I’m Thirsty

I’m Thirsty

 I’m Thirsty. I remember thinking this bottle would hold more water than it does. Maybe it’s because it’s an old diluting juice container and its original contents lasted obviously longer than regular juice would, but a few healthy swigs and the water level has depleted far more than anticipated. I’m only about twenty minutes, I’d say, into this walk and I am understandably yet to find it. I hope I’m not too thirsty by half way up. I have only these remnants of fluid, of which every frugal sip serves only to further my thirst. Those little sips I keep taking taunt me, invite me to guzzle it all when we both know I can’t, or can I? Isn’t downing the rest now the same as supping it periodically? It’s the same amount of fluid isn’t it? As you can imagine, there aren’t many shops on the climb, I checked. I pictured at least a few middle class looking families decked out in hiking gear to be occupying the trail as I am, but there aren’t. The only evidence I’ve seen of any life at all is a lingering cigar stink and two butts I’ve stepped over. I’m not sure why I made such an effort to step over them, but I was looking at the details as I did, so maybe it’s that. The outside, a sort of papery looking texture, was folded so elegantly over itself. There’s something charming about a cigar, romantic. I thought when I first embarked that rain would soon break. The cloud is overarching and grey and the air has that warm metallic smell in it. The feel of the air, thick and fumy, seems now to assure me that the rain won’t come. Normally I would take it as warning of ensuing floods, but I have the odd reassurance that it’s just a big joke the clouds are playing, to tease me. There are a few animals jetting around atop a rising to my left amongst the rougher grass far higher than where I stand. I long to be moved by the picture, fantasising about an elegant pack of deer frolicking and bouncing around a hillside under the purple sky with a shimmering sun in the west, but it’s grey and dim and the animals are distant silhouettes I can barely make out even with squinted eyes and a scrunched nose. My feet grow sore from these boots, which haven’t been worn for a year or so, I think. Has it been that long? They are torn and rugged rigger boots with the steel toe exposed to the elements. I find it satisfying, though, how the metal caps move loosely to and fro in their ripped surrounding and create a small gap between the front of the boots, where the rubber soul curves up, allowing me to slam my foot into the turf and close it. I am thirsty. 

For reasons unbeknownst known to me, I keep checking behind my shoulder. I keep expecting my name to be bellowed. I keep fearing solace and yet am terrified by the idea of company here. It takes the shine off of my plan to think someone else made it here which is ridiculous. I’m only about thirty or so minutes into a hill climb, it’s hardly the last stretch of Kilimanjaro and even that has been scaled by many an attention seeking primary school teacher with a ‘cause’. Fools. Aside from my fear there is a fair amount of confusion, although it is admittedly trivial, but it occupies me. It takes my mind off it. I came across the two cigar butts relatively early in this endeavour, one at around five minutes and the other at around fifteen. I'm not sure how long cigars take to smoke really, but surely longer than ten minutes, no? There weren’t any benches (though I pray desperately for one soon if not only to prevent further thirst) so the smoker is either a hasty or a loitering one. Both explanations fascinate me. I suppose it could be a cigar-chuffing couple, but I doubt it somehow. It was too hard to tell from footsteps with the scattered mess of gravelled path. I have a feeling it’s a solitary smoker. Maybe it’s because I have the gift of omnipotent intuition, or I just find the latter explanation rather boring. I’m not sure. The view is getting slightly better. I’m getting to the point where windows and distant warehouse signs are difficult to make out the details of. Fear hasn’t left. Rationally, I can extinguish it but my body is late to the party. Any noise still causes me to jerk and twist in its direction before the embarrassment at my own silliness rolls my eyes back to the path, the path that is rough and laden with holes and dips that interrupt my focus. I like to wander, almost transiently, but fail to do so on account of constant tripping and toe-stubbing. I could prevent it by looking up instead of at my steel caps, which resemble the appearance of a half-eaten gobstopper, but I won’t. All the different layers of coating and dirt erode from the centre leaving circles and borders of silvers and duller greys. The wind carries me another blast of the burning. A deep and sweet aroma that confirms to me what an acquired taste is. I’ve never really understood that phrase but I enjoy the unpleasantness of this smell. It's initially a harsh and off putting stink but it settles me. Every few minutes or so, I look up and search for any rising twists of smoke but in truth I think it would be lost in the sky. Consumed by the grey. I notice that I’ve picked up my pace a little, it’s not a decision I remember making, or that my legs consulted me about, but I realise I’ve been at it for a few minutes now. I think it started when that scent again tickled my nose and so I sought it. Hopefully that doesn’t conjure up too many images of cartoon characters floating on the breeze to a shelved pie. If I look down to my right, which is beginning to grow significantly in distance, a small winding backroad takes a few bends and disappears behind the far side of the hill. A white van plods down it again almost in a cartoonish and bouncing manner, though I imagine the owner doesn’t look at the condition of his suspension in the same romantic fashion I am. Last year, Craig told me one morning about the Transit van in Braveheart tucked away in the distance. After I’d elected to check, skipping the film forward and watching what I know to be intensely dramatic scenes fly by in a few minutes of almost comical emotional absence- sure enough, the van went by. The speech, the tyrants, the men, the dead. All underlined somehow by a small van tinkering its way across the horizon. Charming, I think. My bottle feels painfully light, I shake it periodically just to hear the splashing.

If I look upwards I can see a mist of low cloud that I have seen from the road down below many times before. Like the hills wore that neck thing Shakespeare always sports in those pictures. A sort of still fog, like fog with substance. I wonder if I’ll feel it on my lips, however tender and light. I hope it has enough body to touch my own and that I can embrace it. I’ve never been on an aeroplane so clouds are something distant to me. Most things are, somehow. I trip into a small hole and again the steel cap quickly shuts the gap between it and sole, beating my toes into a curled ball which feels as though will be painful to unfurl. It is. The stubbings and bashings are building up and the sensory satisfaction of being able to control the position of the cap and wiggle it has worn off. It is just sore now. Since I squinted at some shadows earlier, I had now hoped to have been able to observe the animals in their grace but they now aren’t there. The rising on which they had lept freely in my imagination seems completely bereft of anything. It still has the overgrown grass and dotted shrubbery but it all seems sort of pointless now. No cracks of light have escaped from the cloud and I can’t tell if it was this dark when I set off this morning. It might’ve been, but my gut tells me there was more light back then. I’m almost sure of it. 


It’s been a good while now. I approach another cigar, smoked to another confusing completion, and unlike the others this particular butt requires no graceful overstep on my part. I can see the spiralled boot-drags walling in the crumpled papery end. All the folds, once presumably as elegant and delicate as the rest, reach off in every torn direction. I can still smell this one. The residual stink drowns out the cloud’s own with a hearty ash. It brings to mind my own first experience with smoking, I think I was thirteen. Not that it’s the most riveting of stories or even memorable for any particular reason other than a coming-of-age milestone of ill-advised sorts, but I remember the taste. I remember how it dried my mouth and curled my windpipe into a knot. I remember the relief of a large and well needed gulp of fresh orange after. It was thick, I remember, it went down like a cool silk, extinguishing any fires en route. Like scratching a traqueal itch. I remember. I wake up to the fact that I’ve been swishing my bottle now for a few minutes while recollecting and stop because I’m thirsty.