Music to accompany Lookout + “the right path” excerpt
Lookout is currently in the beta-reading stage, which means that along with pitches and queries, I’m kinda just sitting on my hands. So please, here! Let us enjoy some music while we wait.
This is a playlist of music that either directly inspired my writing of Lookout, or just fit the themes of this book way too well to keep off a book-themed playlist.
Songs to do with nature, fire, death, loss, big world grief, or big world rebirth. The kind of music you’d want to hear when you’ve spent two months alone on top a mountain, what it feels like to walk through a shattered world, or what it feels like to find hope again.
If you’re interested: want to hear my writing playlist too?
DAY 107 – 0850
I heard it again.
Even stronger this time.
The morning fog was thick. Thicker than usual. I couldn’t see farther than two trees ahead of me. The nearby shrubs and rocks glittered with frost from the light of my headlamp. August frost at seven thousand feet. The seasons here are deceptive. Fall here starts early. Winter sneaks in.
I tore down my tent and boiled a cup of cowboy coffee. I sipped for a moment, breathed warm air onto my hands. Onset of a headache and a sore throat—I shouldn’t have smoked. Hoping that’s all it was. I pulled my tuque down tighter over my ears. My breath vaporized and joined the fog. Time was about 0500, just shy of an hour from sunrise—plenty of time to hike back before 0800 weather report, but I was nervous about the fog. While it wasn’t the most difficult trail, it’s pretty overgrown. I had to backtrack several times. And that was without the fog.
No doubt it would all be burnt off by the morning sun, maybe eight or nine at the latest. But I didn’t have that kind of time. I had to get back to my post.
In a fog like this any direction could be any other.
So I went back the way I came, best I could pick it out, guided by my compass and map, headlamp shining in the morning mist.
The trail seemed even more overgrown than before. Quieter, too. I came upon a fallen log across the path that I thought looked familiar, remembered hobbling over. I vaguely remembered walking past that rock—I think that’s where I stopped to tie my shoe. I stared at it for a while before continuing on.
I came upon a clearing, one where I thought I saw Mount Treachery on the horizon, unsure if it were the same. Impossible to tell. It took me a while to find the trail at the other end of the clearing—then it was a blind cover of endless trees, tall monoliths that seem to rise into oblivion like the columns of some ancient ruins.
Until I came upon what seemed to be a fork. I’d guess this was about halfway along my way back. I don’t remember seeing the fork on the way out, but I suppose I wouldn’t have seen it from this direction.
Then, without much consideration or deliberation—I suppose you could call this a gut instinct—I went left.
I went left for about twenty feet, maybe more, feeling confident in my decision, this was indeed the trail, when it hit me.
No.
I paused in my track. I looked behind me. I looked down what I thought was my path. I felt it again. It reminded me of the kind of feeling I’d get way back when, whenever Lindsey was sick or injured or sad and I just knew it, innately, intrinsically, intuitively. See, there’s a gut feeling, and then there’s this. I want to make the distinction clear. This was no gut instinct: my gut had told me to go left. This was something else entirely. This was a revelation. An epiphany. A warning, even. I had made some kind of error. And someone, or something, told me so. I looked down at the ground. Nothing felt out of place. I looked above me. I swear, I remember that tree with the odd-looking knob that reminded me of an old man’s crooked nose. Or maybe they were all just too similar to tell.
I kept going, despite the strange feeling. I knew I was right. My gut was telling me so.
I walked another five, maybe ten steps before I heard it again. Stronger, this time. No. It was damn near yelling by now. I heard it in my throat, this time. A little sour, like rancid milk. I scanned the brush. Was I being followed?
I turned again to look behind me and I can’t tell you what it was or why or how, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt this was not the way, despite my original inclination to go left. My own directive was being overridden. I walked back and came to the point of intersection and, this time, corrected course and walked right.
The feeling subsided. It went quiet. I walked on. About half a mile later I came upon a cairn that I distinctly and undoubtedly remember from yesterday—I know so because of the mossy sides and the half-moon-shaped rock on top. I sighed a great joy of relief. I sat there yesterday to eat a granola bar and write a few lines of bad poetry.
I walked past the cairn and on and on and then maybe another half mile or mile until I came upon another fork, and this time I paused, and considered. I had an inkling but I didn’t have confidence. My gut, as it seemed, couldn’t be trusted. My inner compass was faulty. I pulled out my real one—not sure what good it would do. I pulled out my map. No help—these little forks and side-trails just weren’t marked. I put it away.
Instead, I listened. Then, without thinking too much harder about it, I closed my eyes and whispered aloud: “Which way?” I figured if this whatever it was wanted to speak to me this badly, I may as well listen.
And almost instantly it answered.
Right.
I swear, I would have chosen left again. I studied the two diverging paths for another while and shook my head and shook out my knees and took a sip of water. The left path looked like the right one. Then just as if to test this unusual compulsion, I took a step in the left and supposedly wrong direction, and immediately felt that same voice from before. Affirming. No.
And so, against everything I knew or thought I knew about orienteering and trailfinding and trusting my own gut—I walked along the right path.
Half an hour later I was back up at my tower.
