These Are The Beautiful Things in The eye of every storm

Cut to scene:

It’s Spring. April Spring. The sky is blue above, and there are clouds sailing sideways across the expanse. I look up, place my hand over my eyes to block the sunlight. The clouds, they’re almost wisps, almost like they don’t exist.

Except one. It’s a straight line.

Like cocaine. A line of cocaine floating across the sky. It’s a normal thought, almost comfortable in its development, an old friend who dropped by for a brief visit in your town before heading on to wherever. Old habits never die. You just do other things. You start seeing other people. Different clouds.

Trees are still leafless. There’s not much anyone can do about that. April Spring in Appalachia is still coiled to winter’s deathlike grip. The nights drop in temperature quickly; terminal velocity at sundown. My hand shields my eyes because the trees don’t have leaves. The trees don’t have leaves because it’s cold at night. When the sun comes up, there’s no shade, so I have to cover my eyes. The cycle repeats, and today, I’m learning about cycles by watching the wisp cloud amble across the sky in a gentle breeze.

I am alone. I’ve been alone for the entire morning. Except. Briefly, this once. There were people taking a break at the last highway. I said hello, exchanged the pleasantries....

…where are you heading to today....

I sprint down the highway embankment and vanish into the woods. I start climbing, and I am making great time. My legs are attuned to this thing now. It’s cold but I’m sweating. Beneath my pack, there is a large sweat stain on my back with salt crystals clinging to my shirt. It’s probably mile thirteen or so, based on the salt crystals and the number of snickers bars I’ve eaten.

I pass an observatory and find it peculiarly empty. Astronauts don’t work during the day. Most likely. The dome of the telescope looks like a mosque, and the small gravel parking lot has an electrical box, army green, with a small barbed wire fence around it. There are no cars. I’m walking through this field with knee high grasses about thirty yards away from this Space Mosque. It’s adds a perfunctory strangeness.

I find it winsome. Fascinating even. I don’t stop. I’m just bemused as I’m walking passed it. I round a hill and there’s woods again. Downhill. Then switchbacks. Then everything is wet, rocks and mud and ground and stone and straw. Condensation falling from the thawing limbs and new growth, and the backside of this mountain is the morning shadow.

Several miles later another blacktop, empty of backpackers. There’s no benches or rest area’s or pullovers for cars. Look both ways and back into the pines. Always the pines at this elevation. Eventually, I know the pines will give way to the firs, but for now, it just reminds me of ..... the same thing.

More climbing and I’m then I’m here. Here is the place I want to be. I’m not sure if its for the rest of the day. Eighteen miles have passed but there is still six or so hours of daylight left. I could be there if I wanted to be there but for now I am here, looking up at the wisps of clouds, and the one line of cocaine hanging in the sky, and the empty expanse of blue with my hands a canvas over my eyes.

Cut to scene:

I’m at a hostel. This is a day ago, or maybe two because there’s no calendars or clocks but distance and memory, before I have my hands over my eyes, blocking the sun. This old man who runs the place, he’s telling me about these balds, up in North Carolina.

....trees never did grow in these places. Just empty- no stumps, no burn marks, nothin’....

He tells me, he says:

....strangest damned thing. You’ll see ‘em. They’re up there, just in this one area....

What’s coming next is either a story about Jesus or aliens, and I can’t decide which, but he’s placing pancakes onto my plate, so I’m listening. I’m listening intently. This man, his story is holding my breakfast hostage. The demands of the release appear to be simple: listen to his story about how God or the Holy Spirit stopped the trees from growing because of the ghosts of Native American blood that rolled down some mountain top or how alien spaceships burned the ground with radiation in the olden days and then he puts the pancakes on my plate and I drown them in maple syrup before taking this obnoxiously tiny fork and cutting into the side of the perfectly round delicacy and stuffing twenty bites into my mouth before I push off in the rain that’s not a rain but more of a drizzle on this overcast cold day that’s ahead of me.

He never tells me his theory. Just dumps the food onto my plate and I say, Thank you, I say, but truthfully, I am let down by my own expectation because I want to know the mysteries of God, and I know he knows.

Cut to scene:

I told them I was heading to Wasser Bald on that highway, but I’m not there. I’m here. If I stay here long enough, those people on the highway may catch up to me but its doubtful. I doubt they’re at the twenty-plus-a-day point yet. Leaving Georgia and crossing into North Carolina, it’s just Up. That’s the only direction, and they were stopped on the side of the road, because they were done going Up. They may have been waiting on a ride to a Town where they can get on a Bus and get the Fuck back to Civilization.

Anyway. There’s these clouds in the sky. To the left of the path, a glade of short grass ascends the mountain. There’s no evidence of lawn mowers. Trees have never grown there. It’s almost a perfect square. And I’m here. The place I came to see, whether I knew it or not.

I sit.
I take my shoes off.
I lay in the grass.
I take a two hour nap, under the sun, in the cool air, on the side of this mountain.

These are the beautiful things. The grass, the clouds, the sun, the breeze, the mystery, and the stillness.

I wake up. I get to the Wasser Bald shelter. It’s crowded, maybe with some people who saw me napping and decided to let me lie. As evening approaches, clouds build in the west and the air picks up its weight.

....we got two spots left in here....

Thank you I say, and keep walking down the trail, descending some more elevation, and coming to a stream. Here, I place my hammock between two trees directly over the stream. I’m the only one here, save for the occasional bear nearby crashing through the trees. I think of my beautiful things as night falls. The creek makes its creek noise beneath me. A lullaby. A mother’s song.

Last updated November 14, 2016