In The Beginning

by Richard Webber

  Chapter Two

  When I started my journey I knew that before me lay nothing but a barren wilderness. Once I left behind the rich fields and abundant streams of my home I did not expect to find water, food or shelter until I reached the green lands of the east. But as I went forward into the unknown, I could not get two questions out of my mind.

  How far would this wasteland continue? Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing this for certain. I went forward on blind faith alone, trusting that I could safely reach the green lands on the far side. The other question that preyed on my mind was the one which haunted me; the one which I feared to even think about. Who would I find if I was able to make it to the other side?

  Our father had been willing to tell my brother and me just a little about the others. He discussed them with us once, and this was only because of my brothers’ persistent and irritating questioning about if there were any other people living in the world.

  Father had been obviously uncomfortable and hesitant, which in itself was a rare occurrence. He told us that other humans did exist on the far side of the wasteland, but they were different from us. He said they were more plentiful in numbers and dangerous to each other, though they were not dangerous to us. Father said he had realized very soon after he and my mother moved to their new homeland, where the others had been living, that the differences between us and them were significant, not only in our physical makeup, but in our innate behaviors and thought processes. For our families’ safety he had decided to send them away.

  He had not wanted to say anything else, and he was in obvious distress and seemed so sad. His statements confused us and brought up even more questions in our minds, but though we were more curious then before, because of his obvious discomfort we had not pressed him any further.

  For a long time we had discussed what our father said, and tried to figure out what he actually meant. How could they be so different from us if they were also human? Why were they dangerous to each other but not us? How could he send them away?

  Over time, as I grew older and became busier with work and never saw any evidence of the other people, my curiosity faded. I was young, and never thought I would need to leave home or meet another human being outside my family.

  In hindsight it was ridiculous to think that I had not been more curious about the other humans, but it was now abundantly clear to me why no travelers visited our land from the east. After I left my home with its plentiful water, woodlands and meadows, I quickly entered a land that no human could hope to live in for long. Travel through perhaps, if you could carry enough food and water, but since there were no springs or plants, it would be impossible to live off the land. It truly was a barren wasteland.

  When I left home I did not know how long I would need to make my food and water last, but I never dreamt I would travel this far with no signs of life. While my father had told me the desert stretched to the east for many days, I had not taken this information to heart, and I had foolishly assumed the journey would take no more than fourteen or so days. Since I started my journey with a good amount of food and an inaccurate idea of how long I would travel, in the beginning I thoughtlessly took my normal daily amounts of food and water.

  During the first days of my journey I began each morning by breaking my fast with bread and water and some fruit and nuts. My parents had taught us that it was important to eat well before you started the day’s work, and the fruit and nuts gave my body strength that it could not obtain just from eating bread. This meal was similar to a breakfast that I would have at home with my family, though not nearly as elaborate.

  I also drank generously to give my body plenty of water before I started traveling for the day. I would then begin walking, traveling through the day and taking short breaks only when I felt the need for rest. At home we would take a longer break in the early afternoon during the heat of the day, since this was when we were least productive. In the desert it made little sense to rest at this time since there was no shade, so I continued onward through the heat.

  At home we would have our second meal of the day after our afternoon break, and then continue on with our work through the day until the sun began to set. The second meal would give us the strength to continue with our work through the long afternoon. This meal would include bread like the morning meal, but we would also have olive oil and herbs with the bread, as well as cooked and raw vegetables, cheeses and fruit. I began to salivate as I thought back to those meals which I had considered so simple at the time, but now thought of as a feast.

  For the first part of my journey I tried to make the afternoon meals similar to what I would eat at home. In the late afternoon after the sun had dropped in the sky, I would sit and rest while I drank water and ate some bread, cheese and fruit. Since I ate out of habit I did not ration my food during those early meals, and I would have given anything now for the taste of cheese or fresh fruit. After I had eaten, drank, and rested my body for a time, I would continue walking. I would travel until the sun went down and I could no longer see enough to keep my bearings straight.

  I didn’t feel the need to continue on in the dark, since I had been confident in the beginning that I would reach the end of my journey within two weeks. When night fell I would find a comfortable spot to lie down, behind a larger rock or under some dead bushes. It didn’t matter to me as long as I was sheltered from the endless wind. I didn’t worry about predators, since it was so desolate in the wasteland that there was nothing alive to prey upon me.

  The first ten days were the exact same; eat, walk, eat, walk, sleep. On the eleventh day I awoke and it occurred to me that I had seen no change whatsoever to the horizon. I suddenly realized that I had been a fool, and the wasteland was going to continue for a much longer period than I had imagined.

  I stopped eating food that morning. This decision was easy to make, since I had eaten so much during the first ten days of my journey that my food supplies were almost gone. By this time I had only one loaf of bread, a third of the cheese, and a few handfuls of nuts and dried fruit remaining. I went that entire day without eating anything. I was quite surprised when I awoke the next morning and was still not hungry. I went another day, and when I awoke the next morning I had only mild hunger which was relieved by a mouthful of bread and a morsel of cheese.

  From this point onward, instead of eating twice a day as I had done all my life, I decided I would eat only when I was actually hungry, and I would eat only what my body needed to get by. I began rationing my food this way, and the results amazed me. Though I almost stopped eating, taking food only when my body indicated that it was needed, I had no ill effects. I had no overwhelming hunger, no weakness, and no loss of strength. I could have eaten more, and it would have tasted good and been satisfying, but my body obviously didn’t require all the food I had been eating out of habit.

  Once I discovered my ability to go without eating through the simple testing of my body’s actual requirements, I decided to try the same experiment for both my drinking and sleeping needs. I needed to discover what the real requirements of my body were; to identify anything I had been doing thoughtlessly throughout my life out of habit or a perceived need that had been put upon me by my parents.

  My continued strength after two days with almost no food had given me the confidence to try the next step. That very night I had not lain down and rested. Prior to this, though I had never been weary from my long hours of travel, as night approached I stopped to rest. I had done this only out of habit; because every other night of my life when night came I had slept.

  The first night I continued walking was a revelation. When darkness fell I was not tired from the exertion of walking through the day, nor was I actually sleepy. As I continued on through the night I expected something to happen; that my legs would tire, that I would run out of energy, or that I would become fatigued and need to stop and sleep. It never happened. I continued traveling, using the stars to keep my bearings as I walked eastward. To walk t
hrough the night gave me a sense of power.

  When the sun came up I broke my fast with a bite of bread and took a short break, and then I continued onwards. As when I experimented with my eating requirements, I wanted to continue until my body told me it needed to rest. I walked through the day, stopping only briefly to do what was necessary for my physical needs, and I kept walking into the night. That night I did become a bit weary, and when I stopped to rest I realized I felt the need to sleep. I lay down when the moon was high in the sky, over halfway through the night, and I awoke that dawn feeling absolutely refreshed.

  This now became my normal pattern for resting. I would stop when I realized I needed a break, walk when I was refreshed and sleep only when I was tired. My body quickly established a rhythm of sleeping every other night for just a few hours.

  I was glad my body wanted to sleep during the nighttime, even though it was cooler and more pleasant to walk during the night. Though I had yet to see any signs of life, either human or animal, I needed to keep watch for this possibility, and even with my excellent eyesight, signs could be difficult to see in the dark.

  Since I knew water was so important for survival, especially in this desert environment, I was worried that this would be the area where my body failed me. Unfortunately, I had already drunk the greater share of my supply when I began the experiment of severely limiting my water intake.

  I started to drink only when I was consciously thirsty, and I drank only what I needed to quench my thirst. My intake immediately dropped to almost nothing. Even though I walked through a desert, I needed to drink only rarely. This made me angry with myself for squandering my supplies earlier in the journey, because by this time I had less than half a water skin left.

  I was delighted to have found these powers. I was discovering strength in myself that I had never dreamed existed, and I loved testing myself to uncover the limits of my body and mind. The realization that I didn’t require the food, water and rest I had assumed I needed to survive made me realize that I should question every other assumption I held about my life. In order to understand who I was, I needed to re-evaluate everything I knew or thought I knew about myself, my parents, the things I had been taught, and even the very way I thought.

  From this point forward I would test myself in every aspect of my life. I no longer wanted to do anything just because I had been doing it my entire life, often with no thought as to the purpose or reason. I made a conscious decision to reach an understanding of myself during my trek through this harsh land. I decided that whether I lived or died out here, I needed to make sense out of my past and know who I was. Only by knowing myself could I control who I would become.