I’m not much of a story teller, more of a campfire rambler but people have told me that has its own charm to it so I’ve decided to share, as my friend put it, one of my less shit stories. Nevertheless a story is a story even if it’s bad and I’ve been told many people love hearing this one so I’ll do my best to put it to text.
As people we’ve begun separating ourselves from the boundaries of nature, ever since I was young there was talks of humanity and the ecosystem, humanity and what we do to our planet and when I got into my upper level courses in college it only got more striking. Chomsky’s language theory, the early works of Aristotle and Plato, even better the religion courses I was required to take during my first undergrad all talked about the innate qualities of humans. But I couldn’t help but feel there was always something wrong with what I was learning, sure I knew I wasn’t necessarily the next revolutionary philosopher but I can’t see how we were anything special- anything outside of nature itself. Was building some buildings and having some advanced vocal chords all that was necessary to make us above the animals we lived next to as our ancestors. I’m not even a particularly outdoorsy person but going into the forest by the highway on my way to work every day and just smoking for a little before I clocked in made me realize through all the probability of the universe what if some other microbe developed before hand, created appendages and society well before us and we were the raccoons that got shooed away from the trash every morning.
But regardless of my hippie tendencies I wasn’t in any position to change myself and live in the wild, diabetic, I depended on human medicine to survive, and skinnier than a flag pole I’m sure I wouldn’t be the alpha of the troop in the wild nonetheless. I benefited from human society as much as the racoon did from the scraps of yesterdays backyard cook out. So as dependently as the baby I once was some 29 odd years ago to my mother, I depended on the places that would hire me and take me with my odd schedules while I worked towards getting my masters. The gas station between the observatory in the woods I went to as part of one of my minors because I thought it was something interesting to do and the rest of the small city is where I made my home. Spending the better part of the day through small lectures, going to the observatory through most of the night, taking a small nap in my car, then clocking in off the highway with my eyes bloodshot as I did my night shift till I could get off and get actual sleep. If my mind didn’t hate this schedule my circadian rhythm sure did, but what can I do- at least my scholarship lets me cover tuition costs and these short relative hours in the middle of no where can help with insurance premiums and co-pays.
The best part of the job was the silence, it was desolate, neither the observatory or the city were tourist destinations, and any near by tourist destination was much more sensible to get through with the other highway route. I was a glorified baby sitter for a building that had bright white fluorescent light bulbs that could sear your retinas yet trailed off into pure black at 2 am as soon as they hit the property line for the place. Customers were few and far between, trash needed to be taken out maybe once every two or three days unless you were stealing more chips than usual, and in this day and age both pumps were automated so maybe once and a blue moon you would get the customer asking for 20 on pump two. The perfect place to study, but that late at night I rarely did, no my routine was much more rudimentary till morning shift got in. I would sit at the counter, turn the tv to display a random youtube video with the fire stick i put on it and then I would eat chips staring out into the darkness for hours. I don’t know why I did it, i was never scared of the wild- I was a half baked hippie- I would be eating Aristotle’s words if I was. I think hours of staring at computer data at the observatory made me want to focus my eyes and stretch my far sight possibly, whatever it was it was relaxing. The stillness of the woods at the border of a New Deal era highway, not seeing any movement but knowing that in my field view there was dozens of instances of complex life. It was serene and enviable.
I repeated my darkness watching many times over, there was never a major change but I did it anyways because I enjoyed it- whenever I was really into it and there was a break from the rush of maybe two customers I had I would indulge myself with a smoke at the opposite side of the pillar closest to pump 1. It was the closest I would get to the wild here, sure I would have my wood smoke breaks before but something was different about this section of the woods. It was richer and thicker than any other area, the contrast was decadent to look at compared to the endless whirring of an ICEE machine. But even reaching my hand out against the night to get a grasp of it felt sacrilegious, alienating. No where else have I ever felt disconnected like this, but I was not afraid- never was I afraid. I instead felt like I was intruding on something greater than me, like a regular catholic man daring to stand next to the pope during the height of the Middle Ages. I was the most pious man and not one looking to become the next Martin Luther any time soon.
During my night watches where I smoked outside I would often give myself insulin before hand, for those unaware when giving yourself insulin to eat it’s pretty customary to wait about fifteen minutes to from injection to eating in order to allow the medicine to get its full effect. It’s some pharmacokinetics stuff and honestly I don’t follow the rule that well either, it was told to me when I got diagnosed though so I do it when I can and it turns out fifteen is about as a solid amount of time as any to do my night watches anyway. Any more and it would get too cold for me to be there, I wasn’t a person with poor circulation or anything and we weren’t necessarily in the coldest part of the state but something about the geography of the area meant that along this highway where the gas station was at there was always a seemingly intense cold draft. The longer I was out there the more I would feel it and I’m not fond of the cold either so watching the dark forest would always get interrupted by my freezing fingers.
Near the end of my stint as a faithful gas station employee though, maybe about the start of the winter I had been watching the night for well over a year now in total. Funny enough despite me working here for so long I hadn’t seen the boss in a while and other employees only on the most brief occasions when morning came- checks rolled in though so I didn’t care. But I digress after a decently long time at a dead end part time experience the wind along the road was especially fierce, not stronger but meaner. Like there was sharpness to the wind, any thing outside of the gas station not made out of metal flew away well before I got there that night. But I put on my tag excitedly as this probably meant the handful of customers we did get regularly would surely decrease, and this meant more time for myself to simply stare into the woods like always- a good reward for myself after making it almost through the worst of my observatory work since I started. After a couple hours near 4 am I did as I always did, opened up my smokes, got a lighter from the drawer and this time set aside a piece of chocolate cake to eat once I got back inside- making sure to give myself plenty of insulin to cover it all.
So I stood outside, wind fierce but my faithful cigarette never wanting to go out as I held it behind my hands. And I stared into the woods, nothing but wind smacking against concrete and foliage. I was at this wonderful border, at the apex of my enjoyment. I had felt happier before but here I was never sad, I was perfectly content and whelmed in awe of the nature in front of me. Pure unbelievable black, a void that was anything but. I never timed myself but at the rate I smoked I knew when to head back inside, it lined up with about 3/4ths of the cigarette and when my fingers lost the details of the paper due to the cold. But the cigarette never ended this time, and my fingers were much more cold. I don’t know if it was low blood sugar or nerves but this time I was hype aware. I had never felt colder in my life, and nothing proved it to me more than when I started crying facing the woods. The small individual tears going down my face the late night felt like crystalline ice water. And the woods for the first time took form, I think it was because well over fifteen minutes passed at this point but I felt my hands shake- indicative my blood sugar was tanking. I knew it was bad when I let my arms slump to the sides of my body not caring that the cigarette fell to the concrete. But I would not move, not when what was beyond this border was alive and staring. It was as if every bug on the tree, every branch on the trunks, every bird in their nests and every eye was facing west toward me.
I was the most observed I had been, the subject of an organically made deep space telescope. Whatever was watching me, the things that were seeing me, were not identifying me as one of their own. I was being studied, sweat from my pores was not doubt being analyzed like the gases of a far war star. I was not scared but subdued, as how water will be denser than oil so it will always float to the top I had no say in my position in the transaction, The opportunity to back out of the contract was long before the night I was standing at the edge of the road. I would call it a standoff but there was no freezing besides my body, the darkness in front of me was moving- I was the one standing. What was fifteen minutes became much more and whatever was happening next was coming on its own agenda- regardless of how my health saw it. It was a race between by own body autonomy and the entities at my site and so far I was well behind the competition.
It was when I felt that I was truthfully going to pass out that I saw what can only be described as fumes, anyone who worked in a chemistry lab would know what I was talking about. When something reacts and you can see the gasses come off, almost invisible if it weren’t for the air around it being warped. But the fumes of the forest were uncapped, there was no fume hood here and much less any PPE to get behind. The animals behind the glass at the zoo were aiming to reach well beyond this excuse of a glass barrier that I called the highway. But it let go, I’m not sure why or if what I saw was my own device- I’m not unaware of how easy it is to get tricked by yourself but I was let go. I never had a fear of death, I was never mentally scared, it was biological reactions that made me act the way I did but as soon as the feelings passed I walked back to my counter and before I could begin anything I ate my cake and then some.
When my own hands were still again I chose to forget, I turned the TV beyond volume 10 for the first time since I was hired- I watched whatever was distracting enough to get me through the night. The next day I went to class, drove down the same road to get to the observatory and clocked in to the gas station much the same as before. But the allure of the woods was never the same, the brilliant blacks I spent so long looking at from that point on were indistinguishable from any other point in the woods. The florescent lights of the signs and building for the first time bled into the woods and the leafs were as countable as the stars from the high powered telescope.
I stopped my wood watching from then on, it wasn’t enjoyable anymore. And months later not with my masters I haven’t seen anything like it since, I’m not upset with where I am. Just not happy as I was when I was out there, I cried and sweat my body out then and there. But I was elated, a part of me wanted to cross the border, smell the fumes. But I’m not there anymore and neither are the woods I once watched. Humanity expands into all and the gas station I made my money from is now a proud franchised shell. The New Deal highway now has rest stops and the animals immigrated to other areas.
Then was then and what is now is now but I can’t help but want to get to back then, even if my fingers start to lose the sensation of the paper again.