In the springtime of 2019 a Fresh, Clean Gwodder grew its limbs and fell from the branches of the Gwiddern Tree, just as one had every spring since the time of Gilgamesh, and this Gwodder was You.
You tremble to your feet and begin to wipe off the pollen-laden mucus that covers your naked body in thick gobby sheets. As your vision clears you see you are at the edge of a swamp. You wash off the rest of the way in the still waters of the swamp as the Gwiddern Tree begins to rock slowly back and forth, pulling up its roots one by one and inflating them into hairy pontoons. The Tree is already drifting away, deeper into the foggy swamp. You feel a familiar resolve and smile.
On a makeshift wooden platform nearby you see a pile of clothing. Flannel shirt, undershirt, long underpants, wool pants, thick socks, hiking boots and a hat. Big wide rents in both shirts with little flecks of sap and blood drying around the edges, and as you dress in the clothes you wonder what it means that the hiker put up a fight against the Tree.
You find the highway and follow it west, keeping to the dark at the edge of the woods. The sun has long gone down when you reach a town and you root around in a Salvation Army donation pile where you find a coat and a shirt that's not torn.
You listen to your heart now, and you follow your heart to a house on a country road where you break in through the back door and find last year's Gwodder sitting grey and bloated on the couch in a room that stinks like your own soul rotting. He puts up no resistance as you wrap his head up tightly in a garbage bag and doesn't struggle at all as he slowly suffocates. You drag him outside, pulling him across the threshold and into the yard just as he begins to go to mulch. You scatter his remains in the garden with a rake and go inside. You must have developed far later in the season than normal for your predecessor to get that bad, and as you clean up the house you wonder what it means.
The next morning, in ill fitting clothing and covered in dog hair and mud, you emerge from the house and greet the sun. It's time to go out into public.