INTERMINABLE WOODS

"This can't be the coastal path!" I said to the trees. The trees were less than helpful, remaining silent, shoving their branches in the way, and dripping rainwater on me. I scrambled over a mossy root, slipped off it and got tangled up in some brambles.

I was lost in the woods. I had followed the path as carefully as I could and had somehow found myself hacking through jungle and poking the undergrowth like Stanley looking for Livingstone. My boots were wet and my rucksack was heavy. My skin was crawling with invisible ants as well.

I had attempted to walk from Lyme Regis to Charmouth, a place I remembered fondly from my childhood. We'd taken a rubber dinghy there on hot sunny days and floated down the stream with it. It was also great for fossils, being just two miles down the Jurassic Coast from Lyme Regis. The map thought it would be an easy enough walk, just trek along the coastal path and amble into Charmouth.

I picked the leaves out of my hair and brushed off the mulch from my jeans. Easy enough eh? The woods seemed to go on for ever. In fact, I was sure I had seen this bit of it before. I reckon I've got one of those faulty maps - it's the only logical explanation.

I like the silence of the wood. I like the dark canopy of leaves that blots out the sky and I like the tall, slender trees that poke out of the earth as straight as flagpoles. I like the way the light flickers through the tree trunks and the green leaves, and the way the sky peeks and winks between them in tiny slivers of light. I like all of that, normally. Today though, I was just trying to find my way out, and I fell over three times.

In the end I just collapsed, exhausted, into a clearing and looked out over the sea, through some tall grass. I poured out a cup of tea, opened a packet of Oreos and tried to forget where I was. I think tea-from-a-flask might be one of my favourite blends.

Lost in the interminable woods: what a metaphor. Sometimes life sends you into the woods and it feels very much as though you'll be camping there. You won't though. When I'd drunk my tea and the Oreos were back in the tin, I picked myself up, retraced my steps a bit, and found the path - it was the only option. Soon I was strolling across a golf course under open skies with the sea stretching out beyond the cliffs. All that matters is where you are now, what's in front of you now. How you got there doesn't really matter all that much, though my scratched, muddy hands told a story all of their own.

Of course the metaphor broke down a bit by the time I got to Charmouth. There wasn't really anything there! The river was wide and fast and fenced off, the beach was rough and stony. The wind pulled in spray from the sea and drove it up the beach like tiny wet bullets. There would be no fossil hunting today. 

I had a bacon bap from a café and talked to some pensioners about whether ketchup from a sachet was okay if it was orange. They said that they thought it would be fine, and seemed weirdly reassured that the sachet itself proclaimed, 'It's tomato ketchup'. I didn't like to point out that wasn't necessarily a good sign. 

After that I caught the bus back to Lyme Regis and started the Times Crossword. Started, you'll notice. There was no getting out of the woods with that one today - just not smart enough.