Recording the North Trail on a Day Off

The trail work of the day ran alongside the work he was not yet doing. He had started a new project a few days ago and hadn't returned to it. Yesterday he cleaned, and the space is more organized now. Today he would build the upload feature so the videos could come off the phone, then a pipeline for embeddings, then the analysis pipeline, and after that the reflections could start running again — at which point Autonomy Realms would be roughly where it already was, only rewritten in a better language, and he could build forward from there. He had thought about restarting Upwork, because money has to come from somewhere, but his bank was showing a negative available balance from a pending charge. It was a temporary thing. He would find out tomorrow what he actually had. So he went hiking instead, and made a decision about allocating what little there is toward AI costs.

Past the lake's first appearance through the trees, he entered the north camps and narrated them one by one, because he had never recorded this part. Site one: a fire ring from a long time ago, a good overlook, no way down to the water — too steep. Site two, derelict, which he said he liked anyway, that it had character in some kind of way. Site three, the big one, the one most people pick. He doubted his own count, checked the sign, confirmed it — one, two, three — and admired the outhouse, a small A-frame he called the most adorable little thing. The sparrows were more active than they had been the past few days. Then, at a site he had never bothered to walk down into, he found a picnic bench overlooking Siltcoos Lake. He stopped. Holy shit, did not know about this. Somebody had carried it down here once, Forest Service or otherwise, and it had been sitting there a long time.

He stayed at the bench. The clouds were coming back over — rain forecast, maybe tomorrow — with the sun still breaking through. He turned the camera around. The screen is badly scratched. He noted that he had shaved his hair off, that he could see his age in his eyes, and said that we all get older somehow. He gave an accounting of his health: good, he says, for his age and for the life he lived. Still drinking Mountain Dew. Quit vaping and smoking a couple of months ago. Sinus congestion he describes as a real problem, a little concerning, not yet decided to be a problem problem. Other than that, he says, he's pretty fucking good — and that he is trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life.

Onward toward site five, small and simple, with a steep drop to the water he chose not to take. A motorboat carried across the lake and he named it as a disruption of a perfectly wonderful moment. Something about the day had brought the insects out, and the spider webs with them, more than is usual on the coast. Somewhere in the corridor between camps he set down the clearest thing in the recording: that he doesn't think people realize how much he loves his life, that he has no complaints of the kind other people have, that the difficulty is one thing and one thing only — no financial stability. He assigned the cause outward. It's societal, created, a system imposed on him and on everyone, and he stated he will not read it as a moral failure, knowing it isn't, having contributed more in his life than most. He lives on the coast. He explores every day. His rent and utilities are covered by volunteering for an institution that, unlike the state parks, hasn't tried to screw him.

He walked the quarter mile toward the south camp and talked about being met. He says the life is lonely and isolating and that he would choose it anyway, that he has enjoyed solitude all of his life, all of it, spent holidays alone as a kid because he wanted to. What gets to him is different: that he has never been met cleanly. He described the state parks, someone he opened up to only a little, and the betrayal that followed. He said what reads as vulnerability is actually strategic sharing — a test — and that people always fail it. He described what he calls flattened reality, the image others construct and the distortion it produces, and said he holds to complexity, often with ease. Then he classified it: structural, not solvable, and the only available move is acceptance. He said he didn't want to sound negative, that it was important to put it in the record. He remembered turning the camera on in Kentucky — the natural bridge, the place with forty-seven bridges — sharing his life openly there too, and not being met there either.

Three squirrels had crossed his path earlier, two of them chasing each other around a tree over a nut, a third arriving and sounding its alarm call when it saw him, so he moved on. Walking toward the south camps and the lake again, he laid out the biography in a single continuous line: Kentucky, the anxiety disorder, the sensation of choking to death, the Klonopin that made life livable, the teeth, the years on tramadol, the long stretch where he stopped living and watched himself stop. Then the rupture — he ruptured his life on purpose, and called it a good choice, and said everything since is a result of it. No medications now, no opiates, no benzos, no nicotine. Healthier body, coast air, Mountain Dew still unresolved. And then the sharp edge, plainly stated: he can't stand being broke, hates feeling stuck, can't put insurance on the vehicle he can't afford to lose, can't leave the corridor. That is what Autonomy Realms is for. True autonomy — the thing he is building because it is the thing he doesn't have. The south camp has one of the little A-frames too, and he said if he ever gets his own land he'd want one, a cabin in the woods, off-grid, nearly half a century old and hoping it comes soon enough to enjoy. He thanked whoever was on the trail with him, said he'd walk down and look at the lake from there, then turn around, head back to the laptop by the couch, and get some real work done.