiness that his friends from the village made him an offer that unsettled his contented mind. They explained on one of their pizza nights that they were looking to take in a lodger on a temporary basis to help cover the bills, Angela had been out of work for a while now and as Jack’s friendship with the couple grew they had been considering between themselves whether or not to ask him specifically. Knowing that he was having problems with is current residence, or so they thought from the stories he had told in order to gain the use of their shower and keep his few possessions there they had thought it would be a favour to him as well as feeling that he would be a quiet housemate and as Ez said in a joking manner, or so Jack hoped, if they didn’t like him then they could always throw him out. Jack at first made excuses saying he would just be in the way but they had insisted he consider the offer for a few weeks so he could make a level headed decision without any pressure. He was not given the option for an outright no.
This left Jack with a problem, he was determined to stay on the hill for as long as he could but now that he had an alternative, an answer to all his problems, he found himself thinking about it whenever anything went wrong or even slightly different to how he thought something in his life in the woods should be. When he woke up to any rain he tormented himself with the thought that he could be in a warm house dry and free of the hassle of setting up, taking down and moving camp even though he loved doing the ceremony and had become a master of pitching and collapsing the tent. When he woke up with a bad back from an awkward sleep on some hard ground he was enraged at himself for not being in the soft warm bed in the spare room with its window overlooking a row of gardens in the village.
He loved the forest, the hill, the view and everything about the simple lifestyle he had built, but now he had a safety net again, an easily affordable friendly home and it was only half an hour on a bike away.
Departure
Is a goodbye a hello to something else?
A long week of foul autumn weather pushed Jack to the extreme edge of what he could bare. Rain poured from the sky for hours at a time and a chill in the air made the days drag as he could not get out walking or travel further afield on his bike, even the journey to and from work was causing problems as he would be fetching back the soaking wet clothes that he traveled in. No matter how careful Jack was he could not stop the tent from becoming damp, he tried hanging it from the tree branches during the day time hoping to air it out. No such luck.
When the next pizza night rolled around Jack turned up at his friends house soaked to the bone and with the tail end of a cold he had developed and endured in the terrible weather. He went in and was instantly handed a towel, drying his hair the conversation predictably started about how awful the weather had been recently and how mad it had been of him to bike out instead of phoning for a lift that would have been gladly given. Jack didn’t mind in the least though, just by being inside a warm dry house again his spirits were lifted and even before they had eaten he started to feel tired, this was the first time since the bad weather started that Jack felt truly comfortable. He enjoyed the evening more than any of the previous get togethers and as they sat watching a particularly long war film Jack felt himself growing more and more settled in the seat, when the film finished it was late and he was barely awake.
Standing up Ez noted how worse for wear Jack was looking and insisted that he stayed the night, Jack put up a fight and even got as far as putting his coat on but when he looked out of the door at the pouring rain he felt sick to his stomach as he knew immediately that it was over. He was going to stay there for the night, after nearly four months on the hill he felt defeated and almost as soon as he had been shown to the bed he lay down and shut his eyes. He had only moments to regret the decision before the utter relief and relaxation carried him off to sleep.
It was not until half twelve the next afternoon that he awoke. Only Angela remained in the house and jack lay in bed listening to her singing along to the radio as she made herself some dinner. He could not believe the time but as always trusted that his body had needed it after the extreme conditions of the last week. He felt sad that this had been the end of his adventure but at the same time, waking up in a warm, dry bed and hearing faint raindrops hitting the window he felt relieved, strangely happy in some respects. It almost made him feel guilty to feel anything other than sadness at leaving his life in the wild. He tried to trick himself into believing he would go back out there once the rains had stopped but knew deep down that the winter months would be too much to take on, if the offer still stood jack knew he would stay where he was for a while.
The day passed with pleasant conversation and helping out with the simple household chores that Jack had not done for months when Ez arrived back home from work, the offer was put on the table plain and simple and Jack accepted without a second thought. From that moment on he was back in a house officially. As a token of goodwill Ez suggested they all go out for a meal, in a tongue in cheek and delicious piece of humour they decided to go out for what Jack considered a posher type of pizza. It was a good night, a good celebration of the new arrangement, but Jack knew that really it was marking the end of a fantastic chapter of his life.
Something New
Does time change everything or do people change and blame time?
As autumn pressed on the rumor of a harsh winter started to appear, Jack did not know how he felt about it really, he wanted it to turn out to be true so that he could believe he was in the right place but at the same time was sad to think that even if he had shown more resolve to stick with it that night then he still would have been defeated by nature anyway.
The winter turned out to be a particularly bitter one. When the snow finally fell as the weather forecasts had been threatening for weeks prior to the arrival it covered the ground in record quantities. It became a struggle to maintain the regularity of everyday life for even the fittest of people, the roads were treacherous and no amount of grit seemed enough to keep people and traffic traveling at a normal speed. When the nights came they fetched ever colder temperatures until the fallen snow had started to freeze solid causing even more disruption.
Shops started to run out of staples such as bread and milk, farmers faced some of the toughest challenges in trying even just to reach their stock in some cases, schools and colleges were forced to close and the extreme weather caused several severe power cuts as power lines collapsed under the weight of the weather. Trees blocked roads and in some cases isolated countr
y communities were cut off entirely and rescue services had to be employed in saving many elderly residents from a frosty home they could not heat.
Despite all this a great joy broke out within the younger generations, no school, no college and snow beyond anything they could have imagined, this was their vision of a miracle. A snowball fight every day for a week was almost impossible to imagine until it actually happened, snowmen popped up in numbers that almost appeared to be an invasion and as lakes and rivers froze the inevitable started to happen. People could be seen wrapped up warm attempting to walk on the ice, taking a tumble but being so utterly covered in layers of clothing not feeling anything except a great hilarity.
In scenes reminiscent of Victorian Britain areas in the larger cities became filled with people who had brought their own ice skates to the natural rinks. It was a wonderful sight, it tended to be either children or the more well off families who had their own skates, but enterprising people soon popped up with their rent-a-skate stands. People coming together in one spot for one great fun purpose, the weather was in so many ways awful and disruptive, destructive even. Yet at the same time the weather was perfect.
It was with these images flashing up on the tele that Jack felt relief, when the winter had not immediately turned out to be the bitter cold everyone was expecting he had started to regret leaving the woods. He enjoyed living in his new home with his friends and found the more rural location to be fantastic, he was in love with the fact that he could go out on a walk and see almost nobody from the moment he left the house, the nearby canal was one of his favorite places to walk and the sights and sounds and smells of the waterways had grown to be something he expected to be part of one of his days out in the countryside. He always felt a little concerned that he had left the woods to early though, his current life was one of satisfaction and bliss but thoughts of what could have been haunted his minds peace.
When the snow actually came though all these thoughts were replaced by a strong sense of relief, thinking of what would have happened if he had been out in the woods when the first snow fell he could not think of a way out of the situation, he would have had no choice but to move back into town but would have had nowhere to go to. Relief, fate had been kind to him.
Walking down the towpath of the canal on a particularly cold and dark day Jack paid a lot of attention to the frozen water. No narrowboat could travel this stretch of the waterways or would be able to for some time. The ice was somehow smooth and yet seemed covered in dancing swirls and patterns frozen for these few weeks in time and ready to melt away and be forgotten when the spring finally brought relief. As he reached a stretch of wider water he looked at how tightly locked in place the moored boats were, stuck there at natures mercy.
The ice seemed to rise up slightly as if trying to scale the sides of the boats, it made for a sense of ownership, the boat was not on the water, the water was around the boat, the water tolerated the boat but ultimately had control. A row of four narrowboats lined the towpath, the middle two were owned by people who lived on board, as Jack walked past he looked down into the windows, the light inside seemed a warming orange compared to the dullness outside. Inside, a couple who looked to be in their fifties or sixties went about their daily life, the husband was laying a small table ready for tea, the cooker was only a few feet away, pots and pans were steaming and bubbling promising a wonderful meal when done.
Moving past the windows through the front Jack could see a lady tending the small wood burner to keep themselves heated up and out of the cold, flames leapt up and licked out at her as she placed a few more small sticks into the heat. Following the chimney up to the roof Jack saw the dark smoke flowing out and spreading over to the opposite side of the canal, the surrounding air smelled strongly of the burning wood. It took him right back to the forest, a strong sense of deja vu that made him slow his steps for a moment.
He looked back at the narrowboat, the lights within glowing, the smoke rising from the chimney, the cosy warmth that it seemed to emit. Looking around at the dim, damp, snowy countryside that he was in he was taken aback at how peaceful and perfect the narrowboat seemed.
A new warm feeling passed through him, he felt his mouth turn into an irrepressible smile, all kinds of hopeful thoughts passed through his mind at once.
He had an idea.
The End.
Thank you for reading this book by Daniel Mark Brown, you may also like the following short story collections by the same author:
Twenty-Five Moments
and
Twenty-Five Thoughts
You can find out more about the author by visiting www.danielmarkbrown.com
Thank you once again for reading this book.
The Sweet Forest Page 5