“A True Adventure” by David Hagerty

I should have realized we’d gone too far when the animals started talking to me.

We’d been binging our favorite reality show, Danger!, for ten hours straight when my girlfriend, Yeni, got bored and antsy.

“I’m sick of watching other people’s adventures,” she said. “Let’s do something.”

Even for a woman, Yeni was small, but she was fierce too, always craving some novelty.

“Like what?” I said.

She examined the living room of our condo as if it contained some hidden tunnel instead of beanbags and pizza boxes, then pointed across the street.

“Explore the woods.”

The developer of our complex planned it to encompass many acres in the Catskills, but when they ran out of money, some forest remained. I’d never ventured into it—why would I?—and tried to resist. I liked the adventure on TV better.

“Our fifty-inch is sharper than the real world.”

“That’s not reality.”

Yeni looked anything but outdoorsy in tights and white tennis shoes, both new and clean, styled for spin biking in our second bedroom, but she wedged her hands on her slim hips like all the fitness influencers she watched to show determination.

Instinctually, I resisted. We both held jobs as desk jockeys, writing code to make computers run, which left us little time for getting out. The last time we tried a sport—at an intra-office volleyball league—we both quit due to bruised forearms and sore palms. Then I recalled the motto of my favorite TV adventurer, Cliff McCardell, a veteran of the special forces with many years of survival training. “Find the true you with a true adventure.” Cliff was more he-man than I’d ever be—with khaki coveralls tailored to his muscular build, buzz cut hair kept Marine neat, plus a square jaw of blunt teeth—yet I couldn’t resist his call to action.

“How far do you want to hike?”

Yeni assumed a manly pose, hands on hips, feet apart, shoulders squared. When she wanted to, she could look pretty and feminine, but not when she was strong-arming me. “First, let’s set the rules of the game.”

“I thought you wanted to get away from gaming.”

“Just hiking is no challenge. We need to see what we’re capable of.”

With her macho resolve, she shamed me to agree: no food or water, no backpacks or maps, and definitely no technology. We’d live off what nature provided.

As we entered the woods, I glanced back at our row of townhomes, all decorated and landscaped, and felt superior to the mopes too civilized to risk the outside. The evergreens screened out the sunlight, making it dank and dark, with a thick carpet of dead needles that crunched underfoot and a smell like the air fresheners on my rearview. We walked a little way, bushwhacking like the outdoorsmen on TV, until we came to a river. I looked for a fallen log or narrows to cross it, but all I found were stepping stones, so we hopped between them. Halfway, I slipped on a mossy rock and submerged up to my ankle.

“Wring out the water,” Yeni said, “so it doesn’t chafe.”

Cliff never did that, but I sat on a fallen tree and made a show of squeezing my sock. Then I felt something crawling on my ankle: ants, dozens of them. When I tried brushing them off, they bit, leaving red welts on my pale flesh.

“This stinks,” I said, about my sock.

“But it’s real.”

Rather than resist, I put my shoe back on and marched after her. Our subdivision had flattened and smoothed the land, but the forest rose steep and uneven, with trip hazards hidden by leaves. A couple of times, I nearly faceplanted when I dragged my feet.

By the time we reached a ridge, I’d run out of breath. Yeni paused to look back over our town, which spread out below us like a pizza, each house a topping, then filmed it on her phone.

“They don’t show this on TV,” she narrated.

True, but my heel stung—badly. I unlaced my sneaker again to find a red blister and a patch of missing skin.

“I told you to dry out your sock,” Yeni said.

“How far are we going?”

“Till we find somewhere wild.”

On her orders, I loosened my laces and trudged onward—again. Pretty soon, the undergrowth got so thick we had to detour around it. By then, I had no idea where we were, only that we were descending another hill.

“You know how to get back?”

“There’s no adventure in that.”

“But how do we find a way out?”

Yeni searched for the sun, which hid amid the dense foliage, so we looked for lichen growing on the north face of tree trunks. Or was it south? We weren’t sure. Didn’t matter, since we couldn’t tell lichen from a dozen other mosses.

“What would Cliff do?” I asked.

“Forget about your TV superheroes. This is the real world.”

As my hunger fermented, I regretted our gung-ho ground rules but didn’t dare say as much to Yeni, who’d been raised by a single, feminist mom. Instead, I scanned the bushes for fruits or berries. I found only bugs and acorns, which my TV mentors said contained nutrients, but which disgusted me.

Meanwhile, Yeni located an animal path, so we followed it to a tangle of fallen logs and boulders. I tried to clamber over, but halfway, my foot got stuck between rocks. I pulled back to free it. Next thing I knew, I lay on the ground as Yeni loomed above me, filming.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Documenting. The accidents are always the most exciting scenes.”

As I sat up, I felt a dozen sore spots from my head to my hamstrings. When I tried to stand, my ankle hurt way worse.

“Can you walk?”

I didn’t want to admit my infirmity to Yeni, but I couldn’t hide my limp. Yeni told me to sit, then ripped off an inch of her shirt and wrapped it so tight I lost most feeling in my foot.

“How about now?”

With a branch as a walking stick, I could hobble.

“Let’s go back,” I said.

“We are.”

Except nothing looked familiar. We hadn’t met anybody since we’d set off, which meant we’d have to find our own way out. Overhead, a bird let out this shrill caw as if it had spotted some prey. I hoped that wasn’t us.

We kept moving—but slowly. I stopped every hundred steps to rest my ankle, which swelled under that tourniquet. Nobody on TV ever admitted how bad it hurt to sprain a joint.

“What if we can’t escape before night?”

With the sun obscured, I couldn’t even guess the time, but it definitely looked darker than when we set out. I checked my phone, but it had broken in the fall. When I asked to see Yeni’s, she said, “We agreed, no tech.”

“But you could pull up a map.”

“There’s no adventure in that.”

We walked. All the while I was thinking: what are we doing? We’re gamers, not explorers. Then I tripped and twisted my ankle even worse. My first test as a He-Man adventurer, and I’d failed. How wimpy.

“Since you can’t hike, let’s camp,” Yeni said.

She scanned the clearing for space to lie down, but it contained only rocks and pine needles.

“I’ll gather some branches,” she said. “You clear the ground.”

While she wandered off, I pushed aside the pebbles and pinecones with my stick, making enough space for us to lie side by side. Meanwhile, I started to shiver from the coming night. What could we use as blankets? On Danger! Cliff always brought extra clothes, but we hadn’t even worn sweaters. I scraped together some dried leaves, which smelled of growth and death, then looked for something to contain them. I found nothing, but the search set my mind to work.

Cliff once made a tea of tree bark. A plant might ease my pain and hunger. I scanned the undergrowth for roots and leaves to boil, then remembered we didn’t have any water or a pot, which set off my stomach even worse. Unlike Cliff, my confidence cracked under adversity. Then I spotted a bush with flowers shaped like trumpets and thick, green leaves. Cliff would eat such a thing when he couldn’t find any edible critters, so I pulled off a leaf. It smelled like feet and tasted bitter as crab apples. I couldn’t force myself to swallow more than a mouthful and hid the cud where Yeni wouldn’t see.

Pretty soon, I heard her crunching back through the brush, dragging several pine branches. When I pointed toward the clearing I’d made, she eyed it skeptically, then gave me the same look.

“Let’s make a fire,” she said.

I would have woven a blanket out of poison ivy if it had kept us warm, so I crutched around picking up dried twigs and leaves, then looked for some flint stones to ignite it. Like the moss, all rocks looked the same to me. When I struck several against each other, instead of sparking, they crumbled. When I rubbed two sticks together, all I got were splinters. How simple it would have been if we’d brought some matches or a lighter. That wouldn’t have exposed our lack of survival skills, would it?

By then, Yeni had draped the branches into a low mound and was filming it. Her shelter looked too small for two people, but I kept my critiques to myself since I felt useless as a camping companion.

That thought set my gut to cramping, and my mouth felt as dry as my chapped hands, reminding me I hadn’t drunk anything since we’d set out. I listened for running water, but instead I heard the wind in the trees. If only we’d hydrated at that stream where I fell in. I tried wringing out my filthy sock and bandage again, but even they had dried.

Once Yeni had footage for our adventure video, she pointed her camera phone toward me.

“Isn’t the great outdoors great?”

I faked a smile and gave her a thumbs up, yet as soon as she turned, I hunched over and willed my stomach to settle. Maybe that flower wasn’t so innocent after all—but what’s done is done.

To distract myself, I watched a squirrel nosing around our camp, looking for food. It acted as disappointed as I was, staring at me, begging. Then it spoke in a high voice like a preadolescent boy. “You gonna eat that?”

I knew that squirrels couldn’t talk outside Disney cartoons and fairy tales, but I noticed a pinecone sitting between us, so I flicked it toward the varmint. With wicked joy, it skittered off, swishing its bushy tail.

After Yeni had documented our suffering, I suggested we test her shelter. Really, I wanted to lie down, but I didn’t dare admit that.

“What about food?” she said.

“Not hungry.”

My stomach had contracted so much that I couldn’t stand up straight. Fortunately, Yeni allowed me to sack out solo while she foraged.

The ground felt hard and cold, and the roof hung claustrophobically close overhead, tickling my face with pine needles. Still, I could curl into a ball, which eased the cramping even as it revealed more bruises from the fall. I lay there for what felt like hours—though I’d lost all sense of time—until I heard Yeni crunching toward me again.

“You find anything to eat?”

Instead of answering, she huffed and stamped her feet.

I turned to see several deer surrounding the shelter. Compared to the ones in our subdivision, these looked hostile, their black eyes menacing. One lowered its head, which held a huge rack with points sharp enough to pierce flesh.

“You don’t belong here,” the stag said.

“I know. I don’t wanna be here.”

“You should go.”

“I will—as soon as my girlfriend gets back.”

How shameful, depending so much on a woman, which Cliff never needed, but that was my reality.

“Give me a minute—until my stomach settles.”

The stag studied me with those murderous black eyes, then huffed once.

“No more,” he said, but left.

I forced myself to stand and limped around looking for Yeni. Without knowing which way she’d walked, I picked the most open path and followed it.

Trees and bushes clawed my face, hooked my pants, pulled my hair. The woods were full of nature’s mischief. On TV, Cliff trailblazed with machetes, but since I had only my arms, I used those. Then the branches started creaking overhead. I called out a bunch of times, but all that answered was my own voice echoing through the forest. I came to another clearing, little different from our camp, and wondered if I’d circled back by accident, only the pile of rocks was no longer arranged in a ring.

My ankle throbbed. My skin stung. My heart pounded. Against my will, tears dripped down my cheeks, and my nose ran into my mouth. If actors could become governors and reality show stars could become president, why couldn’t I fake being a woodsman? Reality was proving way different from what it looked like on my big screen.

Then someone belched close by.

“Yeni?”

Another belch came from ground level, so I studied the dirt, fearful of finding her sick, too. All I saw was a frog in phosphorescent red and orange, which stared at me with more pity than those hostile deer, so I picked it up. It was as large as my hand and even more dense, its body protected by a thick, bumpy skin that nonetheless felt slick. I brought it close enough to sniff its musk. Even so, it never retracted its craggy head, just stared with bulging eyes.

“Don’t eat me,” it said, with a deep, authoritative voice that reminded me of Cliff.

“I won’t.”

“I’m poisonous, even to touch.”

“I’m only looking for a friend.”

“Put me down, and I’ll lead you to her.”

I lay the ancient monster back on the ground.

“Now clean your hands. If you touch your tongue, it could kill you.”

I did as it said, rubbing my palms in the dirt.

“Follow me,” the monster said.

Before I could ask where, it leaped away.

I trailed it through more bushes, thrashing away at overhanging limbs and tangled branches, but it moved faster than I ever could, finding passages too small for me. Then the forest opened up, and I stood beside a river with violet water that glistened in the sunlight. Without thinking, I fell to my knees and cupped my hands to drink.

“Don’t!” the frog said. “Remember, you’re contaminated.”

Close up, the stream scented of grape and rosemary, so I plunged my face in. It tasted even sweeter and more herbal than it smelled, and it relieved my dry tongue. I gulped water so fast that my stomach retched, then I tried again more slowly. Once I’d rehydrated, I watched the frog and awaited its directions—even as the water ran into my eyes and ears.

“Follow the stream. It will guide you out.”

“To where?”

It hopped away without answering.

In despair, I lay back on the damp earth, which smelled of strawberry and kiwi, like one of those candy commercials with flavors bursting from the landscape. That’s when I realized: I couldn’t trust my diseased mind, which allowed animals to speak and water to change colors. I needed help, but without even Yeni around, I had to minister to myself.

Cliff never acted so unsure. Even when stalking a bear or rappelling off a high ridge, he exuded confidence.

I closed my eyes until a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes swirled before me. I recalled some lyrics I heard as a kid: some people mislead you, others just leave you, alone in the woods. In the end, you have to decide what to do, all on your own.

I followed the river. At first, the way was easy, with flat, open terrain, but soon the stream descended through a tumbledown of boulders and debris. I slid over them on my butt to protect my ankle while the water moved toward a dense mist and a roar like an old-fashioned fan.

I came to a falls that looked impossibly tall, ending in a pool of roiling froth. I scanned for a way around the drop, but on both sides the cliff stretched as far as I could see. Below, a clearing in the forest glowed like a golden oasis.

I debated turning back for Yeni, but more than her company, I wanted to escape this magical forest. Then I recalled Cliff’s advice: that a river always flows downhill and eventually leads to civilization. For him, that meant a helicopter or a seaplane, but I’d settle for a dirt road.

Far below, the river flowed freely, without boulders or shallows to slow it. I imagined riding its current like a fallen log. If nothing else, it would speed me past all this sound and fury. I’d be saved or killed, the episode would end, and another would begin.

So I waded into the stream, which ran swift and strong, tugging at my tender ankle. I made a tripod with my stick, as Cliff taught, and moved in deeper, to my knees and then my thighs, while the current intensified. When I couldn’t resist its force, I held my breath and lay back, pinning my arms to my sides, crossing my legs at the shin, forming myself into a torpedo.

As I accelerated toward the falls, I heard my mentor’s voice.

“Discover the true you with a true adventure.”