|/-< Dezerae Forsan >-\|
The woods are a sinister place. I don't care what the naturalists or the poets have to say on the subject - they're wrong. In the woods, it seems like the trees have eyes, and their branches try to grab at you, pull you into the undergrowth to be slowly consumed. But most important of all, the woods are cubic. You know that you're in an enormous space, but it's something that you can't verify. And this all-encompassing, if unprovable, sense of space, brings something very unpleasant with it.
It's easy to get lost in the trees.
This was, unfortunately, my current situation. I had gone mountain-bike riding on the trails that filled the woods around my neighborhood, despite the fact that almost everything that possesses a domicile here will leap at the chance to bite, sting, maul, or fall on me. I needed to clear my head. Life was not pleasant at the moment, and I had finally realized that the outdoors could provide the perfect escape.
If only I'd known how right I was.
My bike's back wheel caught on a root, or maybe a rock, or, I rather maliciously hoped, a squirrel. Whatever it was, I didn't get the opportunity to see it; I was flung by my own momentum off of the bike, through the air, and in what must have been the first stroke of good luck my life had ever held, into a river.
I was grateful for not having had my head rammed into a tree, or shattered on a rock, but it was with growing tension that I realized that this river was stronger than I could cope with. I had swum a lot as a child, but as I had grown older, I had abandoned the water for the cliffs. Fate, or karma, or whatever, seemed to have caught up with me, as I was pulled under by the powerful current. I struggled for a moment or two, trying to get my hands or, better yet, my head above the water, until my vision finally went black, lack of oxygen forcing my brain to shut down.
~~~~~~~~
When I awoke, I immediately realized that something was amiss. The sky was gray, as was everything else in my range of vision. Sitting up, I took in what little there was to see; Mists, water, and a gray landscape, devoid of vegetation. If I had been in a better mood, I would have made a comment about not being in Kansas any more.