This path was created by Alison Morgan.
Adam's Journey
Unable to remember much, he starts to explore his surroundings. First he plunges his hands into the pockets or his dirty black slacks. All he pulls out is a card with a tree on it, a handkerchief, and a crumpled receipt for a kale salad. He then decides to explore his surroundings a bit more. Nearby is a small pond if you could call it that. It is more like a big puddle but the water is very clear so he decides to cup his hands and take a few sips. The water is warm but still refreshing. The whole area seems new yet somehow familiar, as if he had been there before in a dream. The smell of the flowers is pleasant and calming. The cool breeze is sweet relief on his warm body. He decides to take off his tattered white button down shirt. It is covered in sweat and the cotton was sticking to him. When he throws it on the ground, he sees the glint of a metal object through a patch of tall grass nearby. As he approaches the tall grass, the form becomes more familiar. It has a long, smooth wooden handle about the length of his arm and at the end a hunk of metal sharpened to a point on one side. He picks up the strange object and it feels heavy in his hands, somehow heavier than he imagined it would be. It is awkward too, imbalanced due to the uneven distribution of the metal. He swings it around barely able to keep control. Is it some sort of weapon or a primitive tool? Although the object seems altogether strange to him, Adam feels as though he has held it before.
As he is contemplating the possible uses for this tool, he is overcome with an overwhelming sense of hunger. When was the last time that he had eaten? His stomach feels as if it were being twisted into a knot. Adam knows that he needs to find food and soon, but where? What in this place is even edible? He has no idea. Should he start looking around for plants? What if they are poisonous? He closes his eyes and tries to channel even the most basic instincts of survival. His mind is consumed by the need to eat and he remembers something . . . meat. Adam remembers that animals can be cooked and served and the taste is incredible. Oh, he remembers the taste! However he is confronted with a major problem. How does one catch an animal? He ponders. He thinks about this with the strange tool in his hands and wonders if he could use it somehow in his quest for food. Before he has too much time to think, a small squirrel comes up to him. He had been standing still for quite a while thinking. Out of instinct, he rushes towards the squirrel and swings the handle as hard as he can, the sharp edge of the metal slashing through the air down towards the squirrel. It lands with a heavy “thunk” . . . he missed. The metal piece plunged into the ground right behind the squirrel, which has now since fled the scene. Pulling the strange object out of the ground, he realizes the damage that this tool can do. It buried itself a solid six inches into the ground. It takes a quick burst of energy to jerk it out of its place. Adam realizes that he has to be sneakier the next time prey is near. Luckily, he does not have to wait too long until a fat rabbit comes hopping by. This time he is ready. He slowly positions himself waiting for the rabbit to come within striking range. His unsuspecting victim falls into the trap. The rabbit, too trusting of new figures, has made a grave mistake. It hops too close to Adam and he swings once more. This time the swing is less desperate and more calculated. The weapon slices through the air with ease and the hit lands squarely in the rabbit’s chest. He can feel the crack of bones as the blade plunges into the rabbit’s body. The metal cuts deep into the poor creature and it let out one blood-curdling scream before it gives in to its untimely fate. Adam is all at once petrified and satisfied. He has done it. He has managed to kill an animal for dinner but at what cost? Although he does not think it will do any good, he apologizes. He does not know to whom he is apologizing. Maybe it is to the rabbit or to some great nature spirit governing the woods or maybe is apologizing to
himself.
There is not much time to worry about this though. His primal instincts take over as the crippling hunger starts to consume him once more. How is he supposed to eat this? He knows that meat has to be cooked and it does not have hair on it. How does one cook an animal? How does someone cook anything out here in the wilderness? He closes his eyes once more trying to think of a solution. His mind is being influenced by primitive urges and he thinks about the most basic heat source. Fire-the word comes like a whisper at first; it slowly builds in his mind until it is a roar. Bright images of a raging fire swirl in his mind, a bonfire with wood stacked like a teepee. Adam realizes that he will have to build a fire to cook this rabbit. He has no idea how he is going to start the fire but what he does know is that a fire needs wood. This means he will have to go out into the forest. He wraps the
rabbit up in his shirt and fashions a makeshift shoulder bag to carry it.
Out of sheer necessity, Adam musters up the courage to go out into the woods in search of wood. Still ingrained in his mind is the image of a large bonfire. He sees the leaves on top of smaller sticks on top of large logs all ablaze in a fiery inferno. The leaves will be easy enough to get because the forest floor is littered with them. Adam cannot move without the sound of swishing leaves beneath his feet. As he shuffles through the woods, weapon in hand, the brush starts to get a little thicker and there are large roots coming up from out of the ground. It is becoming difficult for him to walk without tripping. He pushes through a particularly thick area of weeds and steps on a fallen tree branch. Craaack! The branch snaps beneath his feet sending birds screeching from a nearby tree. Adam feels the crack beneath his feet and it sends shivers down his spine. He flashes back to the rabbit and the sound of bones snapping and the horrible scream that the innocent creature let out. He has to keep moving. He cannot let this thought linger. Driven ever onward by his powerful
hunger, he finally finds the perfect tree.
The tree is a pathetic looking thing, barely taller than Adam himself with only a few green leaves sprouting from its measly branches. It is all alone there surrounded by giants blocking out almost all of the sunlight. Adam thinks that it should be pretty easy to bring down with the tool in his hand. He takes the rabbit-bag off of his shoulder and centers himself making sure that his feet are firmly planted. Again he raises the weapon up marking the spot where he wishes to strike. Unlike the rabbit, he does not have to worry about the tree dodging his blow. It is stuck, resigned to its fate. Adam gently swings the weapon back and forth-blade parallel to the ground-without touching the tree. He is lining up for the initial blow. He brings his hands back, above his head twisting his torso gripping the handle tightly and then like a coil unwinding swings forward with all his might. The weapon once again striking through the air connects with its target, “Thud”. All of Adam’s momentum is stopped and the impact vibrates through the handle into his arms; the metal edge barely embedding itself into the tree at all. Although disappointed, Adam again raises the weapon. This time it feels heavier in his hands like the first blow had somehow added weight onto the tool. He strikes the tree once more hitting the same spot digging deeper into the tree. He repeats this process a few more times until he is about halfway through the tree. By this point, his arms are aching, sweat is running down his face, dripping onto his glasses, and it is becoming difficult to even lift his arms. Sap is dripping like blood down the edge of the blade and slowly oozing out of the open wound on the tree. It reminds Adam of the blood gushing from the rabbit earlier, but he quickly blocks this out of his mind. It is as if he is continuing out of instinct alone. Knowing that he has to continue to survive he raises the axe one final time and drives it into the sap-covered cavity he has created. This time the impact is too much for the tree. Adam can hear the familiar cracking sound as the tree falls to the ground. He has bested his forest foe. Although the feeling of accomplishment is great, Adam also feels a strange twinge of regret. However this feeling is quickly overtaken by the hunger pangs in his stomach. He chops the tree into smaller logs. It is much easier this time because he has gravity on his side and he is able to get better leverage. He heads back to the green space with his arms full of logs and sticks and the rabbit slung across his back.
He lays out the logs and tinder in a rocky patch in the clearing the way he remembers them in his mind. Now, how is he going to light these on fire? He looks around the green space once more looking for something that might be able to help him. Maybe someone left a match or discarded a lighter here. After a short while he becomes disheartened. He is weak from his recent labor and the sun although further down in the sky is once again beating down on his back. His eyes are burning from the sweat so he takes off his glasses and wipes his face with the handkerchief. As he is wiping his face, he feels a stinging sensation on his stomach like a bee was stinging him continuously. He looks down and sees the sun shining through his glasses focusing into a singular point on his stomach where a small welt was developing. Realizing the cause of the pain, Adam quickly changes the position of his glasses to stop the burning. However this does give him an idea. He then walks over to his small pile of wood and adjusts his glasses so that the sun is shining through them onto the dry leaves atop the pile. It takes a couple of minutes but lo and behold the leaves start to catch fire. Soon after the smaller sticks start to catch as well. At this point, Adam realizes that he has to prepare the rabbit. He unfolds his shirt to reveal the dead creature. The open wound looks gross and dark. He figures that he can just cut that part out. He uses the sharp edge of the tool to quickly cut the skin off of the rabbit and removes the head. The result is completely unrecognizable except for a few stubborn patches of hair that Adam missed. He pierces what was formerly a rabbit with a long stick that he sharpened at one end. It is a bit of a struggle to get it through the rabbit but eventually the deed is done. He heads back over to the fire to check the status. To his dismay, the logs were not actually catching fire. Instead they started to smoke profusely. Unwavering in his desire for food he still attempts to cook the rabbit in the smoky pit. However this task becomes increasingly difficult as the wind shifts to blow the smoke in his face. The shift happens so quickly that he can’t get out of the way fast enough. He inhales in the fumes and immediately his lungs feel like they are on fire. He can’t breathe. His body keeps trying to take in clean air but it can’t. He finally escapes the smog and starts coughing uncontrollably dropping the skewered rabbit onto the ground. He heads over to the puddle and attempts to drink as much water as he can between coughing fits. After a few minutes he is able to breathe normally again and returns to his rabbit. It is dirty now but that doesn’t seem to matter much to Adam as he brushes off the small rocks from the exterior of the rabbit and heads back to the fire pit. By this time, the logs had dried out and were starting to flame a little and there is less smoke. He throws some more dry leaves and sticks onto the fire and creates a decent flame. Careful not to be caught in the smoke again Adam returns to cooking his meal. He rotates the meat every minute or so trying to cook it thoroughly. After about ten minutes, he finally feels comfortable taking a bite. He tests his culinary creation and sinks his teeth into the rough flesh. It tastes like burning sap and dirt. His palate is telling him not to eat it but his hunger takes over and forces him to continue eating. As he is consuming the hunk of meat, he thinks back to the rabbit and how it was before so naïve and innocent. Adam himself no longer felt as though he could claim any kind of innocence. Each bite came with its own aftertaste of guilt. He doesn’t know why he feels guilty. He did what he had to do to survive but for some reason guilt still gnaws at him. After he finishes his meal, his stomach is full but there is still an empty feeling inside him. The meal did not satisfy him completely. He heads over to the watering hole once more and cups his hands drinking to drown the taste from his mouth. In the reflection, he sees the sunset over his shoulders. He turns to see the once harsh ball of fire now a golden orb illuminating the sky with beautiful colors. He watches it fade slowly behind the trees. How incredible it is that even after the day he has had the sunset fills him with a sense of joy and helps to ease his mind. He just props himself up against a rock and sits there watching the beautiful transition from intense, active daytime to calm, sleepy night. Before it gets too dark, he heads into the woods once more and finds some more wood. This time he makes sure that all the wood is dry to avoid another smoke incident. He makes it back to the fire just as the sun fades completely behind the trees. The embers are fading and will soon completely die out. He adds more leaves and reignites the flame just as darkness creeps in. The fire’s glow is the only source of light as the wilderness becomes pitch black. It is just bright enough to illuminate the outlines of the trees. As the fire flickers, it almost seems as though the trees are dancing around him. He watches the figures for a bit until he can hardly keep his eyes open. Now as his eyes are closing the figures seem more life-like than ever. The night breeze and the crackle of the fire sing to him a sweet lullaby as he drifts off into sleep. His mind is no longer cursed with those dark shadows. He is no longer bombarded with gibberish as he closes his eyes. Instead his mind is clear and all he sees when he closes his eyes is the golden sun setting behind the forest wall.
Not long after he drifts off to sleep he is awakened by a strange noise. He opens his eyes to see the fire had mostly died down and was now merely embers. Elsewhere a strange buzzing sound was coming from the forest. The sound was getting louder and he felt like he had heard it before. Soon lights appeared in the woods as well, bright beams cutting through the pitch-dark night. The lights were getting brighter, and whatever they were they were getting closer as well. Adam felt an intense mixture of anticipation and fear waiting for these strange beasts to close in on him. He picks up the axe next to him and prepares to stand his ground. Out from the woods, there come these roaring machines coming towards him at incredible speed. From atop the machines, he hears the riders shouting gibberish at one another. All of the sudden they are close enough, and Adam can here what they are saying. “We found him” calls one rider to the other. The second responds, “Are you sure that’s him?” Now they are slowing to a stop about 15 feet away illuminating the entire area with their headlights. The first rider dismounts. Adam lowers his weapon, relieved to see someone else like him. The man is dressed in some sort of uniform and his nametag reads Park Ranger. He addresses Adam, “Mr. Evens, are you ok?” Adam replies, “I don’t know. All I know is that m-my name is Adam.” The first rider takes off his helmet wraps a blanket around Adam grabs the weapon and says, “Ok Adam let’s get you home.” Adam agrees and follows the man to his vehicle. The second rider still atop his bike remarks, “You’ve been a lot of trouble to find mister, you should be glad that we were
lookin’ out the window when you sent up that smoke signal.”
The rest of the ride was rather quiet as Adam did not have much to say and could not answer any of their questions. After about twenty minutes of riding they arrived at a large wooden cabin building. The parking lot was packed, full of people with flashing lights and large contraptions on their shoulders. There was a vehicle waiting for him. This one had a door that opened up into a comfortable leather bench, upon which he was told he could sit. A beautiful woman in a bright pink dress with flowers enters from the other side of the car. She had been talking to the two men that found him outside the car. She closes the door behind her and they pull away out of the parking lot. Adam stares out the window and watches as they drive away passing trees and bushes. However the scenery changes very quickly. Soon all he sees are large buildings made of concrete and huge signs with bright colors. Finally he turns to the woman next to him. She looks at him endearingly with tears in the corners of her eyes. “It’s all going to be alright now, Adam,” she says. Even though he doesn’t recognize her this comforts him a great deal. He wants to get to know her more, but
he cannot think of where to begin so he simply asks, “Where are we going?”
She replies, “We are going to the doctor. He is going to help you remember.”
“That’s good” he says and again they return to silence.
He wants to ask her who she is, but by the time he musters up the courage to ask they have arrived at their destination, a large white building with glass doors with a large red sign that reads “Hospital”. The woman escorts him from the car to the building. The inside of the building is lit up with harsh white light that illuminates the seemingly endless maze of hallways. There are a lot of people buzzing around from place to place. Some of the people are wearing solid color outfits with matching shirts and pants. They are also wearing nametags and bright, white shoes. Others are dressed in normal clothing and look like they’ve been waiting for a long time. He doesn’t spend too much time in any one place. His compatriot whisks him down hallways and up stairs until they finally arrive in a small room with a lot of weird instruments and a plastic mattress covered in paper. He is told to sit here and wait for the doctor. After a few minutes, a woman in one of those blue outfits walks in wearing a long white overcoat with a strange necklace wrapped around her neck. She introduces herself as Doctor Rose and says that she is here to “find out what’s wrong
with him” and she “just wants to run a few tests.”
The rest of the visit is kind of a blur to Adam. First they run him through some sort of shower. He is then hooked up to a bunch of different machines and poked and prodded with different instruments and tools. At the end of the visit, Dr. Rose takes Adam and the other woman back to the first small room. Here she gives the diagnosis and addressing the woman says, “It appears as though Mr. Evens was injected with some sort of narcotic drug that is having a lasting affect on his memory. However his memory should return soon after the drug leaves his body.” The woman seemed very happy to hear this and thanked Dr. Rose for all of her hard work. Soon after he was once again rushed through the halls and out the sliding glass doors where the car was waiting for him. Once inside Adam again felt awkward sitting next to this woman he could not remember. Unable to take it much longer
he bursts out, “Who are you?”
Shocked at first by the abrupt outburst she calmly replies, “I am Edena. I am your secretary.”
“My secretary? Why do I need a secretary?” he asks.
“Because you are a very important person,” she replies coolly “But don’t worry about that now. You ought to get some rest. It is a long way home from here.”
Realizing how tired he actually is, it does not take much convincing before he dozes off. As he closes his eyes, he sees just the hint of a sunrise peaking over the horizon. After what seems to him like only a few minutes, the sound of the car door opening awakens him. Stepping outside, he is blinded by the bright sunlight. He walks out onto the concrete driveway and is his gaze turns to this enormous house casting a great shadow over a luscious green yard. The grass here seems different. It is so even and purely green with no variation in color. It almost looks as though it were painted green. Adam does not have much time to observe this phenomenon as Edena is calling him in through great wooden double doors. The inside of the house looks almost like a piece of art. The walls are ivory with wooden trim that matches the hardwood floor. Adam looks intently at the floors seeing the lines running through the wood panels like veins. He remembers chopping down the tree and the way the logs looked when he split them down the middle. Edena is quick to push him up the stairs and towards his bedroom. At the top of the steps, he catches a view of the living room from over a balcony. Through a large bay window, sun fills the huge room and lights up the brown, leather couches and small table in between. These couches match the dark color of the wooden table like they are part of a set. He is then shown down a hallway lined with photos. Each picture showed him about to chop down a tree with that tool from the woods. Looking at them he feels uneasy. He closes his fist instinctively and it is almost as if he is holding the tool once more. It is surprising to him how much more comfortable he felt in the woods. At least when he was there, he understood what he was supposed to do. Here he felt so unsure about his purpose. By this point he has made it to a room with a large bed surrounded by wooden drawers and shelves. On the other side of the room, is a large sliding glass door leading to a balcony. To his left, there is another door leading to a bathroom. Edena reaches in one of the drawers and pulls out a pair of silk pants and a matching shirt and hands them to him. She then proceeds to hand him a few pills and tells him to take a couple and get some rest. Once she leaves, he changes his clothing and heads over to the glass door. From his balcony, he has a pretty good view of the horizon. Beyond his back yard, he sees a few more houses like his and then a lot of grey buildings so close together that they look like one endless structure. In the distance, he sees large buildings that rise above the rest like a wall. The lack of color and the smoke rising from the buildings paints a very dull picture. Adam feels a sense of melancholy looking out over this urban forest. He thinks back to the view of the sunset from the woods. How beautiful the golden sun was and how clear the sky lit up with vibrant colors.
Feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion, he decides to take his medicine and go to bed.
The next morning he wakes up. That medicine must have put him to sleep because he does not remember much after taking it. Edena comes in soon after and tells him that he should
just hang around the house for a while.
“There is not much use having you go into work when you can’t remember anything” she says.
She pulls a strange box out of her bag and presses a small red button. All of the sudden a large screen on his wall comes to life. On the screen there is a woman at a desk talking about the weather. Edena hands him the small box and shows him some buttons that he can use to change the picture on the screen before she leaves. He feels like asking her to stay, but she’s gone before he can get the words out of his mouth.
It all seems so unfamiliar, so strange, so . . . unnatural. His bed, although extremely soft, does not feel right. He finds himself missing the wilderness that he left behind. He spends most of his days in the back yard or in his bed flipping through pictures on the screen in his
room.
A couple of days pass he is watching a cartoon of a cat and mouse chasing one another. He gets bored of this quickly and presses one of the buttons that Edena showed him. All of the sudden there is a giant picture of him taking up the whole screen. The caption below it reads Successful Business Man, Adam Evens: Found After Reported Kidnapping. Adam immediately sits up straight and is glued to the screen. The voice from the screen has just started to explain that Adam had been born into a modest life before making his millions. As he is hearing the story, he starts to remember pieces of his past. It starts with the image of an old wooden house in a field. “…The son of a carpenter and a housewife he had always had big dreams…” He remembers growing up in rural Michigan with his sister and a dog. “…Mr. Evens was captain of the swim team…”He flashes back to college at the state university and his architecture classes. “…He later became one of the foremost Real Estate developers in the world…” His mind floods with images of his rise to fortune. He remembers starting out at a large architecture firm but quitting because he wanted to travel the world. He remembers meeting Edena when he backpacked through the Appalachian mountain range. She dressed differently back then. He remembers getting his first loan from a bank to start building houses in poor countries. Then he also remembers how the bank came after him for the money a few years later; how he could not pay it back so they took his car. He remembers taking a job at the architecture firm again just to pay the bills. A few years later he would be the one hiring and a completely changed Edena would walk through the door for an interview. “… Mr. Evens left BuildCorp with only a few other employees to start his own company…” Adam had walked out because he knew that he could make more money by exploiting loopholes in the law that allowed people to build on protected land.
“ . . . Mr. Evens was found today in Chippewa State Park, one of the largest remaining forests in the nation.” He remembers now. His company was infamous for lobbying the government for contracts to develop state land. In fact, he had recently bought a contract for land to build condos in Chippewa State Park. His memories are all coming back now faster than he can make sense of them. He remembers going out into the woods to survey the land and get some wood samples when he was attacked. The newsperson blamed it on a group of fanatics called the EcoNuts. He had encountered them before and even had some of them thrown in jail at his last development. Adam starts to feel ill. Had he really done all of these heinous things?
He thinks back to that time in the forest and all of the crazy experiences he had. His stomach turns when he realizes what he has done with his life. He has single handedly destroyed countless natural habitats with his development. Adam thinks back to how much it pained him to kill one bunny and that was even driven by the need for food. How far had he gone in the pursuit of a few extra dollars? He thinks back again to the tree and how much he had gone through to get a few pieces of wood. How could he sit back and order the decimation of thousands of them? Was he so far removed from nature that he could not feel any guilt before? He certainly feels it now.
His head is spinning. He has to sit down. Looking to the left he sees his calendar hanging on the wall. Demolition for the Chippewa condos is due to start the next month. Realizing what he has to do, he makes a call.
“Hello, Edena? I need your help.”
“I thought you’d never ask” She softly replies.
A few years later he is standing once more in a forest clearing. This one is different though. It is new and all the trees are young and only a few feet taller than Adam himself. Edena is by his side wearing a bright patterned dress and a canvas jacket. This time there are camera crews surrounding them and a crowd of people murmuring to each other in front of a makeshift stage. Edena steps up to the microphone and the crowd falls silent.
“I am proud to announce the opening of this new state park” she starts.
“This is all thanks to a man who has in recent years has had an amazing turnaround. A man that has shown us all that there is hope left for our children to see the natural world that we have taken for granted. Without further ado I hereby dedicate this park to Mr. Adam Evens”
The crowd erupts into a loud cheer and the cameras start flashing. Adam takes the microphone and proceeds to answer a few questions but he is mind is elsewhere. He is more excited for the people to leave. After a few hours he gets his wish and the crowd dissipates. Edena and he are the only ones left. It is almost time for the sun to set once more. He takes her by the hand and leads her to a to large boulder in the middle of the clearing. Here they prop themselves up and sit and watch the golden orb sink behind the fresh young trees. Above their heads is a bronze plaque. The plaque is engraved with the picture of a bunny rabbit underneath which is written a short poem:
Wind sweeps through the trees whispering, “feel me”
Sparrows sing in the branches a simple melody, “hear me”
An owl in the trees knot hoots, “know me”
A squirrel climbs the rugged bark squeaking, “find me”
A rabbit races around the tree as if to say, “play with me”
The roots planted firmly contend, “stay with me”
We are not deaf to the sound of nature.
We simply choose not to listen.
