Day 20

October 30, 2007. Day 20.

The midterm is over. Finally. I managed to walk this morning and this evening without too much stress. I haven’t studied for a test in so long I wasn’t sure I would be able to retain information anymore, but I was surprised after a few days of reading and discussing the ideas with others in the class how easily things were popping into my head as I wrote eight pages of essay questions. Blech. I know my memory works fast, but it doesn’t retain well unless I keep refreshing. I would love to be able to access this information throughout my life, but I can only imagine how often I’ll be scrambling to remember someone’s name during a heated conversation over binary linguistic theory and how the theories of Derrida and Barthe help define post-modernism. (yeah, right… but I’ve heard it happen!).

I also ran into my flash flood friend again this morning and this time he asked me what I’m always taking pictures of. “Mostly dogs” I said, “and the shapes of rocks when the sunrise hits them.” I was trying to sound artsy without sounding pretentious (it never works). He seemed curious actually and suggested I take some pictures of this tree root exposed from the tree having fallen down. We were standing right in front of it. It’s the one that looks like an anteater that I always pat on the head just before I finish my final three hundred feet to the top (I almost caught my friend at the top this morning!). I asked him what he found interesting about the root and he said he had actually been on the trail when the tree fell over. I thought this guy must be a complete wingnut with his disaster stories, but that only made me more curious so I asked the obvious question, “what happened?” and he told me this amazing story if I can remember how he said it,

“About fifteen years ago, I was walking here at about this time one morning” (6:30) “but it was extremely cold and windy. It was during the fall.” (of course) “I had bundled up pretty good, but I had not prepared for the amount of wind I encountered at the top. It was as if a train had hit me when I passed over the summit, freezing coldI! It was still quite dark from the clouds and sunrise wasn’t for another half hour, I had no idea if it would be any easier to go down the way I came, so I just kept going. This was before cell phones, so I knew I was being stupid, but it was too late to do anything about that. I also was just getting through a messy divorce, so the experience of fighting the wind actually felt kind of redemptive.” (he said “redemptive”!) “I walked over the summit, and was picking my way headfirst down this bunch of rock steps right here when I felt this weird nausea come on really suddenly. I have a strong stomach, so I felt confused by it and when the dizziness hit me, I went into a kind of shock and couldn’t feel my legs. I tried to sit down, it was happening so fast, I can’t even tell you how fast this all came on, this ringing started in my ears and then a dry POP! Like a twisted towel flicking my ear drum. The ringing became so severe I remember trying to cover my ears,” he showed me how he clutched his belly and tried to cover his ears at the same time, “when for what felt like a minute, everything around me was completely lit up, like it was high noon. It must have been a fraction of a second because I still wasn’t even sitting down, but everything glowed white. It crossed my mind that it was beautiful, but it was so terrifying because the shadows of the pine trees were dancing maniacally around my feet and my head was spinning. I tried to take a breath when I realized I was suffocating, something seemed to press on my chest when I tried to inhale, but before I could worry too much about it, BOOM! BOOM, BA-BOOM BOOM!” he threw his arms away from his body and spit a little as he tried to make these huge sounds, his eyes were wide open, I noticed his nose was running a little bit, and then he looked at me seriously, “A bomb dropped! or that’s how it felt. The ground shook, which is no small thing when everything around you is solid rock!” I held a laugh inside for a second trying to give him the space he needed to finish. He stood up dramatically from his crouched gesturing and painstakingly whispered, “LIGHTNING!” with his eyes still big and round.

At this point I actually did laugh a little and he slowly started to laugh a little bit too. I couldn’t believe it, “how far away from it were you? Did you see the tree fall?” I asked him. “I was right over there.” He pointed to a bunch of piled rocks at a turn in the trail, maybe about 25 feet away. I asked again, “did you see the tree fall?” He said, “well first I puked.” I laughed again, “but then I looked up and saw that the tree was on fire lying on its side and the wind had completely stopped. I suddenly felt amazing inside, like my life had completely changed in a way I never could have understood then, but it turns out to have been true.” “what do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, that’s another story, but the tree burning there and the wind so quiet all of the sudden I just knew everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. I didn’t even feel cold anymore. I just sat down right there on those rocks and enjoyed it like a bonfire. A sort of surreal bonfire, of course, but I felt so good all over. My breath seemed to be coming from my feet and my hair felt like it had nerve endings in it. As the breeze started picking up again, my hair kind of played in it.”
“Weren’t you worried lightning would strike again,” I asked,
“no, it’s hard to explain, the rain started falling and the wind picked up again and the tree kept burning and I didn’t move a muscle. I think I sat there for an hour. It might have been only five minutes, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to leave. When I got home, I called my lawyer and said, ‘I don’t need anything from the settlement, I just need to move on’ and that was that.”
And then his dog barked at something and we both snapped out of our reverie. I realized we were standing on a beautiful slope and the sun was fully over the horizon now. I knew I had to get going so I could get to class in an hour, but I said I hoped I would see him again on the trail tomorrow. He shook my hand really sweetly and I felt incredibly grateful for him being there. It made my day (and got me around the mountain).