Chapter 3

Getting back to the hiking trail took again much longer than before. When I reached the hiking trail, I enjoyed all the mud I was standing in. So much better than all those poking little things I had to avoid in the forest itself.

I started following the trail again until I reached the next junction. The route to the right was the one I needed to follow to get to the second tree. It went deeper into the woods, and this path declined slightly. I knew this forest area was denser with vegetation, and the trail was thinner. This path was used sparingly now.

The deeper I went into the forest, the muddier and wetter the trail became. It was challenging to walk because the mud was sucking down my feet, and now and then, even the ankle cuffs and chain between my ankles got caught by the muddy underground. Looking around me and into the forest along the trail started to worry me. The forest here was flooded. The water wasn’t that high, but I could still see a lot more ahead of me, and this was the only way I knew to get to the tree with the second chain.

I walked on, and it quickly became clear that the flooding ahead was getting worse. On any other occasion, I would have turned back. Because even the trail I was walking on disappeared underneath the waterline ahead of me.

Once I started to wade through the water, it didn’t take long before my feet sank deeper into the muddy underground. I could feel the mud going past my ankle cuffs and the attached chain. I knew that if my feet sank even more, I could get stuck in it.

Nevertheless, I decided to go on, and it took me a lot of strength to keep pulling my feet out of the mud. But eventually, I reached the area where the second tree was. Looking in the direction of the tree, I noticed it was also completely flooded, and the tree’s base was underneath the waterline. Remembering how I could only reach the chain of the previous tree by lying on the ground made me wonder how I would be able to get to the chain here.

The nerves got the better of me, and I screamed, “FUCK YOU!” to the sky.

But then, realizing what I had done made fear overwhelm my body and mind. I looked around, afraid someone would jump out from somewhere because someone had heard me. Thinking about it now, this should have been impossible, of course. Nobody would have been as crazy as me to enter this flooded part of the forest, but for a moment, I wasn’t rational any more.

Eventually, the cold water brought me back to my situation. I knew I had to get to that tree, so I started to move in its direction. Now not even able to see where I stepped, I needed to feel around with my feet even more. Once I was off the trail, the ground felt a little more sturdy, and eventually, I managed to reach the tree. At the tree, the water was only reaching up to a few inches from my knees. So, it wasn’t too deep, but it would still mean my body would be covered with cold water when I lay down.

And I can tell you, even when it was a lovely sunny day, the water and the forest still felt rather cold to me. It wasn’t shivering cold, but bad enough to make it all uncomfortable.

Again, with no other option left, I did what I needed to do. I dropped onto my knees, and then let me fall down into the water. My whole body, my head included, went under for a second. But I quickly managed to stick my head back above water.

I used my hands and the rest of my body to try and find the chain, and it was just plain luck that my hands found the padlock first. Doing everything underwater was even more difficult, but eventually, I managed to do it as I had planned. I had everything replaced without a hiccup.

Getting up was something else, though. I tried it like I had done at the first tree, but when I pushed myself upwards, my feet slipped, and I fell down, again going underwater with my whole body.

I tried it a few more times but didn’t manage to get up. I needed time to think about my situation and finally came up with something. I moved closer to the tree, and with my back against it, I could use my hands to keep myself steady while I used my legs to get up from the ground. I needed two tries, but eventually, I was back on my feet.

This time, I didn’t even bother to look if someone else was around when I walked back to the hiking trail. Most of my body was covered with goosebumps. With my body covered with water, I could feel the coldness of the forest clinging to it.

I decided to walk next to the hiking trail and had a more sturdy footing there. However, at first, it didn’t get better for me. The farther I walked into the forest, the higher the water came. At the deepest point, the water had even reached my belly button, but slowly, the water was going down. I had just now thought about it, but this part of the forest had to be much lower than where I lived and probably also lower than the other parts of the woods. That’s probably why all the water had gathered here.

Eventually, I had to turn to a trail going to my right again. This path was parallel to the track I used to walk away from home.

Walking through all this water made a lot of noise, but I wasn’t terrified of seeing anyone around. However, to ensure I was alone, I stopped a few times to take notice of my surroundings. Every time I didn’t hear anything that resembled the noise that I made wading through the water, I went on.

Eventually, I reached the left trail, going away from my home. This trail went slightly upwards, and before I knew it, I was out of the water and walking on a usual muddy trail again.

I looked down at myself and noticed the water had cleaned the mud off my legs. But I could also see that my body was still covered with goosebumps and that my nipples were rock-hard from the cold. No, for the moment, I didn’t feel any sexual excitement about all of this. I was cold, wet, and grumpy. This wasn’t how I had planned it, and it sure wasn’t anything like my fantasies.

At the top of the little hill, I had to turn to my right. This trail was about 500 yards away from the meadow I mentioned before. I knew this because I had once walked into the forest from here to see how much farther the forest went. On that day, there were a lot of sheep in the meadow, but I judged they wouldn’t be there today.

This trail also went to the left, which I had also checked out in the past, but to my surprise, I found an open clearing in the forest at about three miles. That day, it had been covered with knee-high grass, so I hadn’t even bothered to check it out and had just turned around and walked away.

Now that I was walking this trail again, I knew it had always looked like it had been maintained. This made me feel like I had to be more careful again. If anyone were crazy enough to walk through the forest today, this could be one of the trails they would use.

Luckily, the third tree wasn’t that far anymore, so while being attentive to my surroundings, I walked on as quickly as possible and, at the right time, turned into the forest to my left.

I repeated what I had done before, lay on the ground, and got to work. It was getting easier to unlock and refasten the chain with my hands behind my back, and within no time, I was back on my feet. Again, I shook my body to get as much stuff off of it as I could. But more stuff kept sticking to it this time because my body was now wetter than at the first tree.

I returned to the hiking trail and went onward to the fourth tree. This was the longest walk between two trees because this one would take me all the way back to about the edge of the forest and also very close to the parking lot that the tourists could use. I never measured it, but the fourth tree had to be about 250 yards away from the parking lot. Luckily, it had dense bushes along the hiking trail and also between the tree and the parking lot, which would keep me hidden from anyone around.

But, this also meant that to make it safe for me, I had to walk into the forest and then walk to the tree for at least 500 yards. I would keep those heavy bushes between me and the hiking trail. While this tree was close to where many people gathered, it had always felt very safe during my test runs. So, I wasn’t too worried about it.

While I walked on, I noticed that my feet didn’t sink in too deep while the path was still muddy. Well, most of the time, now and then, I hit a soft spot that made my foot sink into the ground up to my ankle cuffs, but most of the time, the mud didn’t go over the height of my feet. It was getting hotter here, but the air still felt very damp. Nevertheless, I could feel my body drying, and I was feeling less cold.

I was again starting to enjoy and feel good about what I was doing. I was more than halfway, and soon I would return home, warming myself up with a cup of hot chocolate milk.

When I heard the typical knocking on wood from a woodpecker nearby, I stopped and tried to find him. I was sure he had to be in one of the nearby trees, but I couldn’t see him.

But then, my heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. I had heard something. I held my breath and listened. Fuck! Voices!

For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, my mind blank, listening to those voices. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I tried to figure out where the sound came from. And then, something inside me yelled out, HIDE!

I started to look around me, but like I said, this was a well-maintained part of the forest, and I couldn’t see any bushes around me that would be big enough. One thing was sure, to my left, none of the trees would be good enough to hide behind. I then checked to my right, and it took me a few seconds, but then I saw a big enough tree to hide behind.