Sometimes a writer just gets stuck. He can’t find the fire, the energy, the “light” that guided him before. So he sits. And waits, fiddles around here and there, does nothing notable or worthwhile while he constantly feels a sense of frustration and wasting of time. The pressure seems to build inside him and he mentally starts grasping at floating bits of random thoughts trying to build a story or at least an idea of some sort. Sort of like the bored and unsuccessful fisherman who begins to shake his line to watch the cork move, hoping that he’ll entice a passing fish to take a try at whatever lifeless bait is hanging there on the end of his lazily dangling line.
That was Sam’s situation this slightly too warm evening as he sat by the small campfire out on the edge of Double Branches Road along the north side of the Okefenokee Swamp. He slowly tapped his small writing pad on his crossed leg and nibbled blankly on his pencil. Two or three bats were staying busy swooping down and then up into the night sky above the fire as they stayed steadily busy zeroing in on passing mosquitoes and other small and too slow flying insects. Out in the nearby cypress pond, the sound of some small critter rummaging around in the edge of the water came and went. “Probably a ‘coon,” he thought.
Gradually Sam’s eyes began to grow heavy as his unsuccessful attempt to come up with a story idea for his next newspaper column went steadily downhill. He still had a couple more days before he had to get his story turned in for the local weekly newspaper. Still, he hated to be running so late in coming up with an idea. “Usually I have a whole list of ideas floatin’ round in my head… but not now,” he sighed to himself.
Sam’s distracted and frustrated thinking, as well as the natural calming and sleep inducing effect of a good meal eaten out under the stars all probably led to Sam not realizing that the previous coming and going of the little critter over around the cypress pond had stopped. In fact, all the little night noises of one kind and another had ceased. But Sam was too engrossed in his mentally draining attempt to think his way into a story idea to notice.
Sam sat leaning back against a conveniently located stump. He was staring carelessly towards the cypress pond, itself partially hidden over behind about fifty yards of broom straw grasses and occasionally poking up little trees of one kind or another. From his seat, Sam could see the upper parts of the darkened trees across the tops of the grasses. The grasses themselves, beginning just a few short yards away, formed a kind of wavy darkened brown wall with yellowish tips moving softly in the evening breeze. Sam’s eyes slowly seemed to focus on a darker spot in the brownish grasses. A large darkened spot… with a longish nose protruding from the center of it with a couple of white tipped teeth showing just below it…
Suddenly, Sam’s previous boredom was gone! His stomach tightened up unbelievably tight! His mouth went completely and immediately dry with his tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth. His breath slowly and forcefully blew through the rounded hole of his mouth as he tried to slowly scoot up the side of the stump. A bear!! His hand now tightly gripped his pencil. He threateningly held it out in front of him as if it was an Indian war club. His notepad in the other hand now a war shield. His knees, the drumming of the village war drum. A bear! His mind raced, his eyes burned from the campfire’s smoke which now seemed to have become the bear’s ally.
And then, he was gone! Sam, now standing on top of the stump… his war chariot, war club at the ready, waited for what he was sure would be a flanking attack by the swamp creature. His burning eyes swung here and there, searching frantically for the threat. The sweat, unnoticed before, made its presence known as it ran down both sides of his face and head. He quickly jabbed a left finger up to his ear to wipe out the sweat…the better to hear his secretive stalker! Then his right hand went up to do the same… and he howled a cry of pain as he feel sideways off his stump while turning his head to stare with a mixture of fear and anger at the offending pencil which had just launched its secret attack against the side of his head! It bore its bloodied tip as proof of its treachery.
He landed on the ground with a solid whump! His breath left him, his lungs now turned traitor as well. Wildly he tried to scrabble up, sucking for breath, swinging his head this way and that for the threat he feared was closing on him quickly! Nothing. No bear. Nothing. He turned a complete circle, now recovering his breath and beginning to calm down, he realized that… at least for now… he was still alive and not being attacked. Then he heard it….off in the distance… the sound of loud splashing of water as the bear now ran for its life out across the shallow cypress pond, seeking to escape the man it had accidently stumbled upon as it followed the scent of the roasted corn from Sam’s supper.
And Sam? After some time to recover his emotions and tend to his “battle” wound… he settled down to write a fictitious story…based on proven fact, he later said while enjoying a cup of coffee around the stove at the Tebeauville General store. The story? It was about a grizzled battle scarred old swamper and Indian fighter who courageously fought off an attack by, not one but two, bears as they sought to enter his cabin out along the edge of the great Okefenokee Swamp.
The End
Tebeauville no longer exists today. It has been replaced by the modern town of Waycross, Georgia. The swamp is still there and still has black bears around its edges and plenty of raccoons as well. Double Branches Road is there as well… if you know how to find it. cb
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