He’d discovered the bog walk recently while he was mindlessly scrolling on his phone. In his mind bogs were these dark, mysterious places, with hungry creatures lurking in the muddy waters. It turned out they too had changed with the times.
The bog walk he had discovered was well organized and cared for with solid boardwalks accompanied by good signage. It proved to be quite an unexpected surprise.
For him, walking was a necessity. He needed to walk to be able to think at his ideas, to work out the kinks in his projects, and just to get the juices flowing while enjoying the fresh air.
As he found out, one of his favorite moments in the bog was early in the morning, when the sun was rising and the bog was surrounded in mystery and fog.
As he got out of the car that day, Tom felt in his chest the tingling of anticipation, as he was thinking about the beauty of the bog he was about to walk into.
The air was fresh and smelled of decaying leaves and plants. After the coldness of the night it was difficult to distinguish the smells, but as the day progressed the more fragrant ones became easier to spot in the multitude of scents of the bog.
With every step he took Tom felt more and more in tune with his thoughts. He was working on a story which, stubbornly, refused to be completed. All the endings he came up with seemed week and out of place with the story. And there weren’t many things in the world that Tom hated more than a disappointing ending.
So, he turned to the bog walk for support. It had helped him before, for sure it will not disappoint.
As he was walking on the narrow boardwalk, in the wooded part of the walk, Tom enjoyed the sounds of nature while looking deep into himself for a suitable development for his story. This is when a blinding flash of light made him look up and almost gasp for air.
Very close to the boardwalk, leaning against a tree, sat the strangest character he had ever encountered, and he had encountered quite a significant amount of them, real and imaginary.
The man, because it was a man, looked like a very lean hiker or cyclist, dressed in all the usual gear, only it was bright green and remotely reminded Tom of those of the leprechauns.
Only this leprechaun was like nothing he had ever seen or imagined. He was slender and, under the tight outfit, you could see how well defined his muscles were.
‘Heya Tom!’, his voice sounded familiar, but Tom had no idea where from.
‘Hello!’, Tom replied, as one was expected to do on the walk where everybody greeted each other out of an unwritten courtesy.
Tom made to continue his walk on the outer loop of the bog, which was double the size of the smaller one, but the green clad man cut his path.
‘No Tom! You need to go back! It is flooded there!’, the man had such determination in his voice that Tom faltered.
‘But it did not rain, how can there be flooding?’, as any true Irish man Tom had difficulties with somebody telling him what he could or could not do.
The green man shook his head, as if in disbelief that his words were not taken at face value.
‘It did rain Tom, only you were not here to see it. You need to go back now!’
This time his voice was commanding and Tom just did not find it in himself to argue with the strange looking man. You can never know who you run into, best to avoid strange characters!
Tom walked back on the short walk, and a few minutes later when he got to the main path something happened, and the world disappeared in front of his eyes.
When he woke up, later in the hospital, he found out that, he had collapsed on the main path, where a couple of dog walkers found him and called an ambulance.
When the doctor came, Tom was shocked to find out that he had a small benign tumor in his brain, and that they already started treatment for it, but he was extremely lucky to collapse on the footpath, and not on the outer loop boardwalk, where, most likely, nobody would have found him for quite some time.
Tom had this vision of himself as the Old Croghan Man, found in the bog after hundreds of years, preserved like a pickle in the tannins rich bog water.
He had to thank the green man, the walker that saved him and turned him back from the flooded area.
Tom told his wife the story and she went back and spoke with the bog preservation team. They told her there was no flooded area in the outer loop, also their access sensors only showed one person in the bog when Tom was there, himself, but of course there were other access points the locals used so that did not really mean much.
‘Yeah, he looked like a local with all the getup, you don’t travel like that as a tourist …’
The more he thought about it, the more Tom understood that, that strange man had saved his life.
After he got better and expressed his wish to go to the bog his wife agreed only if he wore a smart watch that tracked him. He was happy to do it, for her peace of mind, and maybe for his also, although he would not admit it easily.
Every time he would pass by the spot where he met his green guide Tom would call out ‘Thank you!’ to the silent woodland around him, and sometimes, the rustle of the trees seemed to acknowledge his message.
Tom never did meet the green man again, but he always carried the memory fondly in his heart, and even made him a character in some of his stories.
The least Tom could do, was to immortalize him for the ages.
To keep the legend alive.