Fear of Being Alone

We got out of the car under a highway. My dad wanted to show me a path along the river across from the parking lot. It was a cold, gray day, and felt more like January than late March. The torn up concrete expanse separating us and the river used to be a brick factory, Dad said. A dense, swampy looking forest wound around the perimeter and looked like it had bled onto the cement in the years the area had been left more or less unattended. By the time we reached the trailhead, the weather had soured and we both agreed that it was too cold and too gray of a day for exploring. Probably best to cut our losses and head back to the car. The sky was pregnant with rain and the air was heavy.

On the walk back we split up to scope out the debris. I scaled a mountain of some sawdust-y mush while Dad had the dog water the shrubs lining the edge of the woods. By the time I’d seen all the sawdust mush had to offer and made my way over to them, my dad and the dog were situated before a steep path that cut through a mound of mud and bricks and into the trees, snaking out of view. The prospect of discovering a hidden place was stirring enough to risk walking back in the rain, so I made the executive decision on behalf of the party to conduct further investigation.
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The forest brush had thickened considerably by the time we arrived at the first clearing and, surveying the surrounding flora, I came to three realizations. One, we were already in the middle of the woods– nearly completely entombed by branches and shrubbery, the field and parked cars no longer visible. Two, it was dead silent. We couldn’t have been standing more than fifty paces from the incline where we entered yet I couldn’t make out the sounds of the highway I knew to be audible just past the barren, lifeless trees. There was no observable proof that we weren’t surrounded for miles by wild. Three, we were now following a set of foot and bike tire prints, freshly creased into the mud. It had rained the night before, so these were new. The tire treads were thin– not made to navigate through mud. Additionally, the prints went in one direction. Whoever had left these had entered the woods only hours ago and hadn’t exited, at least not along this trail.

This place gave my dad the creeps, he said. Plus, it was muddy. He and the dog weren’t going in any further. I said I wanted to see where the path led, and that if he was really concerned he wouldn’t let me go alone. My dad stayed put.

Trash and dirty clothes followed me as I plodded through ditches and foliage, deeper into the forest. A fork had me first climb up a hill to find a pile of wood, a tire, and a stamped out fire pit before turning around and picking the other direction. There was definitely a human living here.

After a little more walking I rounded a bend and my gaze was immediately drawn to a dark, round blob. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I entertained the idea of finding someone in a cave. Drawing closer, my pulse steadied as I realized it was only a cavity in a mass of twisted branches collected under a knoll. Ducking under a larger one that was obstructing my path, I saw something shiny out of the corner of my eye. 

It was a bike, lying on its side in the brush. Months later I still can’t really put into words how seeing it made my stomach churn. But it did. My ears rang as I turned away from the bike to face a lone set of footprints climbing the rise. It was lightly drizzling now, and the rain was starting to seep into my clothes.

If someone was on the other side of the hill, they could hear me now and were aware of my presence. Waiting for me to encroach on their privacy, to go somewhere I wasn’t supposed to, creeping into a space that wasn’t mine, knowing full well it could be a very, very, bad idea. The only noise I heard crawling up the ascent was soft morning rain and twigs snapping like little rabbit bones underneath my boots. I could have turned back and minded my own business, or called out and made my intentions clear, but I didn’t. I wanted, badly, to see something terrible. Filled with dread and the reckless, magnetic power of whatever lay just past my sightline I took a step forward and peered over the top of the hillock.

Trash. Lots of trash. Everything I had become accustomed to during the walk over: Ragged clothes, foodstuffs, bricks. No person. Standing atop the hill, I could see the field and the parked cars and the river, but would have been difficult to pick out from the twisted foliage myself. Maybe this was someone’s lookout.

The feeling of being watched is powerful, maybe even more so than the feeling of being utterly alone. Sometimes I think they’re interchangeable fears. Especially out in God’s land where the wilderness sits so still it’s constantly in motion. It’s hard to feel like you’re at the top of the food chain when there’s so much happening just outside your field of view, rendered in violent detail by a noise you can’t place or a light brush from a vine.

I booked it out of there.

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​henry