Coincidence rules our lives in many ways. When unexpected and unusual events occur, words like fate or God inevitably crop up in conversation. Half the world finds meaning in the most minor of accidents. The other half will tell you it is a self-centered point of view, seeing one's own experience as important or meaningful. Happenstance is just chaos having its way with our feeble little minds. I tend to agree with this latter group. I brush aside each accident with impunity. But recently, on a walking tour of England's Lake District, a series of coincidences made this process much more difficult.
My friend, Johann, and I had been hiking for five days. We were blistered, sore and tired. Our host warned us that morning that the last group took twelve hours to hike the next leg over the mountains to the village of Boot. As we began our first ascent, up Scarth Gap Pass, clouds moved in and a steady rain began.
We slogged into Ennerdale, where dark plantations of pine forests were in the process of being harvested. Great machines grounded gears somewhere in the mist. A sign told us that the path was closed, that we were forbidden in the valley. Wary of other humans now, we hiked on, past the lonely Black Sail Youth Hostel, eerily empty and silent. The hostel's name stemmed from the pass ahead, which we eyed with trepidation.
As I stumped up the steep slope behind Johann, rain poured over the hills at us, soaking through my jacket and pants. We finally crested the second pass and slipped down the far side on slick stones and mud. After a break in Wasdale Head for lunch, we were forced back out into the rain. A long stretch of bleak moors separated us from our destination.
We were hoping for easier going than the morning, however, we took a wrong turn, and had to slop through the boggy moorgrass to get back on track. Due to this delay, another group of hikers became visible about a half mile behind us in the otherwise vacant landscape. As we passed the last crest of the hike, we spotted Burnmoor Tarn, complete with an abandoned lodge, a tiny black spot in the endless gray. "Looks like a horror movie set," Johann commented. Within a few minutes, as if to confirm this analysis, we stumbled upon a dead sheep.
The sheep was black, lying on its side in the middle of the trail, sodden with the rain. As we made our way around this disturbing object, another became visible. The second sheep was also directly on the trail, with its guts spilling into the mud. One dead sheep in the middle of the trail could be anything. But two? This smacked of human agency. Or the supernatural. A few other sheep lingered nearby, staring at us with big mournful eyes. What did they know?
We continued on, slightly frightened, but making light of the situation. Then, as we carefully forded the rushing stream by the tarn, the hikers behind us reached the sheep. We saw them huddle around the area, taking pictures. "They just made a classic horror movie mistake!" I laughed nervously. "They're in trouble now."
We continued past the abandoned lodge, the valley of Eskdale peeking through the mist and gloom ahead. I glanced back once in a while, noticing the four hikers behind us getting closer. And then, I looked back and they were gone. Swallowed by the marshes. I searched the open fields but there was no sign of them. "What the hell happened to them?" I began to panic. "Maybe they went into the lodge." Johann shrugged. "Maybe." I wasn't sure. Irrationality was beginning to take a hold on my brain.
We continued down the trail, joking about panthers having escaped from the zoo, the Hound of the Baskervilles, and scary Gothic murderers who would sacrifice us on the local stone circle. The rain picked up again and we slipped and squished our way down the last hill into the river valley. A road was reached. A farm was passed. The sounds of the hamlet of Boot filtered towards us through the rainfall. I made a last joke, mocking my own imagination.
"This is when the travelers think they're safe and then the axe-wielding maniac jumps out at them from the bushes." At that very moment, as if to shut my blasphemous mouth, a terrible howl drifted from the wilderness behind.
We double-timed it to the inn, our science wavering. My mind frantically created various stories from the three events. They each ended with Johann and I narrowly escaping certain death. The two dead sheep had become a herald of doom, a symbol of all that was unknown and frightening in the world.
Today, in the safety of my home, a thousand miles away, the experience has retreated to become just a creepy coincidence. The sheep were certainly put there by someone as a warning or a joke, and perhaps that is the real oddity of the situation, the real horror.
But the story as a whole continues to build up to something more. What? I don't know, and that's the real beauty of my encounter with the two dead sheep. It puts me in the in-between world of possibility. Unfortunately, coincidence closes that door for many people. Things become "fate" or "chaos." They stubbornly choose the rational or the irrational. The real joy is that coincidences like these make things uncertain. These events are where myth begins. From coincidence, fiction springs.
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