Bound for Home (Tyler Cunningham Shorts) by Jamie Sheffield Page B
Authors: Jamie Sheffield
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to my back pack, threw the free end over a tree branch about 20 feet overhead ( with the help of a perfectly chosen stick ), hoisted the pack ( with my food and toothpaste and other smelly stuff in it ) up and out of reach of bears and raccoons, and tied it off. I climbed into the hammock through the entry-flap in the underside with my book and headlamp, a sports bottle of Gatorade and some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, meaning to read and snack a bit, but falling asleep almost instantly instead … listening to the water and wind and feeling the gentle rocking motion of the hammock under/around me.
Middle Saranac Lake, 10:23pm, 6/5/2002
I woke up four hours later, in the pitch black you only find 100 feet inside thick forest. I could hear and smell the water off to my left, and it helped me get oriented/placed in the map in my head. I felt around for my headlamp and sat up, sliding my legs back out ( through what I couldn’t help thinking of as my hammock’s birth canal ) to stand on the needles in my lightweight sleeping bag. I shed the sleeping bag leaving it puddled at my feet, stepped out gingerly onto the cold and slightly damp ground, and started to pick my way down to the shore … hearing a beaver slap its tail on the water in warning as my feet felt the dirt and needles give way to sand and shells.
I turned off the headlamp about three feet from the water and stripped, leaving my clothes in the sand, and walked out into the water … warmer than the air, but not warm. I remembered the feeling of being in the middle of the lake and not knowing where to swim to retrieve my clothes and headlamp from my first night swim. I looked back over my shoulder before I got too far into the lake, and confirmed that I could, in fact, see the gentle glowing of my watch face ( it always glowed, and/but I always checked). I dove under, gasping at the full-body cold upon breaking surface again, and flipped over onto my back to swim out further into the nighttime lake.
A minute later, I could feel that the bottom had fallen away from my feet, and I used the bright stars overhead to grab onto my sense of place in the universe again … Polaris ( North Star ) was easy to find, and I knew that my clothes were in the opposite direction. I floated face up on the lake for a half hour, feeling the lake both move around me, and move me around. When I started shivering, after 34 minutes in the water, I found Polaris, oriented myself away from it, and did my imitation of an Olympic Freestyle back into shore to warm up.
While swimming into shore, getting dressed, by headlamp, creeping back up to my campsite, and climbing back up into the hammock, I thought about my current state of quasi-homelessness, and decided that although I liked it most nights, it might be nice to have Maurice’s blessing to spend the occasional night in the SmartPig offices. I had 73% of an idea about how to bring this about while also doing what I had told John that I would do … I knew from books that I had read, and discussions that I had had with Mickey, one of my childhood parent/teachers, that my solution wasn’t socially or morally acceptable, but it would meet my needs, and not unduly injure or inconvenience anyone else.
I settled back down into my sleeping back, seduced into another four hours of sleep by the wind rocking my hammock, the smell of the water and moss, and the sound of the wind through the tops of the white pines 100 feet over my head.
SmartPig Offices 11:46am, 6/6/2002
I had woken in the failing darkness that signals the coming of morning, and slid down and out of my hammock and sleeping ba g for a round of input/output management ( the body’s needs are troubling and tiresome, but I had tried to stop output by eliminating input once, when nine, and was rushed to the hospital three days later by my parents. I promised never to try it again ). I
Middle Saranac Lake, 10:23pm, 6/5/2002
I woke up four hours later, in the pitch black you only find 100 feet inside thick forest. I could hear and smell the water off to my left, and it helped me get oriented/placed in the map in my head. I felt around for my headlamp and sat up, sliding my legs back out ( through what I couldn’t help thinking of as my hammock’s birth canal ) to stand on the needles in my lightweight sleeping bag. I shed the sleeping bag leaving it puddled at my feet, stepped out gingerly onto the cold and slightly damp ground, and started to pick my way down to the shore … hearing a beaver slap its tail on the water in warning as my feet felt the dirt and needles give way to sand and shells.
I turned off the headlamp about three feet from the water and stripped, leaving my clothes in the sand, and walked out into the water … warmer than the air, but not warm. I remembered the feeling of being in the middle of the lake and not knowing where to swim to retrieve my clothes and headlamp from my first night swim. I looked back over my shoulder before I got too far into the lake, and confirmed that I could, in fact, see the gentle glowing of my watch face ( it always glowed, and/but I always checked). I dove under, gasping at the full-body cold upon breaking surface again, and flipped over onto my back to swim out further into the nighttime lake.
A minute later, I could feel that the bottom had fallen away from my feet, and I used the bright stars overhead to grab onto my sense of place in the universe again … Polaris ( North Star ) was easy to find, and I knew that my clothes were in the opposite direction. I floated face up on the lake for a half hour, feeling the lake both move around me, and move me around. When I started shivering, after 34 minutes in the water, I found Polaris, oriented myself away from it, and did my imitation of an Olympic Freestyle back into shore to warm up.
While swimming into shore, getting dressed, by headlamp, creeping back up to my campsite, and climbing back up into the hammock, I thought about my current state of quasi-homelessness, and decided that although I liked it most nights, it might be nice to have Maurice’s blessing to spend the occasional night in the SmartPig offices. I had 73% of an idea about how to bring this about while also doing what I had told John that I would do … I knew from books that I had read, and discussions that I had had with Mickey, one of my childhood parent/teachers, that my solution wasn’t socially or morally acceptable, but it would meet my needs, and not unduly injure or inconvenience anyone else.
I settled back down into my sleeping back, seduced into another four hours of sleep by the wind rocking my hammock, the smell of the water and moss, and the sound of the wind through the tops of the white pines 100 feet over my head.
SmartPig Offices 11:46am, 6/6/2002
I had woken in the failing darkness that signals the coming of morning, and slid down and out of my hammock and sleeping ba g for a round of input/output management ( the body’s needs are troubling and tiresome, but I had tried to stop output by eliminating input once, when nine, and was rushed to the hospital three days later by my parents. I promised never to try it again ). I
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