“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties;
and when they have conquered these,
rest becomes insufferable.”
Blaise Pascal
I set up camp on the gentle rocky slope covered sparsely with tall, slim pine trees. Somehow I decided that bears and twentieth-century scalp hunters would avoid that picturesque place, probably because the stunning view might have repelled their simple minds. I climbed onto the slope, dropped my backpack on a flat dry rock coated loosely with a layer of dry pine needles, took a deep breath, and looked around.
The view was indeed magnificent. The sun was going down wearily to have some rest and, probably, as they do in Hollywood, to catch up with some stars. On my shady side of the slope, it was already twilight. But the sun was still shining over the top of the cliffs, painting the forest hills and distant rocky ridges in warm tones of pink, red, and yellow. I could even recognize a few patches of snow hiding among the rocks and in lowland valleys between the hills. Spring no longer needed the old thick white cover that protected forest undergrowth and small living creatures from the deadly bites of frost. Spring always goes naked.
I had a cunning plan for those pine trees. As I said before, I had decided to travel lightly and hadn’t taken a tent. Instead, I took a rectangular piece of durable canvas, approximately eight by eight feet, which, if necessary, could be converted into a rag, a tent, or… into a hammock! That was my plan: to sleep in a tree!
I spent some time rigging up a cozy bed from that piece of canvas which, if hung from a reliable branch, would protect me from the dangers of the night. Or so I thought. I felt like an old storm-beaten wanderer, stranded on an island full of bloodthirsty tribes and ferocious beasts, doing his job with a knowing grin.
After a few attempts, during which I inadvertently hit some of my sensitive parts against the tree trunk, I managed to climb up into the tree and, at the height of about twelve feet, set up my new aerial camp.
I tied my backpack to the tree trunk and my improvised hammock to a thick horizontal branch. When I had finally settled into the sack, I realized that my face, hands, and clothes were covered with sap and small wood chips. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with myself. I was sure that all my far-sighted precautions would soon pay off.
I tossed and turned a little bit in my sailor’s bed, like a caterpillar in its stuffy cocoon, and committed my spirit to Morpheus — the god, not the movie character. That night, I didn’t have to call on him twice. I was knackered, bashed, burnt out. I was falling into sleep like an elevator on the loose, having been cut off from its cables and dropping into a bottomless shaft. I was sliding fast into bad dreams. My mind was rushing through an endless sequence of short yet terrifying nightmares until… it hit bottom.
I popped out of my sleep like a cork from a bottle of sparkling wine. For a moment, I had no idea who and where I was. It took me some time to process why I was hanging in a sleeping bag tied to a tree. Ah, yeah, the bears… They were gonna feast on me that night… in that dream. I tried to move my hands but couldn’t. My entire body was stiff and unresponsive. I felt my heart erratically beating in my chest like a fish thrown into a box with crushed ice. Carefully, I started to open and close my fists. Little by little, I regained control over my hands and, after a while, the rest of my body. Had I slept a little bit longer, I could have frozen to death. When I realized it, my immediate thought was to get out of my useless shelter.
I stretched out my arms and tried to grab onto the branch above me. Immediately, my hands slipped, my sailors’ bed overturned, and I was left sticking halfway out of it. I had managed to grasp the hammock’s canvas before I fell out completely. I was hanging above the rocky slope, struggling for my life. The fall was inevitable. Desperate thoughts flashed through my mind. I cursed myself, but it didn’t help. I pulled myself together, bent my knees slightly, as I had been taught in parachuting courses, and released my grip.
The landing was okay. I didn’t break anything. I rose to my feet and looked up at my abandoned monkey camp. My backpack, food, blanket — all of my things were up there. I cursed myself over and over again. Then I clenched my fists and burst into even more spiteful curses, which exist only in the Russian language. Why? Damn, why? Why did I do all that? Sleeping in a tree! Who the fuck sleeps in a tree? Are you a fucking brainless weirdo woodpecker? A damned squirrel? I was spewing curses like a dying millionaire might throw his money into cancer funds. Then I stopped. This spurt of tantrum had warmed my blood a bit. Anger is not always a useless thing, I tell ya.
Curses, however, were of very little use in my situation. I was freezing on that rocky slope and had to build a fire. I looked around, trying to figure out where to fetch some dry wood. Instead, Freud’s phrase came to mind: “The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.” “Fuck you, Ziggie,” I growled. “Go fuck yourself with your fucking clever phrases. Insults cannot warm people or feed them. Got it?” There was no answer. Then I gave it a second thought. After all, he was right. He was talking about our civilization — wasteful, selfish, and inefficient. Doing goo from good. Now, where was some damned firewood when you needed it?
I looked around. There were no gangs of bears or felons in sight rushing to take my life. Nobody cared about my existence. The feeling of absolute loneliness stabbed me like a sudden loss. Gosh, I was all alone in that timber ocean. And if I had died that night, then it would have happened not because of bears, but because of pneumonia.
I found myself standing on the same rock where I had stood during sunset. I saw the same landscape, but now it looked muted as if painted in pale blue ink. The moon was as full and bright as ever, and one could have read a book by its light. That all-day buzz, a chorus of voices — dreams, thoughts, belated disputes, and accusations — suddenly fell silent in my head again. The silence reigned both inside and outside of me. A strange sense of absolute unity struck me. I’m sure at that particular moment, I experienced what people of a spiritual persuasion would call “enlightenment.” I had no fears, no thoughts, no desires. I could have been a living statue of Bodhisattva or an ideal office worker — I would never have been able to tell.
But there was something much bigger than that unexpected spiritual flush. I sensed something great, boundless even, but couldn’t spot it at first. My eyes were wandering pointlessly through the night; then, I looked up. It was there — again.
Zillions of unblinking stars spread over my head. I had never seen the Milky Way in such magnificent glory. In those times we lived on ration cards, but electricity was dirt-cheap, so the light pollution in our city was enormous. I was shaken to my very soul. It was so beautiful, bright, and bountiful. I gazed at that pearl-and-diamond belt over my head and couldn’t get enough of it.
Unfortunately, that pure state of mind didn’t endure too long. I started feeling cold and lonely again. I patted my pockets and found a box of matches. There was also a compass with fluorescent marks on its face, but I hardly needed it. I collected some brushwood and made a fire. Soon, I was sitting near it, rubbing my hands and warming my numb body. I became a normal, ordinary man who was just trying to survive, sailing through the endless gale of his consciousness.
My mind was restless that night, like a hungry dog who had noticed its owner approaching with its food bowl… only to find it full of nothing. I was immensely inspired by what I had just seen and felt. I started to think again about the futility of our civilization. I mused on how in the past, there had been fewer people and how they had died so easily and frequently. Now there were far more people around the globe; they lived longer, but still eventually, died. The number of deaths, though, had never changed. The endless cycle of life and death hadn’t stopped. We had just made it turn slower. I called my revelation “The Constant of Death.”
Then, I lay down on the rocky bed that had become warm from the fire, turned my back to the flames and fell asleep under the speechless stars.
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