Welcome Generosity

It was a windy day, the sun flashing brilliantly from behind intermittent clouds that raced across the sky. Up on the Gap, day trippers roamed over the short-cropped grass, heaving themselves step over step up the slope, between scrubby shrubbery that clung to the steep hillside.



And ponies! There were ponies up on the ridge. The appreciated the occasional carrot or apple.

Our packs, a familiar heft, rode on bruised hips. After several days on the trail, they fit into the hollows and over the bones as if molded to us. We had made it down the rock pile of a trail from the higher peak, treacherous for the unaware foot or ankle.



Easing our way down over the gap, we took the familiar gravel fork towards the parking lot, down down to the fence line, and through the gate. The gate swung closed behind us. No ponies allowed near the road.

The green lawn spread out before us, the picnic area dotted with fantastically twisted branches mottled white and gray. We found a likely pause and eased off the packs. We swigged water and looked about us. People scattered across the park at various states of leisure or strolling progress. We hadn't planned to come out at this spot, as pretty as it was, but it was convenient, the closest outlet within a couple days hike for an emergency stop.



Who should we ask? Someone who looked friendly. Someone with a larger car. One couple nodded to us as they passed us on the way to their SUV still breathing hard from their hike. We'd passed them further up the trail. Them, I thought. I paused, letting them settle in. They took some time stowing their gear. I approached, looking as winsome and non threatening as possible.

"Excuse me, ma'am. I was wondering if you all could possibly give us a ride into Damascus. We've been on the trail all week, and our stove just broke! We need to get into town so we can get another stove at the outfitters. I was wondering if you all could you possibly help us out? We just need a ride."

The woman closed her face, unwilling to say yes or no. "Don!" She called to her husband. "What do you think? This lady says she needs a ride."

"Me and my husband, both." My husband nodded and tried to look non-threatening.

"Where are you all going?" The man squinted at me.

"Damascus," I told him. "Me and my husband" (here I nodded in DH's direction) "started from there last week. We had the bad luck of our camp stove breaking, so we need to get to the outfitters to have it fixed, but we're stuck out here without a ride. Would you happen to be heading in that direction?" I was giving him an easy out.

The man looked at us for a moment. "I think we could go that way." He eyed our packs. "Those should fit in back."

"Oh, thank you so much! We really appreciate it! I thought we'd be stuck here forever." I am miss light and easy. No pressure, no other requests. DH nods and says, "Thanks a lot." "No problem," the man says, but the woman looks as if she regrets giving her husband the final say.

We stowed the packs in silence.

"Where are you folks from? You don't sound like you are from hereabouts."
"Oh, we're from ____, North Carolina."
"North Carolina, huh?"
"Yup. We enjoy coming up here every year. Some years we just hike and camp. This year, we were more ambitious and are hiking a loop around the area."

I was still trying to be friendly. No, we are not weird people. We're just like you. Too late; we already look alien. Boots! Packs! Slightly stinky layers. And what sane person carried twenty five to forty pounds all over tarnation for the fun of it?

The drive takes a good thirty minutes on the twisty roads, the same distance it's taken us more than three days to cover on the trail. It's strange to be moving so quickly over the ground. It's a unsettled jarring of time and place. Why did we just cover all that ground on foot?

We chat about the metal roofs we see on houses, the state of the weather this Summer, our jobs. I am still trying to convince them that we are ordinary folks. But backpacking along a trail is already too strange.

"Do you all need to stop for any supplies?"
"No, we're pretty well set. We just need to get our stove fixed."
"You have everything you need in those packs, huh?"
"Yup, pretty much."

The woman picks up a Wendy's cup from the cup holder. She shakes the ice in the cup and slurps loudly. She shakes the ice again even more vigorously as if scolding us. I almost snort at her disapproving expression. Ma'am, you can keep your ice. We are not your social inferiors. Except somehow we are. Having to ask for help makes us inferior to the people who are always within easy reach of their cars.

They let us out half a block away from the outdoor outfitters store. "Do you need any help with that?" This time barely sincere. "No thanks, I've got it!" We swing the weight of the packs out easily. Once more, the packs are slung over our backs, this time for just a short jaunt up the street. We don't have any small bills to offer the couple in thanks, so I settle for a little philosophizing. "We really appreciate the ride. Thank you. It was a big help. I'll pass along the favor to someone else next time I get a chance." The woman's face is twisted into something almost a sneer. Ahh, screw it, lady. We nod at them and head straight for the store, relieved to be on the ground again.

At the outfitters, they tell us that a new part would take a week to come in, but that, amazingly, the camp stove is still under some kind of "forever" manufacturers warranty. They suggest that they give us another one just like it from their stock, and they'll return ours and get reimbursed. For the second time in one day, we are grateful of a stranger's generosity, but this time, it feels welcoming.

We are punchy with tiredness - it is now late afternoon. We devour a large pizza for dinner and head back over to our favorite backpackers haven. They'll shuttle us back to the gap later. But for now, we crash. The rooms are small cinderblock rooms with thin carpet, but they seem like luxury to us. A hot shower and we fall into bed, to return to the trail the next day.


--

Imagine a Runner

I have been distracted all day, waiting for news, and engrossed in attempting to track my father's progress along his marathon.

The NYCM servers were completely overwhelmed most of the day by people attempting to track their favorite runners. I did not ever get to see my father on the map of the route, which would have been very cool. (I did see the Chilean miner who was running the race, but who had to stop because of knee injuries.)

Fortunately, I paid a little money to have updates sent to my mobile phone.

Bless the Internet! Every time my father passed another 5K, they'd send me a little automatic text message saying what time he'd passed that point, the time elapsed, his pace time, and the estimated finish.

It seemed to take forever to get the first one. His start time was late, late morning, so I kept waiting (and worrying a little while waiting) to see the first 5K notice. Where was he?! Did something happen? Did he not start?

It was a slow 5K. Curses on that uphill bridge! But after that, I'd hear the little buzz every hour or so, and find another update.

The early pace times seemed really slow... but after about 10K, he picked up speed, and kept cruising along steadily in the last two-thirds of the race.

When I got the 40K alert, we got even more excited, knowing that he was scant miles to the finish. We waited, and rechecked the cell until - Bzzt! There it was!

A clean finish, slower than hoped but excellent all the same.

"How old is he?" My friends ask me.
"What was his pace?" "What time did he finish?"

I'm always hesitant to answer those questions directly, because the answers seem misleading. It's easy to look at those numbers and say, "That's slooow!" (And "I run a lot faster/slower than that," if one is a runner, or whatever one says when one is trying to judge if something is "good" or not.)

But the raw numbers do not share the whole story.


Imagine a man who once broke his hip and had it put back together with two pins and a bolt. Imagine that man pushing himself in the hallway after surgery (as one is supposed to), walking laps. His determination got him going sooner and kept him improving faster than other men might have - that's what his nurses said.

And he got back out on the street, and he continued running.

Imagine a man who went in for strange pains and was told that he had to have an emergency bypass, yes today, four of them. And all subsequent complications and further wrenches thrown in by the inevitable aging process.

He may be slower, yes, and he is still running.

Imagine a man who clears brush along public berms so there is more room for runners and cyclists, who is known by scores of people along his busy training route.

Maybe you do have a little hurricane coming through, but he is still running!*
* true story

Imagine a man who has always looked for the best way to maximize his potential, who has tried to undertake things with so much precise and lavish detail that sometimes the trees get in the way of the forest. (Okay, okay, the trees are really cool!)

He plans, and trains, strategizes and analyses, and because of that, he is still running.

Imagine a man who values relationships and sharing experiences over material gifts, who seems to value conversation over status symbols, who sees the value in even small things.

Running with a crowd of fellow-athletes, while running your own race in the privacy of your own head. He is still running.

Imagine a man who values the kind gesture, the symbolic gifts of appreciation and poetry, the symbolic acknowledgements that you ran the race.

You can imagine his collection of racing medals, T-shirts and stories. And you wonder why he is still running!

Imagine a man who never throws a scrap of anything away until all use has been wrung from it.

Man, oh, man. He is still running.

Imagine all that, and then you might get closer to the truth about my father and why he's still running marathons.


How did he do? Well, he finished!
Yay! I'm relieved, but no surprise there, really.

Perhaps better to ask: How is he doing?
And one answer might be: He's testing himself against the wretched weather and the long uphills and his own limitations. He's enjoying the faces and the stories. He's choosing to live the maximum experience over and over and over again.

And therefor, he is still running!


I love you lots, Dad!
--

Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight

My best friend from childhood lived just down the street from me in a brown and gray stone house with a large basement. Her birthday came in the first week of September, which meant that, at that time in our lives, it more often than not fell on Labor Day weekend. She would have large birthday sleepovers which always found a number of us sprawled on our sleeping bags on the basement carpet late at night, still talking despite exhausting our usual topics, talking, talking, despite the struggle to stay awake.

Of course, Labor Day weekend was always the Jerry Lewis telethon. Even at two o'clock in the morning, the teevee was still on, with Jerry pushing himself to continue, half asleep, to make funny, or when he ran out to comic energy, exhort and beg people to call in with pledges. At the same time, a fifties retro doo-wop singing group* was on tour, and the commercial breaks came around regularly even during the telethon. The commercials I remember from that time were always about the greatest hits album of somebody, and this group, asking you to *call now* to get tickets for the concert.

*Sha Na Na

The commercial always started the same way. A guy in greased back hair complete with ducktail and muscle shirt, shown from the waist up and backed by colorful lights, would intone the opening bass lyric a cappella:

Duh DOO-ah, duh DOO-ah, duh DOO-ah, duh DOE

and swiveling smoothly to show off his muscled arm from various angles, whereupon the camera would start to pan across one singer after another - greasers and boppers - as they soulfully kicked in with all harmony:

Goodnight Sweetheart, it's time to go.
Goodnight Sweetheart, it's time to go.
Goodnight Sweetheart, it's time to go.
I hate to leave you,
But I really must say,
Goodnight, Sweetheart, goodnight.

Even after seeing and hearing that same commercial for months, it seemed as if the singers didn't belong up that late, even though the lyrics clearly said it was three o'clock in the morning. It was incongruous to see them singing their hearts out, wooing the camera with each hair flip and sigh, and the announcer telling you to *call now* to order tickets - show times extended. It was as if they were begging us to buy tickets, as if when we saw the commercial one more time, we would be convinced to come to the show.

I almost felt sorry for them, all dolled up in their retro costumes, reduced to hawking themselves to the uncaring late night viewers. Didn't they get to rest? Didn't they get to perform their concert and go home? It seemed like I had been seeing them for months, and here they still were, brightly vamping, with the pale light from the teevee washing over the drowsing lumps of preteen girls and the insistent announcer with what felt like an unseemly loud voice for that hour.

That night, the lyrics dug themselves into my brain, and some thirty-some years later, I've never been able to extract them.

And also the sadness, and the polish of the irresistible tune stays with me. It's wistful but sincere, optimistic, even promising. There will be more times. We will always croon and sway and sing goodnight, Sweetheart, goodnight.
--