The first few kilometers each day are the hardest.
It’s not just the walking, the bandaged blisters on his heels, the sunshine haze on asphalt and the near-death SUV sideswipes, it’s the quiet. After three days, he’s grown accustomed to Rose’s nonstop chatter; she can talk about anything. She’s read everything and in this way he’s found both a match and a missing piece. She’s him without the fear and cynicism and sometimes when their talk drifts into sleep, he dreams that she’s the stuff of fiction, conjured like A Christmas Carol spirit. But when he wakes each morning, she’s still there and has already made coffee on the camping stove. “I trained myself how to get up early,” she told him that morning. “I made it my new norm and never let myself sleep in. The sleep-ins will kill you, break your circadian rhythm and stuff like that.” She was already on her second cup of coffee, full caffeine stream of consciousness, explaining how she once had insomnia for a week and realized how much time there really was in the day. “I’d been sleeping half of my life away, you know.” Anik did know, and in a way he felt that he’d been zombie-walking his way through life, never really noticing anything outside his purview. He’d been a slave to his own impulses and this walk was a remedy, a way to take purposeful steps, to gain clarity. But so far nothing was clear and any inspiration he was hoping to find was blocked out by the fatigue. Though he hadn’t been walking more than a few hours a day, his legs felt stiff and his mind fogged over in ego and fear.
On day one he ended up reciting every song lyric he knew just to block out his negative self-talk. He thought he’d be able to clear his mind of its numbing monologue, but he found his brain buzzing like a housefly trapped inside, zipping from thought to thought. Even now, he’s counting steps and counting breaths to stop the incessant thinking of thinking. It’s meditative, he tells himself. The fact that he is even aware of his thoughts is a reminder that he is not the thought, he is the seer. He looks around waiting for a revelation, but there’s nothing but a raven perched on a nearby tree. He’s seen it every day, and though ravens aren’t uncommon for the area, he takes it as a sign and twirls the silver ring on his finger, whispering his mother’s inscription. “The world has its own magic.”
With his thoughts momentarily quieted, he stares out at the horizon. Postcard-like with its towering trees, all different textures and shades of green, so beautiful that it almost hurts to take it all in. He follows their tapers toward the sheet of gray sky. He knows it’ll rain soon and veers off the highway onto an adjacent wooded path.
He’s only been walking for an hour and already his heels hurt from the chafing at the back of his shoes. He hopes that Rose remembers to go to the drugstore to get more bandages. The walking is harder on his body than he expected, and that’s without most of his belongings. He can’t imagine how impossible it would have been without Rose, without a place to leave his gear, without warm food, without company. Without. That’s his first lesson. He makes a mental note of it. He’s learned what he cannot do without. It’s all Maslow’s hierarchy type stuff: physiological, safety and belonging. He remembers the textbook pyramid and lists the layers: “food, water, air, clothing, shelter, security, resources, friendship, connection.” He smiles, satisfied with himself for having experienced the foundational basics of existence, and repeats the sequence as he walks. “Food, water, air, clothing, shelter, security, resources, friendship, connection.” A few raindrops hit his face and he stops to look up at the opening sky, twirling in a slow circle, arms outstretched as rain seeps through the canopy. He inhales and smells dirt and worms, root and rock. It’s distinctly elemental and reminds him of his mother, of planting the magnolia tree. “The deeper we dig, the stronger the roots,” she said. He drops his pack and guitar case, takes out his phone, and snaps a selfie, sending it to Pavan without a caption. Somethings don’t need explaining. She’ll hear the ping, see the photo and know all is well. It’s the first thing he’s sent her since he called her that first night.
He remembers the sound of frantic relief in her voice, the way she said his name in a long drawn-out exhale. It’s the way she used to say, “There you are,” if he ever came home late from school. Though it would’ve been only twenty minutes, he knows now that it was just enough time for her to imagine a hit-and-run accident or a kidnapping. She gravitates to worst-case scenarios, and he can’t imagine what she must be thinking now, only that she must be thinking it. She gets this far-off glassy look, and everything about her is downturned as if she’s melting into the floor, quicksand thoughts eating her up, and yet from a distance it reads like portrait serenity. It’s easier to not talk now, to just send this picture, to reassure her that everything is fine in a one-sided thread that keeps him free of her fear and guilt.
He leans up against a tree to wait out the rain. Sharp light passes through the thick of trees, cutting the forest dark and bright. The sound of rain steadily dropping from boughs and leaf, the white noise of cars slicing by, his own breath, and distant birds signaling that somewhere the rain has stopped. He holds out his phone and presses record, hoping he can layer it into a loop. Already he’s recorded a dozen soundscapes and plans to hide them in his tracks so that only the astute listener will be able to detect them. He imagines that one day people will discuss his music, try to uncover what made it feel so alive, and when interviewed he’ll say this walk was a turning point in his creative process. He will be famous in certain circles and will be featured in a documentary that premieres at Cannes. The fan sites and bloggers will discover early recordings and digital files of his GOD is DOG recordings and debate their merit as precursors to his seminal work. He’ll be asked about those recordings and why he stopped, and he’ll say because he read the comments. Though he knew that the comments section was a troll bridge, he couldn’t help himself. There were the obvious comments lacking imagination like “God is DogSHIT” but those didn’t bother him, not really. It was the ones that came from a guy who went by Jzsthe2N. Every day without fail, he’d spam post, “You should just kill yourself,” over and over. To Anik, the repetitive harassment, especially when read aloud, felt like a directive, or worse, a mantra. He’ll tell this story in the documentary, and they’ll film him close-up, so that the faraway glint in his eye shines like light on water. He’ll be in his late forties when they interview him at his off-the-grid cabin, an old shipping container on stilts anchored on a low cliff, the front cut away and replaced by a picture window looking out onto a forested inlet. He’ll be sturdy and rugged, a person who has become a landscape. The documentary will win an Oscar. A new generation of music lovers will embrace the unclassified genre that he defined. People will say his new music is evolved and his early music was raw. Posthumously he will be inducted into the hall of fame. He can see it all, this future life, and as silly as it is to be thinking it, rehearsing who he could be feels better than who he is, and so he indulges, believing himself into being.
Rose is waiting at the campsite when he arrives. She hands him a beer, toasting the end of another day’s walk.
“You did it! You did it!” she says, singing in a mock cheer way. She has a way of disarming him, and he quickly forgets his deeper thoughts. He strips off his damp coat and sits down in the camping chair and slowly takes off his shoes and socks. “Where do you get the energy?”
“I’m not the one walking,” Rose says and takes his picture.
“What? Why?” he asks, as she takes a close-up of his dirty boots.
“For posterity.” She snaps a few of him. “So how was the walk today?”
“Tough. My feet are killing.” He takes off the bandage and shows her his blisters. “But good too. I feel like I finally got beyond my brain fog, you know, and now it’s just going to be step-by-step from here.”
“One foot in front of the other.” Rose zooms in on the open blisters on his heels.
“Are you filming this?”
“Yeah.”
“No way. Come on, cut it out,” he says and pushes her phone away. For a minute he imagines her photos becoming part of his imagined documentary. He hasn’t told her about his daydreams; some things are too embarrassing to share.
“Trust me, you’ll be glad I did.” She hands him a pack of Band-Aids. “You’ll want there to be a permanent record of this. People will want to know.”
“What people?”
“Like all people. You’re doing something that matters. Even Carol thought so.”
“Who’s Carol?”
“The barista at Starbucks. Sidebar: I was there for most of the day, nursing my tall caramel macchiato and using their Wi-Fi. Anyways, after a few hours she told me that I had to get another drink or leave, and while she made me an espresso, I told her all about you. She was amazed. Thinks what you are doing is big time. Oh, speaking of big,” she says, putting her phone down, “I picked up a whole chicken dinner from the grocery store, complete with biscuits and mashed potatoes. Tonight, we are going to eat like kings — I mean that in a nongendered way, of course.”
“Okay,” he says, trying to follow along.
“Courtesy of Carol,” she says, opening the bags. “She donated to the cause.”
“The cause?”
“Yeah, you. You’re the cause. You’re the cash cow, cha-ching! Chicken dinner, it’s a winner!”
“You monetized me?”
“You make it sound like a bad thing!” She starts to lay out the spread on the portable picnic table.
“It would be, if I wasn’t so hungry,” he says and grabs a drumstick.
After dinner they sit in front of the fire, listening to each other play their instruments. Rose is someone else when she plays the violin, so upright and aristocratic, her spine and neck hinged in place as she draws the bow. She starts with something classical and melancholy and then screeches the bow across the neck to create some gritty fusion. Anik claps and whistles and she pretends at modesty. She knows she’s good. It’s in her genes. Her great-grandfather was a virtuoso who died in the war while playing in the trenches. She has a lot of far-fetched stories, and sometimes Anik wonders if she’s making them up. He’s decided he doesn’t care; everyone tells stories about who they are and how they’ve come to be — sometimes it’s the only way to make sense of anything.
“Your turn.”
He picks up his guitar and tunes it. “I recorded the rain today, and well,” he says sheepishly, “it inspired the start of something.” As he finger-picks the song, she nods along and picks up her violin, adding in layers. They play like this until the sky is dark and the embers die.
Though there’s plenty of room inside the van, Anik prefers falling asleep under the stars. He knows their names and lists them off the same way Pavan did when they used to go camping. He has an affinity for remembering detail, memorizing and cataloging things. It’s given his world order and peace, edges and borders.
Rose hears him calling out the stars and joins him. “Can’t sleep.” She lies down next to him, her sleeping bag wrapped around her and together they stare at the deep blue and silver ribbons of light.
Anik points out the slow arc of a satellite crossing and watches it until it falls away, wondering what it might be transmitting. He hopes that it has a noble cause, something beyond GPS and television, some important mission like taking pictures of the Earth. He holds his hands above his head as if he’s framing a shot. “A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
“Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan. Well played,” says Rose.
“You know it?”
“I was a space geek for a while.” She giggles. “My first crackpot therapist said I was infatuated with sci-fi because I felt like an alien in my own body.”
“That’s messed up.”
“I know, right.” She pauses. “Whenever I see the Hubble pictures, I think that no matter what we look like, we’re all made of the same stuff.”
“Stardust?” Anik laughs.
“I know, so lame, but I was a confused thirteen-year-old. Bill Nye and Britney Spears were my idols.”
“Fair.”
“But to be honest, even now I get all emo about the Mars Rover dying. ‘My battery is low and it’s getting dark.’ Damn little robot gets me every time.”
“You know it didn’t actually say that.”
“I know, I know. Bubble burst on that one, thank you cynics and Snopes.”
“So — since you were a space geek and all, did you ever listen to the Golden Record?”
“No, I didn’t know you could.”
“Yeah, they released a boxset a couple of years ago.”
“I take it you have it.”
“Yeah, bought it online while I was on my sit-in at home.”
“Oh, that’s what you’re calling your little hermit stint now? Much better; has a protest ring versus a pathetic ring to it.”
“Are you done?”
“Yes, please continue.”
“So, it’s amazing. Fifty-five languages, nature sounds, hours of music and all of that. But what’s crazy is to think that the original is just out there, billions of miles away, drifting through space, waiting to be intercepted.”
“It’s sad in a way.”
“Yeah, but hopeful too,” he says, his voice catching.
“Too serious,” she says and sits up. “Time to lighten things up. What would you put on the record today, if you had to choose the music?” She’s animated as if she’s a game show host and this is a skill-testing question.
“Tough one . . . Maybe Bon Iver.”
“No, oh yuck. That’s not Voyager quality. Voyager,” she says, pausing. “That’s it. Voyager. That should be the name of your quest.”
“I told you already, I’m not on a quest.”
“Odyssey, pilgrimage, whatever . . . I think you should brand it as Voyager 3; the first two were outer space and now it’s all about inner space, self-exploration.” Her face is wide open as if she’s made some big discovery. “It’s the perfect brand, good story.” She gets up, grabs her phone and takes a photo. “Too dark, we can try again in the morning, but you do photograph well, your broody artsy vibe, so that’s a plus.”
“Brand it, story? What are you even on about?”
“Just figured we could start a little blog, maybe something on socials about the journey, you know? It’ll give me something to do while you’re walking and, besides, a walk without a name is just a walk. All of the great pilgrimages have names — you told me yourself. El Camino, Pilgrims’ Way, Abraham Path — if you don’t like Voyager, or V3.” She stops and cringes. “No, never mind, V3 sounds too much like V8 — you know what, we could just call it Anik’s Way. Yeah, that’s it. Not sure why I didn’t think of it before.”
“Sure, sounds great,” Anik says mid-yawn. “Now can we go to sleep? I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
“For real? You’re cool with Anik’s Way? I can use that?”
“Yes, yes, whatever. Just go to sleep.”
“Sweet,” Rose says, and with her sleeping bag caterpillared around her waist, she shuffles back to the van, mumbling to herself about Anik’s Way.