It was dead of night and I had walked what seemed to be 100 miles and indeed may have been close to that. I had, had enough of the chaos, the endless arguments, and lies so I packed my bags and just started walking. Anywhere but here I told myself, as I left the outskirts of town and proceeded down the state highway.
My shoulders were killing me, my feet burning, and my legs wobbly from the endless hours of passing cars honking as the flew by. I found a nice clearing in a wooded area of the state park and laid down on top of a picnic table to use as my bed for the night. It was quiet. Deathly quite for being outdoors in a park setting as I was. It struck me as just damned strange at first for the only thing I could hear was a far off whirring, almost like a deep moaning. I thought oh, that explains it, it's gonna rain and that's why the quiet, the calm before the storm.
I grabbed some parachord and tied in on a tree and then to another and threw a tarp over it making myself a nice large well anchored roof to keep me dry in case the rain came late in the night while I was sleeping. There is nothing worse than being caught sound asleep in a cold, wet, nasty, wind blown rain with nowhere to hide but under a concrete slab of a picnic table shivering all night waiting for time to pass.
I made a small fire in the bar-b and heated up some pulled pork and beans in a can a stared at the flickering shadows of the fire thinking about all the years wasted with the crazy crack head Ex I had so desperately walked away from. Tears welled up in my eyes and flowed to an all out cry in the cool evening air isolated from all distraction, save the shadows from the fading fire. I felt like such a failure. I questioned everything. I got mad and pleaded with God to spare me from this despair. Silence. Nothing but silence and the odd moaning in the distance.
My tears had dried. I had reached the cathartic point of silliness and allowed laughter to take the place of my sorrow. I rolled out my sleeping bag, kicked my shoes off and got out of my clothes and crawled inside zipping myself in for the night. It must have been close to 3:00AM or so and I laid there looking at the clouds rolling past the starlit sky, listening for the thunder of the storm to come. The noise I had heard earlier was gone as I listened intently. Every now and again I would see a flash of light and I was sure a storm was coming as the night was still and suddenly. Suddenly I was startled to my feet by a blinding light in the night time sky. Quickly I grabbed my phone to take a picture of it
This was the last thing I found on my friend Carl's phone. All of his stuff was found on top of the picnic table by the state park ranger. A report was filed and technically he is reported as missing for no body was found, no evidence of foul play, just his posting half written and the image. You be the judge.