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I've walked this path before, maybe a thousand times. Used to come here as a kid with my parents... They loved camping.
I hated it...
Freezing at night... Bitten by bugs... Feeling gritty and sticky from sweat and the smoke scum that covers your skin and clothes when you sit too close to the fire, but you HAVE to sit too close to the fire or you lose the feeling in your fingers and toes... And the smells... Burnt marshmellows, burnt hotdogs, burnt plastic from the wrappers and plastic bottles that always end up in the fire instead of a trash can... I hate camping... Always have...
So why the fuck am I up here now?
It's not quite dark yet, stray beams of light, little laser blasts from the
sun still shine through the leaves here and there, but the angles are more
harsh, like the sun's throwing side-arm at the earth. The color has gone from
creamy yellow to a mysterious orange...
It's the quite time...
And the sound of the gravel-crunch beneath my feet is almost painful... As if thousands of tiny skulls are being squashed and pulvarized beneath my feet.
I spin around a corner in the path, thick blackberry bushes on either side guarding against escape from my predetermined course, when I finally see the bridge... But it's not the normal bridge... not that empty arch over water that I sat on as a child watching things float away into the sea. No, no, no...