Page 11 of Fate Fiction

For now, I would approach my life in small chunks of time. I would have my week in the woods, become the idealized version of myself, and then face whatever came next. Who cared what my life looked like two weeks from now when I had a trip to camp on the horizon?

Everything about Boston reeked of heartbreak and Nick, I delayed procuring coffee and something to eat until I was well outside of city limits. I knew the drive well, and knew myself well enough that I could power through the majority of it without stopping. The less that kept me from my sanctuary the better.

I tossed my things in my car, did my final checks around the apartment, and gave the middle finger to Boston before hitting the road.

Early summer mornings like this one still had a spring chill to them, but by mid-morning the blazing sun burst through and radiated an intense heat. Over the course of my drive I went from shivering in a sweatshirt to pulling it off in frustration as I sweat from the rays beating down through my windows.

After hours of highways and winding rural roads—soundtracked by a pop anthem playlist I hadn’t listened to since college—a valley appeared between two rounded mountains. The pine trees parted to reveal a small town that had only two things, a miniscule grocery store and a gas station.

It was the last piece of civilization I’d see before going fully off the grid, and it barely classified as such. At present, the gas station was surrounded by logging truckers loitering and sipping cheap coffee as they made a pit stop before bringing their hauls downstate. After this shopping trip it would only be the woods and I until I got to camp.

I pulled my car into one of the many empty parking spots in front of the grocery store and held my haphazard shopping list before me. The list was really a formality more than anything.

Sue had generously offered to include me for camp dinners, and I only needed to fend for myself for breakfasts and lunches, and coffee.

I definitely needed to stock up on coffee.

If this trip was going to be the writing retreat I so desperately needed it to be, I anticipated there would be many late nights sitting at the kitchen table, furiously writing by the light of an oil lamp while my body was roughly in the shape of an apostrophe.

On any good day I subsided on coffee, or caffeine of any kind. When I wasn’t drinking coffee, I was drinking matcha, or chai, or yerba mate, or Diet Coke. And if I wasn’t drinking one of the aforementioned beverages? I was probably asleep.

Everyone has a vice and this was certainly one of the less detrimental ones, despite Caroline trying to gently move me away from this dependency.

I tossed a tin of coffee grounds into my cart, and grabbed a case of Diet Coke to serve as my chaser.

The aisles were barely wide enough for two carts to pass one another, and the shelves were sparsely stocked. It didn’t matter, proper meal prepping was the least of my concerns. I could subside on endless coffee and peanut butter sandwiches all week.

Peanut butter was plentiful, and I could definitely make use of a week’s supply of that.

As I wound up and down the aisles I paused briefly at the modest wine selection, I could allow myself one night to have a melodramatic breakdown. If anything, it may have been well-earned. I snagged a bottle of the second cheapest red and placed it into the cart, which was now beginning to look like a divorced dad’s pantry.

After paying a premium for the luxury of shopping at the only store for dozens of miles and topping off my gas tank, the most precarious portion of the drive was about to commence. Forty miles of unmarked dirt road littered with pot holes, rocks, and branches that would lead right into camp.

I couldn’t wait.

The second I flicked my blinker on to turn right out of the parking lot, the heaviness of my relationship lifted off my shoulders. The weight of my sadness flew off and fluttered into the wind behind me, disappearing in the dust clouds from the dirt road.

My phone’s map turned into a beige grid of nothing as I lost cell service. GPS was irrelevant now. No one could find me here, and I could only hope that my feelings wouldn’t be able to either.

The first rudimentary hand-painted “RDLC” sign appeared nailed to a tree fifteen minutes after I started my trek. After a decade of making this drive I easily recognized the exact trees and boulders that indicated where to turn. Brush had grown taller around them, and the paint had begun to fade, but they were irrelevant when I had my muscle memory to guide me.

As I passed the threshold from real-life to camp, something shifted. It happened every time, like I stepped through a literal portal into another world. I could never put a finger on precisely where on the drive it happened. As ancient pine and oak trees whipped past me and the gravel crunched beneath my tires, every cell in my body seemed to understand that I am not where I was, and I am not who I was a mere hour ago.

My driving slowed as the trees opened up to reveal the cabins and vast lake behind it, and I could breathe again.

“Sue!” I hopped out of the driver’s seat and crossed in front of my car, now coated in a thin layer of dust from the dirt road.

“How’s my girl?” Sue asked with open arms and her deep, throaty voice. It was like nothing had changed since last summer.

She radiated warmth and smelled like patchouli. Her black hair tumbled down to her waist, tied in a loose braid, and her face was dotted with freckles and sun spots from years of working out in nature. Deep smile lines sat like parentheses around her mouth.

She served as a stark contrast to my mother who was perpetually corporate and buttoned up, her own graying hair dyed a harsh blonde.

Sue was the aunt who’d sneak me wine as a teenager, and the person who would tell wild stories of her youth without the same filters other adults would use. After she’d fallen in love with Randy at a biker bar in her early twenties, they bought the camp on impulse and taught themselves everything they needed to know to run it. It was like she lived two separate lives sometimes. I wanted to be her when I grew up, but twenty eight seemed late to start.

Her tanned arms wrapped around me in a bear hug and I clutched onto her, inhaling her scent and the rush of memories that flooded back with it.

“Thank you, so much, for letting me spend the week here. I really needed it.”