Bugs and Bogs

Harrison stabbed his paddle into the dead water of the little stream, weeds and detritus clung to the ancient stick. He had dragged the Old Town canoe through the woods and launched into the overgrown, and unmanicured body of water. Morning was thick with a soupy fog that drifted down from the tops of the spruce trees which had disappeared from view. The corridor of the banks was lined with raspberry bushes, and reeds turned brown by the drought that had plagued New England for well over a month.

Bugs were atrocious. Harrison wore a caramel creme fisherman’s style sweater he had inherited from his grandfather. Fingerless gloves, hat, jeans, and a thin turtle scarf sprayed with bug repellent. It was all worthless. The blackflies swarmed around him like a million little sharks looking to take a bite. Looking for blood. The insects crawled into the little spaces, the tiny cracks around the edges of his baseball hat, the line of skin between his gloves and sweater. They crawled under his belt and into his pants. When he retired to his tent hours later there was a purple line of toxins under his skin.

This stream, as far Harrison was aware, or concerned, hadn’t been explored since the forties - it was now a thin blue line on a gazetteer. The young man was born in the last year of the twentieth century, and he had chased the idea that there were places to explore. That the world still had secrets and wonders that have yet to be discovered. He figured the last people to really be where he was were the Mi’kmaq. Ancient folk on a land lost to them, and to civilization. Perhaps Harrison would be able to step where no human had gone before. He knew that there were plants and trees which humans had never laid eyes on - discovered they were, but this particular picture had never been seen by someone in his lifetime. That meant something to him.

The stream bent and turned and made oxbow loops. Harrison had stuck a large bundle of camping gear in the bow of the canoe. The bow, and stern had large patches of fiberglass patches his father had provided. Harrison peered into the deep water, he could see the water lilies trying to climb to the surface, the fin-like leaves of the weeds threatening to snag him and drag him down to the water. He gulped. Harrison had nearly drowned on multiple occasions for a variety of reasons. When he was ten he sank to the bottom of the hole of a stream while wearing hip high boots. At seven, his lungs filled with chlorine and he sank into the depths of his aunt’s pool. The worst time was when his sister let the floaty drift out onto a lake - his parents asked him to put his suit on to retrieve it. Harrison had since become an excellent swimmer, but at the time he hated going anywhere in any body of water where he could not touch. As a boy he had sunk into the mud and pondweeds of the lake, his feet scraped a sunken log, he began to bleed and panic. He was closer to the float than the dock. It was his only lifeline. So was born his most pathological fear. To address this, Harrison had trained in the college pool, sinking to the bottom and holding his breath.

None of that seemed appetizing now as he stared into the blackness of the stream. Realization struck him that no one knew exactly where he was. He slapped the gunwale. No use worrying, I’ll only suffer twice, he thought to himself. The first leg of his journey concluded on a grassy island. Harrison set up the mountaineering tent, splayed out the sleeping bag and bivy sack before starting up the little grill to make his dinner. A warmed can of beans, and a pack of dried jerky. Dinner of champions.

Harrison slept the night away.

The second day was more laborious than the first. Harrison had to strip down to his briefs to drag the canoe through three different landscapes. The first was a stretch of dry current. He pulled the vehicle into the deeper spots to protect the underbelly and the keel. The man’s feet torn up by the sharp rocks, he tip-toed into the areas with the heavier flow. He found those stiller waters, deep too. So deep that the only piece of him above the waterline was his mouth, nose, and eyes. He could feel the gravelly bottom between his toes. Thickets prevented him from riding in the canoe. Dense, thorny bushes and briars of brambles crawled over the surface of the water. The plants scratched at the boat, one false step and he could go deeper, or he could stick in the muddy spots. At times, he swam on his back and slowly, surely, pulled the canoe through. When he made landfall he was covered with ebony black slugs, harvesting his delicacy of a blood. To the insects, he was this foreign alien stumbling into their world, might as well take a bite. He counted forty he pulled off, some he attacked with a thin lace of fishing line and others he poured salt on from his provisions. They left pockmarked pinkish splotches on his body. The midnight bulbous suckers spilled his blood onto the ground, and the water.

No use complaining, or bleating about it. No one around.

Harrison soldiered on. The sides of the bank squeezed together and became dank, mossy, and soft. The edges floated on the water and the passage in which he intended to go became a boggy sluice. Like a gondolier sitting high as he was able, using the paddle to dig his way through the watery entrenchment. As the sun began to dip behind the tree line, he happened to find stable ground to pitch his tent upon. The temp cooled. The birds that flew overhead quieted themselves and the bugs began to rest. The warmth of the campfire was welcomed, Harrison’s toes had struggled to warm up after dragging them through the spring-fed stream with cold autumn earth below. He shivered that night in the sleeping bag. Harrison wrote in his journal and thought about how nice a shower would be in that instant.

The next morning, the drought ended.

Harrison sat soaked in the little red canoe. His longer hair dripped into his face, he looked like Chiron - a sad, lonely gray and blue figure paddling over smokey water. Looking around for an end, the dead water and briar and barrens stretched for a few miles before he would be able to make land. Trees sprouted in the distance, the only ones near him were sad pale whittled things, long dead. In those trees that lived, was a road, and from that road he would be able to find civilization again.

The rain was steady, but not heavy. Bailing out the spillage in the canoe was a present and pressing chore. His gear was floating now in the bow. He was forced to break his pace and bail for minutes, letting a minute current drift him toward his target. He looked into the water. His reflection, pockmarked by the little rain ripples, glanced back. Harrison sped up, I want to get home in front of a fire.

Harrison did not see the rock.

The canoe capsized, he struck it hard and Harrison was driven into the reflection mirroring his grotesque look of horror. Harrison went in. Harrison’s body, shocked by surprise and fear, flailed for a moment before reaching toward the boat. His fingers tickled the gunwale and the canoe drifted out of reach. He took a step toward it best he could and his foot was sucked into the muck of the streambed. Harrison instinctually tried to rip his feet out and was pressed further in. He contorted himself to grab at the nearest vegetation. “I can get out of this.” he said aloud. His fingers at least a yard from the branches.

Then the rain really came. Heavy, icy droplets carrying fall chill pounded him, the brush, and the water. The water rose. Harrison sucked in a breath of air before crouching down to the mud. He felt his butt strike the mush, and he tried to get at his laces, to jam his fingers in the spaces between the shin high LL Bean boots and his leg. No use. He went up for breath, then down again. This time he took his ankle in both hands and tried to rip at his foot. His legs were vacuum suctioned further into the black, silty, detritus filled watery sludge. He surfaced again, breathed deep, and drove back one more time. He used his whole core, shoulders, and legs to twist and gyrate to spin himself loose. Harrison had nothing to hold to, no leverage. He went up for oxygen, there was none. His eyes were stabbed with the sting of the dirty water. His hair floated and spun like seaweed tentacles waving good-bye to the surface. A minute passed. He tried to chase the last of his lung bubbles, fingers scraping the film. Little ripples left in the wake of his canoe. His worst fear was realized and the world went dark.

Harrison stood where no human had, and where no human would ever again.