Ten weeks, alone, in the woods. It is a long time—to be alone, yes, but also a long time to spend outwith our civilisation. There are few people who do this and, I am sure, not one of them comes out of the experience the same as they entered. Being this close to, and a part of, nature does things to you. It makes you sense things in a different way, more completely. When the constant background hum of our busy lives is removed, then senses which have laid, dormant, somehow switch themselves one, and we integrate once more into the world in a way we as a species has mostly forgotten.
This particular adventure was not quite over, but events would soon take a turn I had not entirely anticipated, and force me into a choice between changing my plans or risking much. The sun was beginning to set on my time in the woods.
Read more at the introduction, and see Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Five, Week Six, Week Seven, Week Eight, and Week Nine, if you wish to catch up.
You should click on each of these Notes to read the full text and view any attached photographs, many of which will not show below. I am unsure as to why photos do not display in the order I upload them, so sometimes the sunset sits alongside the dawn, or the night before noon. I apologise for this, but unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be much I can do about it!
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This week, I also posted the following Note, which is related, in that I used this staff daily, and decorated it while living within my shelter:
If there are any questions you have about A Fall in Time, do let me know and I shall do my best to answer them.
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I have a ton of questions!
Too many to type in the few minutes I have before I leap up again to attend family necessities and before I ask I will say this...
I am going to be dévasté when you post the last of these diaries... I have been held spellbound by every moment of every day and every eloquent word and photograph (I’ve not missed one) of description you’ve published... and I’m sure that perhaps there are those moments you felt unable to share also - I think I can imagine them...
Ok, so my first question; Did you use only animal tracks for your movement or did you create your own? And the second; presumably you don’t eat meat because you never mention hunting for your protein, so I wonder from what source you found it...? Living as you did, as you say uses considerable calories, a good source protein would have been important. So says the ever practical mother and wife of a family prone to eating crap if I leave them to their own devices... excuse my curiosity !
Were you ever scared? Did you spook yourself with imaginings?
And lastly, but only because, I’m out of time, when you left, finally, how did you feel? Maybe I have to wait for your last diary for the answer to that though...
Ok times up... my boys are beginning to look beyond hungry - not a good look!