Ideas, they say, come at moments of loneliness, or seclusion. People have written volumes of books while jailed by their fellow men, who regretted the inspiration gained by their enemies even as they were incarcerated. In 1963, from a jail in Birmingham during the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote several pivotal letters.
Not that I recommend going to jail as a way of coming up with ideas. There are less-punishing places to find inspiration. Places to get away from all the noise and smoke, dust and smells. A place to have quiet moments to think, to come up with new ideas, or to hope new ideas will germinate in the mind like the small, wavering stems of young corn plants.
"Just find any quiet, isolated place," they say, "and ideas will rush into your brain."
This is not to say that a person cannot still have ideas when everybody is on their case and situations around them are blowing up, with their parents screaming at each other, their wives asking them to wait a minute more for the egusi/melon soup to cook properly, their children not doing as they are told, their bosses unreasonable, money drying up like raindrops on Harmattan Day, and people not giving them the respect they deserve.
One still could come up with ideas in those horrible situations. The problem, though, is that under such circumstances the ideas would come out scrambled, like the patch of damp soil where a hen has used her claws to search for an elusive worm, with which she hopes to feed five starving chicks.
There is no debating, therefore, that being in a quiet place is the best way to imagine new ideas and new ways of accomplishing a dream, no matter how elusive that may have been in the past.
Nevertheless, finding a suitable nest for a solitary moment is becoming very difficult. One may have to think hard, search hard, perhaps drive a distance to locate quiet places suitable for a moment of reflection.
But since I had been thinking of this walk for months, perhaps years, I had an idea of where to go to find solitude. What freedom it would be to walk alone! The place I had in mind is a community park in Monroe, Connecticut called Wolfe Park. It is an area filled with tall trees, surrounding a lake the size of a soccer field.
When one of my brothers visited from Nigeria and I had taken him to the park, he had remarked how the Wolfe Park Lake resembled Nwangele Lake in Onitsha, Nigeria. As kids, we used to visit Nwangele and from a distance, and for no particular reason other than we were young, restless, and uncontrollable, throw rocks on a few toads and frogs that raised their heads above water. I remembered how quick those frogs were and how they would dive back into the water as the rocks left our palms.
Don't feel left out if you didn't know the town of Onitsha or Nwangele Lake. It doesn't really matter, because people have maltreated Nwangele, used it as a dump site and left it to dry out beyond recognition.
Anyway, Wolfe Park has a narrow pedestrian path that takes visitors up the hills and down steep valleys until they have walked right around the lake to come back to their original starting point.
Making up my mind to go for the walk was not an easy decision. The sky looked like it was going to open its doors and pour down buckets and buckets of rain. "Will it rain or not?" I asked myself as I looked up into the teary cloud.
Questions came into my head. Was it possible that what I had not been able to do for months could today become a reality? Several times I had used fatigue as an excuse not to walk. Yesterday, fatigue was the reason I could walk; today fatigue is gone.
Ripples of excitement flew into my head. What would the feelings be when I walked alone, and what ideas would come into my head?
Walking with others is fun, but it is compromising when you have to keep pace with them or talk to them or listen to them, share their everlasting burdens of issues and problems. Selfishness, like walking alone, serves a purpose. I wanted to walk alone in silence and at my own pace, hearing only the sound of my footsteps and the beat of my heart, the rustling of the leaves in the tops of majestic trees.
In terms of ideas, lately, my ideas seemed as old as worn-out jeans. A new wardrobe of ideas was what I was searching for. There is more holding back for a walk alone, a walk that would solve a lot of my worldly desires.
With my mind made up, after work, instead of going home I drove to Wolfe Park. No other car was at the parking field. What did that mean? Everybody else but me was fearful of the rain. The cloud was on the brink of tears, but would it rain? I thought for a moment. If I hurried and began the walk, I could finish and get back to my car before any downpour. If, however, the rain caught up with me... oh well, I would have to endure it just like I have endured many other misfortunes in my life.
As a final preparation I grabbed a bug repellant tin from my car and sprayed the tips of my shoes, the cuffs of my shirt, the hems of my pants and the top part of my hat. For some reason bugs, mosquitoes, and their cousins like to follow me, land on me and bite my neck, like mean women do to their men.
Then, again, I looked up at the sky. Not that I was terrified of rain; I only wanted to know what was facing me. The cloud above was damp with rain, but also there was a defiant sun. Which of the two would win the day? I pondered. As kids, we used to wonder who would win if the sun and rain wrestled. The sun is so powerful it could evaporate falling rain, but then again a torrential rain could drench the sun.
Not certain if it would rain, and not overtly concerned if it did, I began to walk the trail of the park, an undulating landscape of hills and valleys around a lake of crystal water, surrounded by vegetation and the big tall trees.
True to expectation, there was not one man or woman on the trail with me. I was all alone, just as I'd prayed for. Ordinarily, you would see a crowd of people, including weight-watchers, loners, monks, those who wanted a quiet moment, old and young, men and women, black and white, all walking the trail. Not today.
They were not serious, to begin with, I said to myself: How could everybody be gone because of the threat of rain? Their absence was my gain, I supposed. More quiet time for ideas to rush into my brain.
As I walked down the trail, my mind was occupied, initially full of ideas, of wonderful possibilities in the field of making money, plenty of money, and new, never-seen discoveries that would take the world by surprise, all of which would finally make my teachers proud of the time they spent educating me.
Mediocrity wasn't what they intended when they crammed my brain with mathematics and physics and yes, chemistry.
Raindrops were now beginning to break through the leaves to fall on my hat and arms. It was a drizzle, yet it was beginning to derail my mind and my ideas, turning them into situation alert. For the first time during the walk I became conscious of my circumstances.
What an insane idea to walk the trail, alone in the rain, through the woods. By this time I was in the thick of the park, surrounded by trees, huge tall trees; some kissing the sky, others, weak and broken, leaning against their neighbors. My mind was running through scenarios of pandemonium. Am I in any danger or not?
Drops of rain were now breaking through the branches and leaves at a much faster pace and landing on my head, which was now exposed because I had been using my hat to ward off the scores of flies that, despite the insect repellant, were hovering around my ears and eyes and face.
To shake off the flies, I began to trot, occasionally stopping to elude them. They kept pace with me. How did I manage to get into this mess? I swore to myself as I hit and swatted the flies off my head.
Minutes ago I was happy, unaware of my surroundings walking alone in the park, and indeed, new ideas were beginning to erupt in my head; but now everything around me had become noticeable and frightening.
The trees were no longer elegant and strong. They were actually in a forest where wolves live, and I remembered that recently people had reported sighting a horde of wolves. My heart, which had been quiet since I started the walk, began to pound beneath my ribs, and my breathing went up and down like a child at the end of a long cry.
From the chest of the forest a long, winding snake rose and began to creep towards me, one inch at a time. With drops of rain hanging off my eyelashes, it was hard for me to judge its distance. I suspected it was close enough to lunge at me. I could only see its dazzling head, its grey skin and half of its length; the other half of its body and the tail, I suspected, it had either concealed or curled around a half-dead tree with a slender trunk. What should I do now? Grab a weapon, my mind instructed.
Around the path were quite a few sticks thrown to the ground by the wind that had accompanied the teary sky. I selected a thick club, the size of a man's leg. But the second I gazed back at the snake, it had turned into a twisted fallen branch. A sigh of relief came upon me. With my weapon ready to whack any other intruder, I continued trekking the trail.
When I got near the lake that resembled Nwangele, I quickened my pace trying to go around the circumference of the lake in a faster time. Half of the perimeter of the lake is not sheltered by trees and the rain hammered me as I walked.
Because I was so deep in the forest I welcomed the rain. It had been a long time since rain fell on me. It brought back childhood memories of my village, Akokwa. How grandmother would allow me to shower in the rain and I would position myself to let the waterfall from the zinc pound my head.
Except for ripples of raindrops the lake was calm. I don't think it has frogs and toads like the old Nwangele Lake before it dried up, but I have seen people catch medium-size fish and crabs in Wolfe Lake. Where were they today? Only a little rain and everybody but me was gone. They couldn't have been serious fishermen.
When I'd completed the circumference of the lake I turned the corner and began to walk back up the trail to where I began the journey. I was drenched but happy. My fear had lessened. Let it rain on me, I murmured with wet lips. I slowed my ascent up the hill. Why hurry when I was already soaking wet?
Almost halfway back to my car, a steady breeze came to glue my shirt to my skin. Uneasiness and cold sent a shuddering sensation around my chest. I tried to peel parts of my shirt away from my skin but it was not enough to save me from the chills, so I let the shivers plague me.
More power walking and I could see the outline of my car, all by itself in a field that could swallow six hundred and seven cars. Pride filled my heart. Not empty pride, but a pride of accomplishment.
Breakthrough ideas did not come, but I sure laid the foundation for one. No farmer sows a corn seed without tilling the ground, preparing the fields, and cutting the weeds. The same with ideas; they don't just come out of thin air. And they come when least expected.
Who knows what channels had been opened in my mind by the experience of rain on the body, the reconnection of the past to the present, and the remembrance of Nwangele?
Back in my car, I peeled off my wet shirt and put on a coat jacket. Where is everybody on this rainy day at Wolfe Park?
End
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