h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Quagmire: A walk in the woods - A16262084
Author: TRiG (Ireland) I'm not ignoring you personally, I'm ignoring everyone until I get A3421289 through Peer Review - U612575

This is not a work of fiction.

F1749279?thread=3452828

I wasn't sure if I would enjoy reading this, but you caught me all the way.

It made me think of tmes I sued to wander off into the Oz bush as a lad, sure of myself as always and then thinking that certain places looked and smelt exactly the same...

Lovely prose TRiG

Hey TRiG, cool story! Scary story. Your poor Dad, too.

There’s a quaking bog in woodland near me. I found it once, but I’ve lost its whereabouts again. It’s 1.5 m of sphagnum moss over running water. Saplings grow on it, until they get too heavy – at which point they just sink and drown.

I didn’t try stepping on it, I wonder if the surface would sink as you describe. That’s a good description by the way.

What sort of comments do you want TRiG – just general stuff or do you want people to exercise their critiquing teeth on you?

It wasn't originally intended as a write-up. I just felt some need, when I got home, to record what had happened. And then I published it in my journal, because I thought it made interesting reading.

It was people there who told me to put it here. So I've obeyed them. I'll consider any suggested improvements in the writing, up to and including a complete change in structure. But I won't change the events, which are factual.

So critique, by all means.

Have a glance at my journal convo first, though, because some things have been said there already.

TRiG.

No don't change the events, definitely not.

As a journal entry, you've got a good, written at the time, record that's a good read for others too, which is a bonus, and will probably be fascinating for you to reread later. You don't want to change a word of that and you should keep that journal.

But you can do something else with it too, which is let others really experience it as well, but without the inconveniece of getting muddy .

It makes it easier seeing those journal comments because you've got several different viewpoints that I'm just adding a further to.

As a short story, I think you're right in feeling that some of the detailed record of the route is confusing. My attention did wander a little in some of those bits and I was trying to see paths and routes as if on a plan instead of seeing bark, leaves and roots.

I don't think you need maps, though. My feeling is that there's three strands to this, your mental mapping of these walks, the odd features you find, and the near-miss story. The mapping wasn't of so much interest to me, I was interested in the picture of the woods, sharing your reactions (like Wilma I like the understatedness, I think it fits your persona, but you could drop in words to trigger the reader to feel the same things) and of course what happened in the bog.

The bits after you get out are both interesting and an odd tailing off from the main story. You could try keeping them by tieing them in by, I dunno, something along the lines of showing how they added to your sense of unease. Or perhaps they seemed stranger to you because of what you'd just been through and showing that would link them in.

A conclusion to do with the change from familiar woodland to something feeling alien and threatening, if it did, would link the two strands you have of unexplained features and the near miss.

It would be good to keep them some way, because they're fascinating. Bit difficult though.

Perhaps there's another story there - when you find the solution to the mystery.

Enough for now.

Thanks for posting it here. It was a good read.
Waz

I've been interested for a long time in mapping those woods, and, as I explained, the whole reason I followed that stream was to try to discover how my sense of direction had been so badly wrong the previous time I was in the area. But maybe, for the reader's experience, I have laid too much emphasis on describing the route. On the other hand, if I were reading this, I would want to map it myself: not on the first read, perhaps, but I'd want to know that I could if I wanted to.

(Maybe providing a map actually would help. People could glance at it, get an overall view, and then concentrate on the description.)

As I said to Wilma in the journal conversation, I'm glad for my own sake that I didn't get out of the bog and arrive home. The fairly long walk ahead of me, even after I attained the main path, helped to relax me. Perhaps if I try to add that sentiment to the account it will provide a mechanism to tie in that part of the tale?

Alien and threatening is a good description. I'd heard of this type of bog, but I'd never experienced anything like it before. And it was certainly threatening.

The 'unexplained features', such as the odd clearings, the plank bridge, and that structure? The clearings are old, fitting in with the artificial causeway, ditch, and long hill (which I think is at least partly artificial). I don't imagine I'll ever discover what lies behind the bridge and the roofless hut. In fact, I haven't been into that end of the woods since.

Do I need to improve my description of the mature woodland? You can usually see quite a distance between the trees. And yet they're close enough that there's very little undergrowth. This leads to a sense of openness, which is, perhaps, why I've always felt perfectly at ease in there, even when I didn't know exactly where I was.

The time my mother and I came out on the opposite end of the woods was disconcerting, certainly, but hardly scary. We were intrigued. We wanted to know how we'd managed to do it. We felt like turning back immediately to discover where we'd gone wrong. But we didn't have the time.

What I'm trying to convey is that, although I'd never been on exactly that route before, it was all, in my mind, home ground. The thought of danger had never crossed my mind until I fell into that stream in the middle of that vast bog. And it was vast.



Thanks for your comments.

I'll consider some tweaks, which does seem to be all you're suggesting.

TRiG.

TRiG,

I'm a big fan of Stephen King, and I thought this had a feel of some of his stories. It certainly had me on the edge of my seat. I was waiting for something awful to happen. I'm glad it didn't and you got home safely.

Thanks, F.

I've never read S. King. Glad you enjoyed this.

TRiG.

Mr King doesn't just write shock horror stories, your tale reminded me of a yarn called The Girl Who Loved Tom ..somebody or other - a baseball player I think. She was a little girl who got lost in the woods, and the fear was rather like your own. Very well written - your story that is, but if you can get a copy of the King thing I'm sure you'll see the likeness in style.

Hey - there could be money to be made there.

For a start, I didn't realise this was what a bog was. I'd always thought it was just soggy ground, not realising it meant a lake under the vegetation and now I am to understand there are different kinds of bogs? It fascinates me, this. I'm going to have to do a bit of reading up on this now


W

'Twas a vast sponge, Wilma.

The strange structure, which I didn't understand at the time, was almost certainly a hide for culling deer. I discovered this the other day, when I was shown another deer hide in the same woods.

TRiG.

Hi there TRiG!

Just posting to let you know that this great piece of writing has been picked from AWW to appear in this week's issue of . Congratulations!

Bel

I somehow missed you post Bel, and have only just discovered the Post version.

TRiG.