Agitated

I haven’t been able to write. I haven’t even been able to think to write. I am way too noisy. I am agitated. Any little noise outside of me is too much noise. Right now someone’s car alarm is going off, again. It keeps going off. Like the wind is doing it. I want to smash the alarm or maybe the car.

I went to the woods yesterday. Alone. Not on my own. I was alone. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t take anyone with me and woke furious that no one could go with me and even more furious I knew I still needed to go. Even more furious that I have no one to even take. I didn’t want to spend a single minute in the woods with myself. I have not forgotten how to be ok on my own I forgot how hard it is to be ok on my own. It was a recipe for disaster. I had images of falling a lot, being mad about other people being there. Bugs flying into my eyeballs, spider webs. I read one single review of the trail that said it was too rocky and difficult to walk and she pulled two spiders from her hair and noped her way back to the car. After a mile. I stopped after the first review. I know better than to try and base what a trail condition is like from other people points of view. What kind of mood was she in? What was her goal that day? Did she start a new medication? Is she recently out of rehab for an injury? I don’t know enough about the person who wrote the review to use it as a tool for my lack of plans. I will often call the park office and ask the rangers questions. They work the trails and travel the trails in all their moods and days so they usually say things like. Today a tree fell at a spot, or the creeks are running high today but the other day were not, there is a broken section of bridge, a sign got knocked down at this junction. We are logging in this area blazes may be absent, don’t follow the crews work roads by accident. You may see this flower in bloom. If you wait a week you may see this one.

I left with no knowledge of the trail I didn’t even print a map. I didn’t even want to go. I packed to stay the night but in my head I pictured getting there and leaving. Or getting there and hurrying. I don’t like to drive. I also recognize I am not a good driver. Not a bad one but a distracted one. The worst. I have been pulled over under the assumption I had been texting. I had not been. He assumed it based on my driving. He didn’t even see me texting but thought he saw me looking down and I swerved. I told him I was not texting but I am definitely distracted. I don’t even remember with what. Maybe a taco. Maybe a bug. Maybe I looked down just to look down.

I had to drive myself. I was so used to being driven. Which sometimes felt worse. I had no control. I had to sit and be driven by another distracted driver who needed control. I needed another steering wheel and brake pedal. Together the two distracted people could fill each other’s distracted ness and become one undistracted driver? Or we would crash into a cliff. If he turned his steering wheel one way and I did the other would it cancel the turns out and we would stay straight? What if he brakes while I accelerated. We would spin in place? Go nowhere. We never went anywhere. We spun in place and stayed straight from each of pulling away from each other. We were destined to crash.

I found where I assumed the trail was. It wasn’t clear and since I didn’t really plan I didn’t really know. I just picked this trail by process of elimination. There were no other trail heads in the area my memory told me I was supposed to be in.

I have the start of a cold. Not the start of coronavirus. I told my mom I was getting a cold and she said you better go get tested!! I said for a cold. She said for the virus. But I have had a hundred colds in my life. This is what a cold is for me. I have a scratchy throat, my eyes are wetter and I have a little post nasal drip. I do not have a virus. I knew better than to try to do anything with the early onset of cold symptoms for me. I am more agitated than normal and I am usually agitated in normal. So now I am over agitated.

I chose a holiday weekend to go. I broke a solid golden rule I have for me taught by my dad. Never travel to the woods on holiday weekends. That’s when everyone travels to the woods. The weather was stellar. The night sky has been amazing and we have a harvest moon. All the reasons for people to want to enjoy the outdoors. Problem is I want to too. Just not with them.

I made sort of a chose your own adventure kind of trail. I found a trail on the one trails site I use that shows a way into the state park without parking with everyone else to get into the state park. My lack of plan was to walk 8 miles to the state park with a connecting trail then I would play a little in the park and climb the lookout tower, find the falls and see the highest point in the state then I would turn around and walk to my car after sleeping a night somewhere. I didn’t account for really anything. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure this would work. I was not even fifty percent sure. I just headed that way in my car in an agitated state expecting it to maybe work. I would just guess if it didn’t.

As I am walking I hear squeaking. When you are in the woods a human is heard even when a mile away. We can’t help it. We sound like humans in the woods. Squeaky. Stompy. We don’t tread lightly. We clear are throats. We might hum. For me I could hear clearly a squeak from a tightened backpack. Mine does it too. There is one spot and no good reason why. I have looked for days and I know where it is but it is not a squeak to grease it is a friction squeak. I have tried padding that spot. Nothing stops the squeak. I was hearing his and I am sure he was hearing mine. I stopped to look at something. What? Oh a pile of cool mushrooms. Stood up and he was right there. Like 50 yards from me. It scared me right over to the ground off my feet. I just rocked over. I said. I knew I heard someone. And he said yes that was him squeaking back there. See, he knows the squeak. I accessed him quickly. Up and down taking in who he was fast. I like to know if I should feel threatened as soon as possible. I am a female in the woods. Alone.

His backpack had clearly been used a lot. He was super clean though and either that’s just how clean he is lucky to get his hiking clothes or he ruined his set and had to get new ones. He was wearing a super white top. I both get and don’t get the white thing. My dad was always shoving a long sleeve white shirt my way. It will reflect the sun. Why do I want to reflect the sun? I love when it warms up my obnoxious colors. You would see every little thing I got into in about 10 minutes if I was wearing white. I would like to see this guy in 4 days after he is done with his perfectly mapped out trip. He had no wedding ring. I don’t check this to see availability. I check it to see what or if they are committed to someone. That they have a person. I don’t and want one. I want that ring again to play with on my finger to remind me that someone made me a promise. I still play with the finger like it has a ring on it. This guy asks if I am ok. I had forgotten I was sitting after falling over when he startled me. I roll over to get up. My pack is too full of water in fear I won’t find water. Even though I am supposed to see a water fall in about 8 miles. I stand and he looks what? I can’t read him. He asks me where Im heading. I say my plan. He pulls out his laminated map he printed from the same site I use only he had printed his route with little dots showing specific places to stop and see or sleep and when to break and where he might find water. And he had little notes everywhere. I said. Look at your cute little map. He laughs and asks if I have one. I point to my head and say I am a chose my own adventure when I get there kind of person. He looks panicked. His eyes got big. I peak over at his map and he pulls it close to him. I’m not going to take it I think. Does he think that? Or is he holding it for his own protection and fear of not having one. In his head is he wondering, could he do that? Just leave and guess. In my head I’m thinking a perfect laid out plan is a plan for a failed perfect laid out plan. I don’t like to set myself up for failure so I don’t plan. I have all my basic things to help me get through what ever might happen. He looks at me and says. Oh good you have a gps. I say, oh this? Yeah, I don’t really know how to use it. I have it for the sos button and am still figuring the rest of the things out. I tell him that I figure someday it will come in handy. And that I assume I will have to hit the sos button to have someone else be saved. He laughs. He says that he runs across a lot of people he worries about on the trails after he passes them. I am not worried at all about this guy. He doesn’t seem worried about me. We both seem fine with our little plans. He is skilled for sure but must be like an engineer or someone who likes computers and printers and plans. He tells me to be safe and I say have fun and we will never see each other again. He will no doubt be fine. I will doubt my every move and still be fine.

I got turned around. Not just lost turned around but turned around and just went back. I had stopped to eat a snack and when I stood up I wondered in a circle on the flat glades and when I found the trail again I just started walking on it. Not noticing I was heading East and not west. I didn’t know for sure I was going west any way. I look down and notice a pile of fungus on a small log. It looked like one I had seen. Like exactly alike. As I am walking I look up and see a man and dog in front of me who had passed me coming from the other way. This didn’t make sense. Did he turn around? I climb over a log and see the little batch of red mushrooms. Then I look to my right and realize the sun is now in my right. I burst into tears. I am heading back to my car. Not to the park. I sit. I cry. I am mad. I look for a butterfly in hopes one appears and shows me my dad is with me. There are none and he isn’t with me he is dead. He is not a butterfly. It is a cute story to believe when I am less agitated and can look past the agitation and believe nonsense to help me grieve.

I am going home. I don’t want to walk here or anywhere. I don’t want to unagitate. I want to stay in the frame of mind forever. I remember I read a quote once that said something like this, when you feel like you don’t want to be in nature for even five minutes that’s when you should be for an hour. That’s not even close to what it said I just know it is something along those lines. I don’t want to sit with myself so that’s why I should. I don’t want to connect to nature so I should. I sit longer and stare at the piles of moss. They look so comfy I wish I could make a quilt from them and cover myself up and sleep here. What am I going to do? Sit here and cry forever? Give up? Push the sos button and make someone come get me so I can tell them I need rescued from myself? None of them. I’m going to cry and rest. Think.

I decide to keep going and when I got to the spot I assumed I made the mistake and headed back at I stopped. I looked around in circles and took in what I did. I just wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t in a zone to do this. I wanted to go back. So I went back. I noped my way back to the car without even thinking I was going back to my car. But now I am here. At this single spot that tricked me into thinking I should give up. That I should doubt me. I keep going. I am tripping about every single step on my right foot. My right foot keeps catching on everything protruding from the ground. I am breaking in new boots. This was not the time to break in new boots. Yet here I am on a holiday weekend in an over agitated state with new boots and too much water packed and the beginning of a cold. Might as well get this over with. Then, I see it. That butterfly I longed for just a few hours before. Right there in front of me. I closed my eyes and held them tight shut so I didn’t see it. I was willing it away. Then opened them and it was still there. Like it was waiting for me to go. It was hovering like a helicopter. Not fluttering all around busily looking for pollen. It was waiting for me to leave. I left. I looked back and it went about it’s fluttering business. I laugh. Out loud. And say. There you are. Just for fun. Just for a minute I say goodbye to my dad once again. And head west. The sun back on the side it belongs on and me back moving my agitated state ahead.

It is ridiculous to believe my dad is a butterfly messenger and it also ridiculous to believe he is not.

If I had to write a review for this trail it would be a terrible review for someone else to read. I would say things like. All the bugs flew into my eyes, but my eyes are in there way. They don’t expect an eyeball to be there. there are lots of spider webs. Every time I go through one I think of the momma spider having to start all over. It’s too rocky and my left foot is handling it better than my right. Its not too rocky. It is just rocky. It is a mountain made of billion years old rocks. There are trees down and you may have to crawl under them or climb over them. There is no water unless you pack too much and carry it. Or go when it has rained. I was agitated and want to blame the trail but the trail conditions don’t reflect my mood it’s the other way around. I am more annoyed that my right foot had forgotten to pick itself all the way up. I have my arms and hands out awaiting to fall and prepare to catch myself yet know when it happens my arms won’t do it and I will fall hard and face first. I will crack open my skull maybe even break a leg but my arms aren’t always ready for me to fall. I fall hard.

I cried again. After falling. I want out of this place so bad I am walking so bad. I had to regroup at least 3 times. No four. Once I soaked my feet in the cold water from the falls that was barely a trickle and I could barely get water filtered from it. I had to rest a lot. I have not pushed myself like this for too long. I have to remind myself I am not giving up I am resting. I am agitated over remote teaching and trying to work full time. I am agitated with confusion from someone who I met and I can’t figure out. When will I meet and attract people who are less complicated? I won’t. I would be bored. Less agitated. I don’t know how to be anything but.

Who am I when I am not anxious? I am not me. I am anxious. It’s who I am. Agitation makes me more anxious and even in a state of panic. I doubt myself and my abilities. I have been turned around and lost more times than have been on the right path and not turned around. I always think to myself how lucky I am to still be alive. I put myself in weird positions and then feel shocked when I am in weird positions. That I put myself in. I was asked for directions like 6 times. Once i helped a lady get back to her car. If I hadn’t shown up I am not sure what would have happened to her. She had almost no water left and was confused about her direction. I look at my gps and tell her she has .4 miles to the juncture before she will turn and to make sure she is going the right way to think about the sun being on her right side. I give her water. I have way too much and the weight is burdening me. I know I am .5 miles to the falls and can make me more water with my filter I also packed in case I find water. Given that one of my locations of interest is a waterfall there is little to no doubt I will find some water. Which I did. Just enough to filter what I gave away. I found that I can make waypoints in my gps tracker and can access it and see back where a spot was for mileage. That’s too hard to explain. I made a waypoint at my turn which is the turn she needs.

I keep approaching people. They ask how far until that same sign. I know the answer. I feel like I am on the trail the wrong way so many people keep coming up. There is no right or wrong way. Just my way and your way. I don’t know why people keep approaching me. I try to be unapproachable. I try to look like someone who should not be approached. But they keep approaching me.

In the end I finished my trail in a day. Not in 2 days. I walk fast when I’m agitated. I walk fast when I’m not, which isn’t a thing. I am just easily agitated. I wanted out of this woods. I was in no place to stay the night in this woods with all these squeaky people on a holiday weekend with new boots and early onset cold symptoms. There are too many people in one spot for me. One guy was talking so loud I could hear him as I walked away and looked to see he was over a mile behind me. When I first heard him talking I actually looked to see if he was carrying a microphone to amplify his voice. It was that loud.

So I am out of the woods. Literally. And physically. It did its job. I was agitated and still am but for a day it was somewhere that has a little less noise than where I have to be. Enough that for a few minutes I was here. Right there.