Nowhere…to Be Found.

September 10, 2020 2:42 am Published by EverEden 1 Comment

 

What do you do the second time you ever meet a man? You go riding in his car for hours to the middle of nowhere, where there is no phone signal and just bush and trees as far as the eye can see.

Welcome to last Saturday. Welp, I’m alive. *shrugs* And aside from screaming, “Whatever happens out here, stays out here!” as I awkwardly trample my way deep into the bushes to pee, it was a really good day.

I’m still not a whole person, but sometimes you have to move your feet physically before the inside/rest of you follows. I have a few friends who decided that the following months will be packed with all the things they wanted to say yes to but never did. This wasn’t like that, but when I got to VJ’s house and he was herding us to his gigantic off-road vehicle, I was nervous and very fatigued but thought “Meh, ok, fuck it.” I’d been home for nearly a year, recovering from a broken bone, my autoimmune relapses and sifting through the wreckage of my private life. I was almost well(?)

I’ve got this far in life knowing that whatever you have going on can make you want/need to break out and, for people not into substance abuse, you become a loose cannon. So you are dealing with that caged feeling, in addition to the problem on your mind in the first place.

I was wearing a dress, (which was actually comfortable tbh) and some Docs so it could have been worse, it was only a problem sliding out of his gigantic car and having the skirt section ride up, across from a full gas station, so…that was great. :\ VJ and I spent hours driving and I saw a lot of trees and hill areas that I don’t get to, while bumping and swerving on an uneven gravel path. At one point we reached an area where the path disappeared and I said, “You’re kidding, this is the end of the road?” and he replied, “No…this is the beginning.”

(*if you know you’re going off-road, wear a good bra, ladies. LOL)

Where I live is known to be flat so it’s not often I get to see those things (hills, crazy terrain.) There were some areas that were really inspiring visually (if you’ve read King of Spades,) it reminded me of the parts where Agent Darkrose and Agent Starr drive out of the desert installation at the beginning of the book, and also the road trip right before the car is sniped. At the time of writing this, Red Cowboys is still publicly unreleased but there is a chapter that takes place in a very similar setting(warm climate with miles of forest) and involves guns, blood and Agent Starr. So “over-stimulated” was an understatement in this circumstance.

Naturally, my mind was a million miles an hour and I was telling VJ about the case of Kremers and Froon too, two backpackers who became lost in bushland/forest areas and whose case spawned multiple theories until very recently. I was always unnerved by the fact they were supposedly using camera flashes in succession to light their path when they were lost in the dark…Even though they are just pictures of trees and whatever was directly ahead, I get shivers thinking about how dark it must have been and how desperate they were to need any minimal flash of light. And why didn’t they just stop for the night? Why are all the pictures very close in succession? If they were being chased by something…even scarier.

So, I was telling this ex-military/defence force guy who’s probably done directional training stuff in the middle of nowhere how “until today I was always wondering how ppl really got lost when backpacking,” because I didn’t understand it much. I’d never driven myself anywhere far enough that I was out of phone reception for long or anywhere that I couldn’t see some form of civilization. (Oh, believe me when I say this was a mere speck on the list of the MANY embarrassing things I said that day) Looking around, it was unnervingly obvious that without a car and the gravel paths, you’d likely be dead very soon. There were some creeks and bodies of water but you would probably walk for days before possibly noticing/locating one. And without phone reception (of COURSE he had satellite, phew) you would be absolutely screwed.

 

• • *I just want to stop here and tell the guys n gals who may be reading this DO NOT GO TO AN UNKNOWN PLACE WITH A GUY YOU’VE MET TWO DAYS EARLIER. When I read the start of my own post, I freak out. There is a little more to it, and I knew it was probably going to be okay.  I’m also blessed, and was also able to hang out with someone decent who was not a serial killer. It doesn’t mean you will be so lucky. So please don’t.

 

I was like an overexcited dog that never gets to leave the house. I was excited about everything, taking pics of trees, horses, wallabies, pointing at cows on farms on the way there.
(Everyone loves cows. See?)

After running around up hills and in sludge, I sat down on one of the chairs we brought with us to make the most of it.

I breathed air that wasn’t polluted, didn’t have wifi signals beaming, no phone about to ring etc. and I closed my eyes. We were near a running creek surrounded with flat rocks, mud and a sign that indicated the water rises and floods the area some days. I could hear birds in the trees somewhere to the left across the creek, and smell combinations of wood, leaves, water, dirt. I tried to make myself stay in the moment and think of nothing for a second, because one second is usually all this overworked brain can manage and…then VJ started fidgeting and walked away to do whatever manly, Viking men do in the back of their vehicle in the middle of nowhere.

When I opened my eyes he was walking across my vision with. A. Fucking. Shovel.

I stayed on my chair with my legs crossed, chillin out (because I’m cool like that,) and calmly said… “you gona kill me, bro?”

It was mostly a joke, but I was happy when he laughed too. 🙂

!!!!!

 

Here are some cool pics I want to turn black and white and more spooky. Australia is a great place and it was nice to get out of the city for a while to have an adventure and get some more ideas for the novels.

   

 

TLDR:

*Impromptu road trip to a place I’ve never been.

*Didn’t get murdered. \m/

*Weirdly regained a perspective I’d lost while hibernating and recovering for a year.

*Grateful for the opportunity to spend time with a new person and have fun doing something different.

***Sign up to the newsletter that I am launching soon. Cos, why not?

 

 

 

 

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All content is no copyright infringement intended. All posts are opinion only and are subject to change due to experience, kicking ass and learning how to adult more effectively. If you don’t like it, don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. Elements of original content may be reproduced with expressed permission from Ever Eden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: australia, australian author, cows, Don't try this at home, king of spades, mental health, middle of nowhere, nervous, no signal, off-road, performance art, pinjarra, pinny, queen elizabeth, red cowboys, roadtrip, tension, thank you, tourist, VikingJ, VJ, wallabies, Wisdom, you gona kill me bro