We are on a ship. A group was formed to help each other with creative writing. The assignment was to look at this photo and write 1000 words telling the story. I failed. I had a hard time keeping it down to 1000 words. These were those words...
A Walk in Time
We had been walking for five days now, Kit and I, across Northern Ireland. Last night she said she had reached her limit. She just couldn’t walk another mile. We were planning on making one more long day today and then take it easy the last bit into Derry on Friday. In order to keep our footsteps unbroken all the way from Belfast I was going to do this one day on my own. I would walk for both of us.
The locals had told me that when I got to the bottom of the hill I could stay along the main highway and keep to the flats, or go off into the wild countryside through the hills on the narrow roads that wound between the sparse farms and cottages. It was a beautiful and sunny morning and the last thing I wanted to do was hear the roar and smell the exhaust of cars shattering my peace. The narrow road with the breaks in the pavement felt as if it were actually calling me to climb. To wander. To explore the Irish countryside.
As I climbed upward from the valley floor I could see the divided highway cutting a scar through the rich green landscape and I could feel my heart pounding in my ears from the exertion of the hike. Cresting the hill the sight and sound of modern civilization slipped away and the lazy rhythm of walking and nature crept into my pace and my being. A few white clouds appeared on the horizon, but the sun was still warming my back as I put miles behind me on the penultimate day of my long walk.
I checked my phone for directions when I reached a fork in the road. The signal was good and turning off onto the small dirt Glenmorgan Road would take me across a small stream and into some woods beyond. The birds had been taking flight as I approached and they all seemed to be aware of a change in the weather that I started to notice as well. The cool breeze that you get before a storm comes in was just picking up and the overcast was now nearly complete. With about five hours yet to go in my walk for the day I pulled out my windbreaker to help protect me from the cooling air and the rain that looked like it was on the way.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the crack of thunder happened at the same time as I saw the lightning hit a huge oak tree just across the road from me. I could feel the heat from it and a branch from the gnarled old tree dropped into the wide dirt path just ahead of me. If my heart was pounding before it was racing now.
I pulled out my phone to see if there was anyplace nearby to ride out what was promising to be a terrible storm. Nothing. Must be that the lightning strike had caused it to die. I knew there wasn’t any place behind me that would work, so there was only one way to go. Forward.
I tried to pick up the pace and make better time to some sort of cover from the growing wind and rain that was now coming sideways. I gave up trying to keep my hat on my head and stuffed it into a pocket. The windbreaker hood was flapping behind me and it was getting hard to see through the driving rain.
I couldn’t be seeing right, because of what I thought I saw. A little girl? Out in this weather? She looked to be about ten or twelve years old. She was wearing a blue and white sundress and her long red hair was getting blown into her face. She ran up to me and yelled over the wind, “What are you doing out here? You need to get out of this storm”. I had to agree with her and didn’t resist when she grabbed my hand and started towards a house just down the road that I hadn’t seen in the nasty weather.
It was a beautiful stone cottage just off the now muddy road that looked to have been recently completed. Very old fashioned, but a lovely little home. When the roughhewn wooden door finally closed against the raging wind I spoke to my rescuing angel for the first time. “Thank you so much for finding me in this storm. My name is Richard. What is yours?” She introduced herself, “Rebecca. Becky to my friends. Becky Morgan.”
There was light and heat coming from the next room and I heard voices. I took off my muddy shoes and left them by the front door so as not to mess up the place. Her parents, Sean and Mary Morgan, were both proud and irritated with their little girl a the same time. “She’s always worried about others. Becky would risk her own life just to save a baby squirrel. We call her our little angel.” Said Sean in that thick Irish brogue that I was still trying to get clear in my ears.
It was my turn to introduce myself to Sean and Mary at which point they were quite taken aback at my accent as well. I told them a bit about walking from Belfast to Derry and they seemed quite impressed by the whole thing. He offered a bit of Irish whiskey to take of the chill. I was glad at the offer and was a bit surprised to see him pour it from a jug rather than a bottle, but it was a wonderful strong spirit.
The weather didn’t seem to be letting up and I was feeling that drink a bit more than usual. Mary suggested that I lay down for a bit and see how things looked after a nap. A small room with a small bed with a horsehair mattress was more comfortable than it looked. By the time the wool blanket had come up to my chin I was out.
When I opened my eyes again I was laying there covered with a blanket of leaves. The walls were still there, but the sky was opened to a blue sky. I tried to make sense of it, but I could not. The space was the same, but it was not. I worked my way through the opened doorways to where the front door used to be. A wall as high as my chest with gap where my shoes were sitting, caked in dried mud.
The paved street in front of the house went through the countryside that was familiar from my earlier walk, but it hadn’t been paved when I arrived. I checked my phone and found I was only a mile from where I told Kit I would meet up with her. I always take pictures, so I took one of the remains of the stone cottage that had been my shelter in a storm.
When you are on a walk you walk. So I did. In a half hour I was at our meeting point and I sat down to look at the pictures on my phone. As I was doing that Kit walked up and said she was surprised that I had gotten there so quickly. I must have looked a bit confused because she asked what had happened on my solo walk.
What to say? I thought a whole day had passed. So I just showed her the pictures of the neat old cottage I had passed on the way. In the corner of one of the shots was a little grave marker. On it was written, “1856-1866 Becky Morgan Our Little Angel”
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