Ugh. My head feels numb and weird. I just want to lie here. My confusion doesn't improve when I feel and smell grass on my face and hands, and can hear what sounds like waves crashing. I am dazed but I get up in a sitting position and look around. Ow! Headache!
What? The? Fuck?
I'm sitting on a maybe 50-80 meter wide strip of grass, with sea waves crashing on the wide stone and boulder beach in front of me, and there is a fucking jungle behind me. After just staring around me for a while the main thoughts are:
"Where the fuck am I?" Closely followed by: "How the fuck did I get here? And why am I wearing my work clothes?"
Fucking headache!
I always change clothes at work. Although the last thing I remember is being at work, and taking some tools with me to go up on the roof above my office to try and locate and fix an annoying metallic sound. And I'm still in my work clothes with my tools in my pocket, and Sweden sure doesn't have bloody jungle like this. Have I fallen and hit my head or something? Is this some kind of dream? The nature is pretty enough for it, but shouldn't there be a pretty girl too? Maybe surfing? Or slowly walking out of the waves in a bikini with a diving mask and snorkel?
Yeah, not even in my dreams. Hardly surprising.
There is no bumps on my head, although half my head feels numb and I got a headache. I check my smartwatch and the date makes no sense, but then the battery say 12 days left. Another item on my growing WTF list. I charged the watch yesterday, and it should last for about 21 days. What the fuck happened the last 9 days?! I check my mobile phone and my work mobile phone. My work phone has 5% left and beeps at me, but my private phone is dead. Figures, and match with my watch. No messages or new email, and no mobile coverage at all. Shit. How can there have been no messages or emails during nine days?! There are no weird files deleted that I can restore. I put the phone in airplane mode before turning it off to save what little power there is left. If I get to high ground I might get a signal.
An loud echoing animalistic roar instantly makes all thoughts evaporate and change to 'What the FUCK was THAT?!' as I jump to my feet and start to really look around me. It sounded big. And angry. And not to distant. Sea at my back. Thick jungle and jungle covered mountains in front of me. Open grassy land to the left and a rocky grass covered knoll along the beach. A vegetation covered high rocky ridge going all the way into the sea on my right with many rocky parts cutting out from the jungle and a few cliffs up high above the jungle, with huge rocky outcrops poking up from the sea like small islands. Another mighty roar reverberate and sounds like it comes from somewhere front-leftish, which makes the decision for me and I start to walk to my right. That rocky ridge and outcroppings looks nice and just a few hundred meters away. And quite steep in some parts. And very high. Hopefully whatever is making that roar can't climb very well. My quick walk turns into a jog, which turns into a faster jog. A screwdriver jumps out of my pocket and I turn around to pick it up. And I realise I'm in black work pants and a high vis yellow and black jacket. Out in the open and moving on greenish sandy grass and outlined against the sea. I quickly take of my jacket and bundle it up as I leg it to the ridge while contemplating the situation: Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!
The moisture between my legs is just sweat. As I get closer the ridge looks higher, but still climbable for some parts, and less jungle than the jungle and more vegetation and low trees clinging to rocks. Shit! Are there creepy crawlies? Snakes? Shit!
The rocky ridge quickly becomes steep and hard or plain impossible to navigate, and I start to occasionally need to grab the plants to help me climb certain passages, but adrenaline and fear helps before I try to calm my mind and start to be careful and methodical. Not easy when fear is still there, but then again, fear of falling, grabbing something thorny or getting a hand of face full of venomous snake are just other types of fear. I just keep climbing until I reach a ledge a bit up the ridge, and then I just sit there breathing heavy and trying to calm down.
I look back and see the grassy land is the beginning of a large valley cutting into the land and mountains, as the sea shore just continue into the distance with more mountains inland from it. Long shadows cover the land and it looks like it's early morning. Sure, the view is pretty, especially with all the flowers and there is a wide but fairly shallow looking river winding its way out into the sea, but calming down doesn't become easier when I see what looks like long necked freaking dinosaurs grazing the land.
Dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs.
What? The? Fuck?
I try to locate my spectacle case. My eyesight isn't bad and I used to have excellent vision, so I don't need to wear glasses while driving, reading or using a computor, but my eyes have changed as I got older and the spectacles makes everything a bit sharper. I put them on, and they're smudgy as I see far worse. My confusion increase as I take them off and they're totally clean, but I actually see far better without them. What? I shift back and forth, and cover one eye then the next. No doubt about it. I have excellent vision without my spectacles. Huh. Another thing to add to my long 'WTF?' list. But I just sit there and stare out over the landscape, and on the freaking Dinosaurs grazing and moving about.
I don't think I'm going to find any mobile coverage. As much as I loath the concept, serious time travel back in time seems to be option number one on a list with no option two. I'm enough of a nerd to know that time travel back shouldn't be possible. Time isn't a direction like height or distance. Time is our perception of cause and effect from events and chemical interactions, and they don't go perfectly in reverse. The trillions upon trillions of atoms that makes up my body, used to be somewhere else, and not that long ago.
But that is freaking Dinosaurs grazing, and this sure isn't Sweden. What happened during those 9 days?! I'm so far up shit creek that I'm neck deep without neither a paddle nor a canoe. The optimist inside try to point out that 'at least the weather is warm and nice', but I'm Scandinavian, so beside that just meaning that I need to stay in the shade to avoid a bitchin' sunburn sooner or later, I see the dark clouds that the wind is bringing in from the sea. Shit. That looks like a big open ocean. I look at the watch barometer, and it is going down. Shit. I put the watch in battery saving mode to make the most of the battery as charging seems unlikely. 31 days left. The good news is that my high vis jacket is good against rain and wind, and I have a folded up soft hat in one of its pockets. The bad part is the colours and that I'm high on a ridge where I really don't want to be visible. And the shape of that flying birdy thing far over there that seems to be flying backwards, probably means it's another dinosaur, and big. Very big. With a long sharp beak, claws and big pointy teeth. I need to find shelter from the worst of the weather and make sure I'm not too visible even from the air.
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I explore the ridge a bit more and the jungle can be really dark and thick, with ferns and mosses at certain places, but I find a way up on to the crest so I can see the other side, but that doesn't help my mood. Just more jungle and rocky ridges with spires and outcrops going out to the sea, although there is flattish land beyond them with hills in the distant haze. I can probably see 15km fairly clear and another 15km in the haze, in both directions. So at least 30km wide area, with nothing that looks like roads, farmland, masts or infrastructure. I wonder if there are other humans here? Is there a village somewhere? And how will I find it? Can I actually move around without becoming dinosaur snack? In the future I need to go higher to see more, and more inland.
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I explore the difficult rocky terrain towards the beach I came from and the ground basically go between sloping, to steep, to vertical, to overhangs, along with an unhealthy amount of 'don't slip'. I try to go around obstacles instead of up or down, and more or less steep ravines is another problem, along with creeks in the bottom. Seems to rain a lot here. There are somewhat flatter areas - well less sloping and not big - but this is not terrain that is easy to move around in. Although going up and following the crest seems like a fairly easy route as it's mainly low bushes and a few trees. Still too visible. Very pretty and impressive nature, and I have done day trips in similar nature on vacations, but I sure don't feel any sense of safety here. I want to know what is lurking, but I also don't want to know what is lurking.
I work my way around a huge cliff that is too wide to be called just a spire, I end up on a dead end large flattish area. The cliff sides go up basically vertical for 4 to 8 meters on three sides, and there is even a bit of overhang on a couple of parts. I have to back track. Again. I can't keep doing this. Actually, this might be an okay spot for a camp. The ground is hard and mostly smooth rock with hardly any rubble and that cliff overhang in the back have a bit of drip edge, so the rain should fall instead of following the rock face down, and I don't want to waste more time just wandering around without aim. This is higher up than the first ledge with a good view over the beach and grassland through a couple of tree tops, and not too damn hard to reach. I think. Climbing up the last meters here was tricky enough, and if I going to stay here I need to build something like a 3.5-4 meter ladder I can pull up, and maybe chip away on the rock a bit to make it harder to free climb where I did. And maybe fix that trail a bit too, as slipping down it is a possibility and that would hurt and be dangerous. There sure don't seem to be any other way to this spot with out serious climbing or rappelling skills.
There is a screeching bird doesn't like me being here as I'm just 30 meters or so from a tree that have a nest, but he is a normal size bird and isn't attacking me, so tough luck for him. This is my spot now, so I give him the bird. I need to scout the area better and the route up from the beach, but there doesn't seem to be much options and the trail here had several sharp turns, hard rock to scramble up for, and a few tricky passages that should make it extremely hard for any big dino's getting up here, and smaller ones should at least find this last climb too hard. Still, I have to make sure that is the case and should make some kind of blockage across one of the tighter passages to make that harder, and make sure that I can get up here easily enough in a hurry. And find my way back here. Hence that ladder needs to be good, and I need to mark the trail. Getting lost and trapped would be bad. It seems likely that I'll need to run the trail sooner or later.
Actually, I dislike the area being this big as something dangerous will have plenty of space if they reach it, and it is more exposed to the air and more visible from the grass strip and beach. Good view works both ways, and there are flying things that seem dangerously big. This area is about 16-18 square meters behind the cliff faces and maybe 10 more square meters jutting out and exposed, spread over four different reasonably flat levels, but there is pretty much no way up or out from here without a long ladder. If I get a monster up here I'm trapped. There is no doubt that this place gets plenty of sunlight as it is hot, but I should be reasonably protected from wind and rain if I make some kind of shelter. Lots of leaves will also hide me.
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My keyring have a small multi tool, but a 4 cm blade isn't really optimal for cutting branches and big leafs, but it's better than the two screwdrivers or the adjustable wrench. Hitting branches with a wrench in a jungle feels utterly stupid, but it might help. My improvised ladder is bad, but better than climbing, and I manage to find quite a few dried branches and what might work as tinder as I cut down what I need, and I make sure to bring much of it along and store it as protected as possible. Surprisingly the under brush seems to be fairly dry. I strip a few fern looking things to use as cord, and as the rain starts to fall I quicken my pace. The work gloves help protecting my hands, and I really don't want to get sore infected fingers. The way I build my shelter is more a steep roof with plenty of overlapping leaves for rain protection, and I add a low side wall for wind protection, but I leave a gap between so I can look outside. When the rain really starts to fall I sit under a leafy shelter hugging my knees, and can't help to feel depressed. I don't think this is a nightmare as dreams never make sense after, and I've tried to find errors. Everything seems to be too real.
"What the fuck do I do?! I don't think I will be able to get home, and I can't count on being rescued. So I will die here sooner or later. Probably sooner and really gruesomely while being eaten."
Sequences from those first Jurassic Park movies flash inside my head. This suck. I have no idea about the time, and the watch doesn't help as I can't remember what it was before, and it sure isn't synced to local time. I'm thirsty and I realise water and food will quickly be an issue. There is rain streaming down the rock and from the sky, so I cup my hands and drink as much as I can. I still might get diarrhea from it. Most of the rain just continues down, but the rain collects in a couple of large puddles hollowed out by rain over time, so I hurry out into the rain to quickly scrub them as clean as possible with leaves and my hands. It might actually be a good idea to soak leaves to see if they work as toilet paper once dried. The soaking might remove dangerous chemicals from the surface, and I don't want to have a rash between my butt cheeks. Considering the terrain and probably rainforest I figure that rain won't be unusual, so if I can collect rain I won't have to drink water from the ground. I'll probably get sick fast, and maybe die from parasites. Slow and painful death? No thanks!
As I get back into my shelter the question returns: What the fuck do I do?!
Giving up and just take a swan dive from one of those high places into the jagged cliffs below?
No. That will always be an option, but I am not a quitter. Just giving up is not an option. Yet. Living here alone and scared for the rest of my life really doesn't seem worth it, but I'm not just giving up. Not yet.
But; what do I do?
I need to learn how to make a fire, and catch something to eat and grill it well. There should be fish in the ocean or river, and I might be able to trap small animals. Standing along the river with some kind of fishing rod and waving it about feels like a terrible idea for time and danger. I'm not some survivalist or outdoorsy person although I have hiked, but it has been day trips or I've always used a stove and brought food along with me. And slept in a cabin, hiking shelter or tent. Although I have visited living history museum and seen shows on TV and Youtube. Guess I will have to try with that bow drill thingy. And I need to make some kind of fish trap or net. Which means I need to leave this ledge for the dangers below. And I need tools. I need tools to make tools.
"Shit, I'm going have to go all caveman. This will suck arse."
Just staying here and hope for other people to show up is a loosing strategy too, and they might be hostile, or just pretty much cavemen, so I need to see them before they see me. I need to get high and try to see any kind of sign of human presence, but I need to prepare so I have water, food, tools and shelter before I start to explore.
One thing at a time. Make tools to get food and fire. Try to store rainwater. I should carve down a good straight branch and make a spear. Fire hardened tip was a thing, so I have to try that when I eventually and hopefully start a fire. I should probably make two spears as I will probably fuck up the first. Then climb down to the beach and river and get stones for some kind of axe, knife or spear tip. And collect materials for a trap and something that works as cordage. Maybe make it from that tall grass or leafs? It doesn't need to last. One of those cone-in-a-tunnel deal fish trap baskets? Then return and try to make a bow drill thing and make fire, and make tools and so on. Then return back down and try placing the trap, and bring stuff back up to improve my shelter and make it harder to see. I need to break up the colour and make it look like just a part of the cliff. Shit. Chopping down trees will have a distinct sound, and might attract dinosaurs. But no real choice. Rain would help to mute and cover any noise, but that applies to dinosaurs as well. Still, I shouldn't waste time and the rain.
"This will really really suck."
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