Composition 160 

A personal narrative. 

We were excited young sixteen-year-olds with too much energy and too little to spend it on, so my best friends Kate and Sophie and I went to the popular walk through a big green forest on the side of a steep hill near our house. Many people would go to stroll or run up the big hills, and round the three-kilometre loop, but on this doomed day we foolishly decided to walk through the forest and make our way to the other side using the path less travelled. 

 We saw an opening into the woods and decided to leave the path and go in.  Thick shrubbery, bushes and thistles surrounded the forest. Once inside a feeling of regret set in but it was too late, I wasn’t going to be the one to chicken out. We trudged through the overgrown greenery on the forest floor heading straight up the middle of the forest knowing that if we kept straight, we would safely exit the forest onto the path once again. It was fool proof, we were in the middle of a loop, we had to come across the path at some stage. Or so I thought.  

As we stumbled over tree stumps and through bushes full of briars, we chatted about Sophie’s new boy drama, with Kate constantly behind, struggling to keep up with our slow pace because of her short legs and her thick black hair always covering her eyes.  

‘I really like Bryan, but he used to like Sarah, why didn’t she go out with him? What’s wrong with him? There must be something up with him if she didn’t want to date him. Also, what if he still likes her? What if he likes her more than he likes me and breaks up with me to date her? I’d never be able to show my face in school again.’ 

‘I don’t know Sophie, I’m sure he likes you more, he wouldn’t do such a thing.’ 

What I really wanted to say and what I and no doubt Kate were thinking was we don’t care about your silly boy drama anymore. With her flowy brown hair, long legs and piercing, green eyes Sophie had a new boy every week, I often wondered why she worried so much about them, they’re not going to be around for very long anyways. 

I was leading the group as we walked, the orange sun was low in the sky and the breeze started to pick up, I felt something drop on my nose before I had time to react, another one hit my forehead. The cold rain started falling so heavily that it had already fought its way through the thick foliage above us. Of course, not one of us brought a rain jacket or an umbrella so we staggered on through the uneven, overgrown bushes and briars. ‘Well, this is just fantastic! Aoife are we nearly at the other side yet, my hair will go all frizzy if it gets wet.’ 

‘We’ve been in here for about forty minutes, and I think that we’re still going straight-ish so surely we’ll be out soon’ I didn’t know why Sophie was asking me as if I was Bear Grylls and I knew where we were going, I thought we would be well out the other side by now but the bushes got too thick to go through a while back so we went left and I’ve been going slightly right any chance I could after that to get us back on track but now I’m afraid I’ve over shot the pass and am completely off course. 

I wouldn’t even be able to tell if we were walking in circles because everything looks the same! 

‘Aw feck it!’ Kate let out a squeal, ‘I caught my fecking leg on a briar, I’m after cutting my leg and tearing my favourite tracksuit bottoms’  

‘Aw no, are you ok? Is your leg bleeding?’ Sophie shouted over her shoulder back to Kate who was now trailing behind. 

‘I don’t care about my leg; I only bought these pants last week on sale! The sale is over now, I’ll never get a pair so cheap again.’ Kate sobbed.  

I glanced back at her to see if she was still following us, I couldn’t tell if she was crying over the torn tracksuit bottoms or if it was just the rain on her face, but there was nothing we could do to salvage them now. We could have a tracksuit bottom funeral to make her feel better when we got out of this forest and back home. 

As I raised my gaze from the forest floor to make sure I wasn’t about to walk into a tree, my eyes fell upon the most elegant, peaceful creature I had ever seen. A doe was about 30 metres in front of us grazing on a patch of grass. The girls stopped abruptly behind me spotting the magnificent beast as well. We stood there for about 30 seconds watching as the deer went about her business calmy in her natural habitat, before Kate tried to readjust her balance and stood on a twig which snapped in half and sent the deer racing through the forest never to be seen again. I felt our moods had lifted even in the pouring rain, after seeing such a beautiful animal. 

After an embarrassingly long time I realised that as we got closer to the edge of the forest the shrubbery got thicker preventing us from leaving. Every time we got close to the edge, I had changed our direction to get around the thick shrubs instead of going through it, now we would have to produce some Tarzan moves and swing from vines to get out of here. Or we could just bear the pain of the thistles and briars and try walk through the thick shrubs. I led the way hoping and praying there wasn’t a mink or a badger living under the bushes, waiting to bite half my leg off if I accidentally stood on his tail. 

Thankfully we all got out with all legs fully intact. A sense of relief flooded over me as I stumbled out onto the wet gravel path, the girls cheered in celebration as we joked about not having to call the police to send a helicopter to search for us anymore. We had been stuck in the tiny forest for two and a half hours! The only problem now was we were on the wrong side of the loop and had to walk half of the walk to get back to the house. 

‘Should we go back through the forest again?’ I joked as we made our way down the hill, exhausted and soaked. 

‘Ha, very funny Aoife, all I want to do is go home and cry’ Kate said, mourning her ripped tracksuit bottoms. 

Once we got home, I made us all hot chocolate and we made a toast in celebration of the short but incredible life that Kate’s pants had lived, and we promised to never walk through the forest ever again.