(026)
It felt good to walk. Well, insofar as it felt less bad than sitting inside in the stagnant air that he’d brought in from the night before. Perhaps it was better to say that it was distracting to walk, and it felt good to be distracted.
Snippets of memory flicker in Sam’s mind as if played on an old projector. Patches of the film are burnt and indecipherable but enough clarity remains to fill him with anxiety. He massages his sinuses with his fingers, manipulating his nose to try and loosen the residual cocaine he’d apparently accepted from someone. It cloys in the back of his throat and he attempts to hawk it up, spitting whatever he’d mustered onto the dusty footpath, followed by a short blast from each nostril.
From under his arm he produces the book his therapist had given him two weeks before, having promised he would use it before their next session. Their next session was less than a day away, so despite his intense lack of desire to do it now, the idea of explaining that he hadn’t seemed even worse. He slows down to look at it before deciding to stop entirely when the motion sickness makes his head swim. The art of the forest bath is the title. That alone makes his jaw clench and his eyes roll, but with a sigh he opens to the page that she’d marked.
“In everyday life it can be easy to get lost in our thoughts, but with a forest bath we can reconnect with and eventually get lost in our feelings.”
The words blur a little as he reads them, though whether from the brain fog or the tremor in his hands, it was hard to tell.
“Start by walking at whatever pace feels natural through a forest or woods. Take whatever path you feel – it doesn’t have to be the marked one. While you’re walking, take note of the things you can sense around you. What do you feel under your feet? What do you smell, see and hear? Follow what feels right to you. Pick something that’s interesting to you and stop to examine it.”
He closes the book and puts it back under his arm, shutting his eyes. Behind his tight jaw and knitted brows, two voices argue with one another about what to do.
This is stupid-
-Just give it a chance! Why are you making this so difficult?
It’s pointless hippy dippy bullshit-
-It’s not as if what you’re doing now is any better!
It’s a version of an argument he’s well accustomed to, as they bicker almost incessantly. He takes a deep inhale through his nose, well, as deep as one unblocked nostril will allow.
-You’re a fucking mess-
He opens his eyes and starts walking at pace, following the path he was already on.
What are the questions again? What do I see?
He scans the floor at his feet, the dust from the path pluming with every step. Nothing stands out. Leaves, dirt, trees – all the things you’d expect to find in a forest.
What am I supposed to see?
He tries to focus on what the ground feels like beneath his leaden feet, but nothing clear comes through. The only sounds are of himself moving, the wind, or the river up ahead. No sudden revelation or spirit guide presents itself. Just the starkness of his reality.
I’m a ghost.
The path begins to flatten and arc to the right and Sam instinctively follows it, until something finally draws him away.
He steps down the bank onto the patchy brown and yellow grass below, trying in the back of his mind to differentiate between the sensations, though to little success. Now directly under the sun’s glare, he senses the warmth of it against his skin. He paces across the grass towards the river, coming almost to the edge of the bank that stands high above the water level. With his eyes closed the sound of it flowing acts like an anchor, his focus finally still. He opens his eyes and searches around for something to examine, for the first time feeling that he has a grasp on what’s being asked of him.
Standing alone by the water’s edge he finds it. A wide tree stump, blackened and ashy in the empty field. Following the current of the river, he approaches. His palm enjoys the smooth sensation as he runs it across the flat top, his fingertips subtly dipping and rising between the grooves of the rings as he does so. The bark around the edges is dark, cracked and flaking, but the centre appears unblemished. He snaps off a piece and it crumbles in his hands like charcoal. Checking over his shoulder to see that no-one is watching him, he brings his hand up to his face, inhaling once again. The smoky scent reminds him of his grandparents’ old house. Of staying up late on the couch when they’d babysat him, the wood fire crackling in the background. He exhales, dropping the wood on the floor, and patting his hand on his jeans to clean it.
He stands there still for a moment, simply breathing. Then he turns, walking back into the woods, albeit a little slower than before.
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