The different Runaway

Chapter IV

"Ahhh!" I jump up and see that there is some guy standing on the riverbank. Where the fuck is he coming from? He has long curly hair and looks a little bit like a hippie. Not a little bit he looks perfectly like one. He wears this round kind of sunglasses that were modern in the 60s. I think that he is not even 25 more likely around twenty-one. Most likely still at college. "What are you doing here?" He looks at me like I am the crazy one, which is partly true. "I am hiking down this river course. Some kind of hiking trip. I assume I do something like you." Totally normal. No, he is not crazy at all or at least not worse than me. I realize that I am standing naked in the river and how odd it has look to him. "Ah. Ok. Give me second I go and find underwear."

We sit after this little bit strange start on a rock and share some stories. His name is Ben and he was studying law. Is parents forced him to do it and he hated it. But now he dropped out and wants to start biology at the college after the summer. He is far better prepared than me for a camping trip which is not very difficult. "Are you camping here?" "Yea I decided to stay here because I don't walk a river down like you I try to travel West so I meet rivers only so often and I need the water. I also needed to dry all my stuff it is still wet after the rain yesterday." "Sounds like a good point. Do you mind if I join you here for a night?" And this is how I meet Ben.

I made some place on my line so that he can dry his stuff. I think it is now around three or four o'clock and we sit on rocks and hold our feet in the river. We share some of my biscuits and Ben opened a packet peanuts. Ben has huge amounts of peanuts with him because he means that they are pure protein with fat and salt and this is what you manly need on such a trip. I trade a packet of peanuts against one of my packet of biscuits. We both are happy to mix up our food. Every day the same is kind of boring. I knew that it was good that I studied business at the college.

"So why are you doing this trip any reason or just did you just wanted to get away from your parents?" He laughs about the idea. "My girlfriend dumped me after told her that I stopped doing law and my parents were angry so I thought that it would be the best to bring a little bit distance between me and the rest of them. I didn't have much money because I didn't work during my time at college because I was so busy learning. My parents paid but now they stopped because I am not anymore at college. All I could do is this self-finding trip." "Sounds cool." Tell me, why are you doing this camping trip? You don't look like the kind of person who would do this." Asks Ben me after some time. How do I explain this to a total stranger? I run away from home? Sounds like an angry five-year-old child. Ben notices how I say nothing. "You don't need to tell anything if you don't want." "No, it's not this. I am just thinking how to describe it best without sounding crazy." "Why is the story this strange?" I have to smile he is right. "I needed a time-out from work but wherever you go someone is calling you and tells you that this happened and that they need my opinion on this and that. I would not be able to relax. I decided to do this at a Friday afternoon after I finished work. I went to the store bought all and left on the same day before I realised how strange the idea is." Ben starts to laugh. "So, you simply run away. This is how you live." "Yea, this is how you live. I told my wife on the phone what I was about to do so that she won't worry too much." "She will kill you as soon as you come back." I must laugh when he says it because it is true. Julia will be not to happy. "You may be right but I hope she will understand it. She will most likely try to send me to a therapist." Now we are both laughing "I wish you luck. You will need it."

We talk for hours about life, women and everything else that is important in life. I think that he learns things from me and even I learn new things about life. In some ways, he hast more live experience then me. It is most likely well past seven (Ben has also no watch) when we decide to cook dinner. We will cook something together because we can't see a sense in each of us cooking for himself. We want to cook pasta with some sauce and Ben goes to the river to get water and I start my stove because I have more than enough spirit and Ben runs low on gas which he needs for his stove. Ben comes back from the river without water but with some strange plant. "Look what I found this is much better than pasta." He tells me proud. "What is this?" "This is an arrowhead. The roots are eatable and taste like potato. There is a lot of this stuff and we can roast them over the fire." The idea of something like roasted potatoes is too nice. "This sound nice let's try it. I have sausages with me we could cut them in small pieces and fry them with the arrowhead." "Ok this sound even better, do you have a shovel if yes get it." I extinguish the stove and take my shovel. Ben also opens his backpack and takes the shovel that he carries around to dig cat holes and we head to where he found the plant. The plant has leaves that are formed like arrowheads and stands in the water. Ben was right there are a lot of these plants. I take of my shoes and roll up the legs of my trousers. We both walk into the river and Ben explains me how to harvest it. "You rip out the plant and then you use your hands and the shovel to get the roots out. The tuber should rise to the surface and all you need to do is collect them." We start but I find out that is much easier to dig your feet in the mud and get the tubers out this way. We collect the tubers and after half an hour or so we have more tubers then we could possible eat. We wash all the mud of them and I ask Ben how he learned about this plant. "I meet a week ago some hunter and he showed me this plant and we cooked a stew with them and a rabbit he shot." Ben explains. "The guy was sound he was doing some hunting trip. He told me that he was doing this every year at least once if he needed a time out from his family. Like you I would say." Looks like this forest is full of people and that I am not the only person who does stupid stuff. I take of my T-shirt to carry the tubers in it and we head back to our camp. I collected the firewood earlier this day so we don't need to do it now and we make a fire and cut our harvest into thick slices. Ben has a bottle of oil with him and we use my pot cover/frying pan as a pan. We place three rock in the fire and place the pan on them. The pan is much too small so we will need to fry a portion eat it and fry the next one during the eating. We learn very quick that the fire is much hotter than a camping stove and our first portion nearly burns. It tastes so nice and the next portion is even better because now the tubers are not even black on one side. We eat as much as we can but in the end, we still have half of the tubers we harvested left. We decide to share them tomorrow so that each of us can take some with him. We wash our bowl in the river and I use sand to rub the grime from the bottom of the pan. Some grime is so burned in the aluminium that I can't remove it so I leave it there and dry my stuff with my T-shirt, it will dry fast enough. Then we start to take our stuff from the lines and put everything in our backpacks. Ben then takes a rope throws it over a branch and pulls his backpack up. "What are you doing?" I ask. Ben fixes the rope on a big rock and then starts to explain. "I do this so that a bear can't reach my food." I look a little bit surprised. "There are bears in this forest? I never did this and I still have my food." "Of course, there are bears here. This can be dangerous. Do you have at least a bear bell?" "A what?" Ben looks at me like I am crazy. "Do You have anything to protect you from bears?" "No I never thought about this." "This is crazy. Do you know how dangerous it is if you meet a bear and don't know what to do?" I am surprised. I never thought about this but it makes sense that there are bears in a forest. "No, I kind of never thought about this." "Ok it is simple. Most bears attack you if you surprise them so make noise. If you don't have a bear bell knot a stone on you bottle so that it hit against it and makes noise. If you meet a bear walk always and leave it alone. And store your food at least 10 feet over the ground. A bear will also leave you alone if it realizes that you are a human so talk to the bear." "You want me to have a nice chat with a bear?" "Only if it looks at you and starts to come towards you." "You want me to talk to a bear that attacks me? This is the moment where I run as fast as I can!" "No this will trigger the hunter instinct in the bear and it will attack hunt you. Keep looking at it and back of slowly." "But if the bear charges at me then I can run?" "No. If it is a grizzly play dead and if it is a black bear hit make yourself big. I would use pepper spray but it also helps if you hit the black bear with a stick on the nose." I think this is useless and I will never need it but I nod and say that I will keep it in mind. He helps me to pull my backpack up. I do this just to make him happy. After this we sit down next to the fire and talk about student live and how much better it is then work. Always parties and then the big question how to survive a lecture at Monday morning. Ben tells me that there are so much drugs at his college. "I don't talk about the harmless stuff like weed. I mean LSD, Speed and this kind of stuff. There are so many people on a high during the lectures. I mean weed is not bad and yes I smoke it from time to time but only on weekends and I would never take the hard stuff." "I smoked once weed when I was totally wasted and I got so unbelievable sick from it." Ben looks at me as if I told him that I murdered someone. "You smoked weed? Never!" "I know hard to believe was during my college time. But never again because I felt terrible after it." "Yea can happen if you are totally wasted. It is much better and more relaxing if you are not drunk." "I will keep it in mind." I have to laugh about my own joke. I will never smoke weed in my life again I am now a grown up. It is not like I still go to parties where someone has always weed with him. "I have one emergency joint with me for special celebrations. Let's smoke it!" I look totally surprised at Ben. He can't be serious. "You are kidding you don't have a joint with you." Ben smiles. "No, I am serious. Let's smoke a joint on our friendship." He is serious. Should I? It is illegal but there is not policeman in a radius of at least 40 miles around us and my body will have broken it down till I am back in civilisation. "Ok let's to it."

It is fully dark and we are both happy and tiered when we decide to go to sleep. The fire is fully burned down. It looks dry and I decide to sleep without a tent so that I can see the stars and the moon on the sky. They are so unbelievable beautiful. This trip was the best idea I ever had. I need to do something like this again. At least once in a year. Maybe I will take my sons with me this time. They would need to learn how to survive without a phone for one or two weeks. This would be the biggest challenge. I am not sure if Julia would like this kind of holidays. She is more the beach type. But hey I thought the same about me and I love it here. The camping mat is not the same as a nice soft mattress but I am always this tired that I could sleep everywhere. Or even better we should do this as a team-forming event with the company. It would be so much fun. I just imagine us all at the first evening how we would need a gigantic fire to burn all our suits. But then I could not take my naked bath in the river as usually. This would be a shame. I will need a river in my garden. A huge ice cold river to take a nice bath every evening after work. I think my neighbours would look a bit strange but they will get used to it. I have the best ideas this evening. The joint we shared was great. I did not get sick so it was the alcohol last time and I feel so relaxed. Julia would kill me if she would know but I am far away. All these toughs shot through my head when I lie on my camping pad and watch the stars. Ben is already snoring but I am looking up to this beauty and think. I am think about closing my eyes and try to sleep when I see a falling star. I never see them at home because all I can see when I lie in my bed is the ceiling. I need a glass ceiling. I know that I should wish me something but what? I just want to be happy. I wish that my sons will see this beauty and that it will last for ever. That nothing ever will disturb this beauty.

I know i never make some but here a writer's note:

I am amazed how many people read my book in the last days (40 Are many two me). I will try to update every weekend but I have a leaving cert this summer and I should probably learn. So I can promise nothing. I never get much feed back but I would love it so this could be the moment where you say what you think about the story so far