Swallow the Distance
Bam! I fell harder than the Roman Empire. There were deadfalls
everywhere; you could break both your legs before you took ten steps
if you weren't careful. I had been as cautious as possible, as
cautious as could be expected running through the woods. Things were
not going my way. Lady luck's a crafty one. She'll turn her back on
you in a minute and, as luck would have it, that'd be exactly when
you'd need her most.
I guess the old lady wasn't smiling today or she wouldn't have dealt
Seth and I quite so bad a hand. This day started like any of our
usual first Friday of the month camping trip days. After school we
jumped into my jeep, that was probably only being held together by
its extensive rust, and stopped by my garage to get the bags we had
stowed there yesterday. Then it was off to Dell's to fill the tank
with enough gas to get us over the mountain and fill the back seat
with enough junk food to rot our teeth three times over.
We took Route 19 to our pitstop then followed it another handful of
miles to our turnoff, Stone Quarry Road. It is a long meandering road
that is the only way up the mountain beside the old logging route
which is now reserved for Rescue Patrol, Snowcats and such. Stone
Quarry was still hard going; half of the way up, the blacktop gave
way to the relentlessly chewed, brush choked dirt road that is the
backbone of country life. And it rattled your backbone alright, made
your teeth grate in their jaw.
Now we like things remote, Man Against Nature, a classic struggle.
Where we go, though, it's more like Man With Nature, because against
it you would not get very far to anywhere and I'd be truly surprised
if you even managed to get yourself back out.
We were okay though, been camping since we were still bouncing on the
knees of our dads. The woods were just as much a home to us as were
the boxes we spent the rest of our time in. That's why when the jeep
blew a tire in a rut, we pushed it off the road and decided to forgo
the usual site and hike from there. Besides, I had put the spare on
last week.
If you think that's where this trouble started, you have no idea.
Things were smooth. We hiked and joked, did a little bushwhacking.
Then the cloudcover came rolling in, like the rug before the bride.
There was no music though, no noise whatsoever. The bride came in to
complete silence. There was not even an ominous rumbling or rustling
wind. Rain would be fine; we could deal with rain. This, however, was
the unknown and that is the root of all fear.
We were in thick woods at the time and the daylight was being eaten
up quickly. The weather was holding but it was bound to break soon
and we were not in a good place. The birds knew it. They had long
since quit their calls. We were equally eager to evacuate.
The ground was soft from an earlier rainfall. Being early autumn,
most of the leaves still hung in the trees. But they hung silently,
in an utter stillness quite unlike the eve of a storm. We got
nervous. A mist was rising with the smell of cut grass, only holding
none of the nostalgia. Our leather boots turned dark as we wordlessly
continued up the path.
It was several agonizing minutes before Seth turned to me and said
only, "This is not good." I met his eyes and continued
walking, not saying a thing. There was nothing I wanted to say,
nothing I could say that would offer any insight to our situation. I
walked, quicker than normal, trying not to watch the mist rise up and
swallow the distance.
The sky had gone from a pale blue to a pallid gray, a dull concrete
color. Everything became muted and surreal. I could not hear my
footsteps in the dirt, or the creak of my pack, or the gush of my
breath, or the beat of my heart. I watched my chest heave and begged
to feel some sense of life, whether it be within myself or somewhere
out in that world gone stale before me. Nothing.
I was running then, but to or from what, I had no idea. Things were
not familiar anymore. The sense of home, or any such comfort, had
drained away. I was running away from something that, within all
reason, was not chasing me --a stranger that only existed in
nightmares, that had no face, no weakness, but worst of all, no purpose.
Then I fell. The pain shot through my leg and continued upward,
exploding in my head. I was jarred and dazed. I clenched my eyes
trying to bring thing into focus. I saw Seth emerge from the mist. He
was running up the path, his mouth moving but nothing reaching my
ears. I clenched again, and opened.
Things looked brighter. Well, they had more color, as if someone
lifted a screen. Dusk had come and visibility was suffering. But I
saw Seth's eyes. They were open wide, kind of awestruck, desperate,
harried, both relieved and enraged. They looked as if he was trying
to explain the inexplicable. It was a look of hopelessness heaped
upon adversary. It was a look I wanted to forget but never would.
Compelled to turn around, I tried to make sense where none could be
found. The forest had opened and the earth split in two.
So that brings us here. I'm sitting at the edge of a ravine a million
years old and a million miles long. My leg is hurting but
serviceable. Seth threw a pebble over several minutes ago and is
still waiting to hear it hit. I see no way across and really no
reason to cross, but there's this nagging. I want to say it's in the
pit of my stomach but goes much deeper than that. It's from way down
past logic and past sensibility, all the way to the primordial depths
of my existence.
It's not a choice so much as a drive. I must cross the gully to the
sheer rock ledge of the other side. From there it's only a quick
climb to continue our unspoken, unreal journey. A glance over at Seth
reveals that he feels the same.
So here we are. We've got our wits mostly about us and mostly intact.
We've got basic tools and the bounty of nature. We've got a narrow
ledge with barely two feet of space backed up to a cliff. There is a
tall stand of pines to our left and a viney patch of thistle to our
right. There is a way across.
The Questions.
1. To cross, it's conceivable to chop down a tree and tip it over to
the ledge, but let's impose these guidelines: The incline is too
great to reach the top; they have to span to the ledge. If the tree
is too short it will fall; if too long, it will break uselessly
against the side. So they're faced with measuring, within the two
feet give of the ledge, the height of the tree and distance
across the ravine. How can they continue?
(Note: The illustration is not to scale. Also, it is impossible to
work the problem in abstraction. Let's say the distance to the end of
the ledge is 46 feet. Determine how they might figure that as well as
find an appropriately tall tree.)
2. What is the difference between height and distance?
How does length fit in there?
3. Could the ravine actually be a million miles long? Why or why not?
4. Are the terms ravine and gully interchangeable? Can
they exist concurrently?
5. Say, due to deadfalls, you break both your legs before you take
ten steps, then answer this: If a person takes two steps a second,
what is the maximum amount of time it would take a group of six to
break all their legs?
|
©Jeff
Valure |