Out of This World

One day I was walking through the woods behind my house, a usual routine that I took part in every day equipped with only a backpack that contained a jug of water, a compass, and a few matches, and a pocketknife. Suddenly I entered a world that was very different from my own. I do not know how I got in this place, but I realized that somehow, I knew I was not going to get out quickly. I had seen places like this in movies but never imagined that I would be in one. First there was this constant humming sound that was kind of loud, and it kept on going in a continuous steady tone. I could also hear the babbling of a stream that must have been close by. No birds were chirping, but something was making a clicking noise, fast, then slow, and it kept changing the beat, stopping once in a while then starting again. No signs of other human life were in this place. I heard no cars, no noise from a city, so I figured I was all alone and far away from where I had been when I had started walking. In the woods behind my house you could hear large trucks and some cars passing by, but the air here was clean, no sounds of an engine echoing through the woods. The first sight I noticed was an immense forest, trees towering so high I could not see the canopy. There was some motion among the branches and I got the feeling that I was being watched. I heard rustling, looked to where the noise came from, saw the leaves moving but never spotted anything. I decided to stop looking for this elusive thing, be it insect, mammal, reptile, or other type of creature, and to look at some of the other features of this odd place. The tree’s green leaves were accompanied by a type of colorful orange fruit. The lowest of these was too high to get or to even attempt getting to so I started scouring the ground for one to look at, and possibly to eat, as I was beginning to feel the first signs of hunger.

As I looked at the ground, I saw a few ant like insects crawling around. I seemed of no interest to them as they went about their business of collecting bits of grass, seed, and other specks of things for the harvest. A few of them were carrying pieces of what looked to be the orange fruit so I started walking in the direction from which they came. As I walked, following the colony for quite a while the sound of the stream became louder, and I decided to leave the ants, as they continued to roll by in a steady crowd. As the stream sounds got closer, the humming that I first noticed kept going, not getting louder or quieter and I still could not figure out the source direction. Another five minutes of walking yielded a beautiful little stream that I was glad to come across. The water was as clear as out of the tap and I located my water bottle to gather some. The water was cool and refreshing. This place I’d come to was about seventy degrees, but quite humid, as most rain forests were.