Abandoned Roads, Part II

After the sun sinks below the mountains, I turn on my headlamp.  Sparse moonlight filters through the umbrage of trees and casts a greyness over the campsite.  I am writing in my journal when I hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet.  A shadow bounces behind me on the shelter wall.  I turn around and there is a mouse staring at me with black eyes.  He approaches me, but when I pretend to charge, he scurries away.

Without the heat of the sun, the temperature drops significantly. I am shivering in my leggings and fleece.  I return to my writing as Cavin and Brian enter the camp.  (I would not learn their names until the next day.)  Cavin is slender and wears a thick red jacket.  Brian is stocky and is clad in shorts and a thermal long-sleeved shirt.  They are celebrating their birthdays and getting their feet wet for an eventual thru-hike.  All they have to do is save up the money.  Brian tells me his strategy.  I can tell by his tone that he likes being in charge but he also possesses a genuine fondness for his friend.

While Brian hangs the food bags and filters water, Cavin collects an ample supply of twigs and branches.  He sets the kindling ablaze by sparking dryer lint.  Cavin and I sit on separate logs as we huddle around the flames.  The radiant warmth of the fire provides a tremendous comfort to my body and an even bigger psychological boost.  At this point I do not even know this man’s name, but we form an immediate connection based on an instinctual need for protection and comfort. 

“How far are you hiking?” Cavin asks. 

“As far as I need to,” I say. 

The northern terminus of the trail lies at the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine.  Although Maine has always been my goal since I first discovered the trail, I don’t want to mention Maine in the beginning.  I don’t want to become fixated on the destination, but this is easier said than done.  Already I feel the urge to rush forward to get this over with and reach the next stage of my life.

   

“What made you want to hike the trail?” he asks.

“I want to simplify my life,” I say.  “But I also want to appreciate what I have at home.  I’m not out here to shun modern technology because I love my cell phone and Netflix and cars that can drive faster than I can walk.”

He also agrees that refrigerators are a better option than carrying your food and that basically modern man cannot easily regress to caveman standards.  I ask him his own question. He works at Wells Fargo, but his job isn’t quite as exhilarating as the time he spent living on the north shore of Oahu.  He wants to reclaim that sense of excitement. 

“Exploration and adventure is what life is all about,” he says.

Brian returns from his nightly chores and quickly steals the spotlight.  I welcome his loquaciousness, for I am eager to discover what brings hikers like Cavin and Brian to collide with me.  Brian is a former military veteran who was deployed in Iraq.  He never planned on driving a truck, but he was assigned this role to replace drivers who were killed by IEDs.  I ask him if he was afraid to take the job. 

“Of course,” he says.  “Every single day I knew I could die any minute.” 

He then recounts a story that illustrates his proximity to death.  A senior officer had asked him to drive out to an Iraqi’s house, but he was not briefed on the nature of the mission.  Nonetheless, he followed his orders and drove the officer to the location, where he was told to wait in the car.  He waited, not knowing how long this would take.  Ten minutes pass.  A half an hour.  Forty five minutes.  Brian starts worrying that something is wrong.  He’s afraid to go inside, but staying in the car isn’t much of a comfort either. 

He decides to enter the Iraqi’s house, and the host offers him a cup of tea.  He had been raised to be respectful to his elders, so he accepted their hospitality.  Nothing sketchy seemed to be going on; everyone was just talking.  Brian sips the tea.  The officer tells him it’s time to go, and they drive to the base.

 

After returning safely, Brian starts to feel queasy, so he lies down to sleep off the pain but can’t.  He becomes violently ill and reports to medical, who tell him they are too busy to help him.  There is nothing he can do but be sick and wait for the pain to pass.  Brian suspects the cup of tea is the root of the problem.  He thinks he was poisoned.

Back in the Georgia woods, I listen to Brian’s story intently.  I am fascinated by war stories, but I am reluctant to ask him questions in fear I may bring up the wrong memory.  Instead, I tell him that hiking the trail will be a cakewalk compared to what he endured in Iraq. 

We sit in silence for a while as the fire flickers weakly.  The stars sprinkle the night sky like pixie dust.  I bid my new friends good night and climb up to the loft.  In my very own private suite, I wiggle into my sleeping bag and drift off to sleep thinking I could be resting in worse places.