Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

Hours passed. I was so relaxed it felt like half of my brain had shut down. All I want to do is be here, I thought. Out beyond these woods somewhere is progress, but this forest was created by the heavens and hasn’t changed in hundreds, or thousands of years. I’m not going anywhere.

The relaxation took a stronger hold, and I felt myself sinking deeper into my mind. I had the impression that I was walking in the shoes of the ancestors. I thought that this could well be the same woods that hunter-gatherers and druids and pagans had stepped through, and that they’d done the same things that I was doing now. The sky was above me, the earth below me, the forest around me, and I was close to the fire. I am inhabiting a timeless realm, I thought. There was no difference between now and five thousand B.C. I was sitting in both the past and the present.

The trees became vague black statues and the stars came out. The temperature dropped, but I was warm. I went into the tent and took out the pot and some rice, poured water in, and put the pot in the middle of the fire. I stirred the rice with a stick, and ten minutes later it cooked up perfectly. Some of the rice had stuck to the bottom of the pot, but other than that it was delicious. I ate in exhilaration.

I finished my tea, collected more wood and stoked the fire, then I lay down next to it in my sleeping bag, removing two of the stones so more heat would get to me.

Harry would’ve liked this, I thought. It’s a shame we couldn’t light it when he was here.

The heat was coming through beautifully. I clasped my hands behind my head. There was no light pollution. I could even make out the milky way.

I watched for a long time. One of the stars drifted quickly across the sky from right to left. It’s probably some sort of satellite. Some telescope taking photos of towns and streets and the people in them. We are always being watched.

Being around my dad’s work had made me wary. I was always wary of what they weren’t telling us. I knew that Big Brother would keep getting worse in the voracious, urbanizing world. But I was safe here, for now. It was still possible to find solitude and freedom. For how long, I didn’t know.

Chapter 49

I woke up under another grey sky. Dew glistened on the grass around me. I got up and stretched out my back and legs, then rolled up my sleeping bag. But something felt strange, and it wasn’t that Harry wasn’t there.

A stiff wind was swaying the trees and blowing the clouds over my head, the mountains behind the loch were dark and brooding under shadow. Then I realised what it was, the birds weren’t singing. I couldn’t even see any.

I made some breakfast, went for a pee, and came back. The wind picked up. I was sitting, staring at the charred remains of the fire, when a loud rumble went out from beyond the mountains. A thrill of excitement shot through me. Above the peaks, a set of clouds, blacker than the charcoal, merged into a single entity and started to drift my way. Underneath it a mesh of water, like a giant portable waterfall, fell on the loch, and got closer.

It arrived quickly, landing on the hill, thrashing the leaves. I dived into the tent and zipped the door right up, dragging our things in from the walls. The rain hammered down on the roof. The canvas that separated us was so thin I could physically feel it beating against the earth outside. I looked nervously to the corners of the floor, and stroked the walls with my palm. Ten minutes must have gone by. Then twenty, then thirty. The rain kept lashing. “Yes! It’s holding up!” I thought. I felt like I was hidden in an impenetrable bubble.

It was relentless. The trees thrashed loudly. I thought I was quite sheltered but then the wind bent in the front of the tent. The sky groaned like an angry beast and then a flash lit up outside. I partially unzipped the door, but the rain immediately made me close it again. It seeped into the left side of the tent. I waited, marooned.

My adrenaline was rushing. The storm continued to batter down and throttle the tent and was demanding me to show it respect. I was. And I suddenly thought, maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Environment dictating man instead of vice versa. Just me and my shelter against the elements, a natural battle to survive, like the rest of the animals. Did the hunter-gatherers live in the moment like this when they roamed from place to place? Their lives had meaning, instead of bills and tax returns their thoughts were only on today. And just now my life too has meaning. I am aware of who I am, and where I am. If this rain gets in, or if this tent collapses, I could get pneumonia, and I’d have nowhere to go. I could die. This is a real threat. A real challenge.

The thunder soon ceased but the lightning continued to flash every fifty seconds. I pulled the zip down a little, and watched the rain smash the earth and bounce back up. The black cloud blotted out every chink of light. I zipped it up again. A puddle was forming inside the left of the tent, I was so glad we had placed it on a slope.

I got into my sleeping bag and cozied myself into the dry middle, staring at the ceiling, listening to the storm. A week ago, it was