Slipping Tires

One summer evening, a college friend and I decided to drive his rear-wheel drive Chevy truck out to the Hone Quarry reservoir and try our luck at the trout that were purported to be in the deep waters at its south-west end, the area shaded by still extant Eastern Hemlocks.  The deep waters were crowded with tree trunks and stumps that had fallen off barren, arid slopes at the foot of a steep skid littered with shale of the Alleghany Plateau.  We backed the little truck down close to the water and then waded with rods and tackle as far as we could into the cool water until we were up to our bellys and the gravelly bottom gave way to slushy sandy loam that had collected on the lake bottom in the years since Civilian Conservation Corps men had impounded the area.  A mild evening gave way to a cool night, and as stars started to shine in a darkening sky, we headed back to the little truck.

Key turned, ignition clicked, and the engine hummed but the tires spun.  We pushed and prodded, taking turns pushing for hernias, but we gave up, and decided to walk for help, a bigger truck with a stout rope was sure to be right down the dirt road that led through the campground.

On this evening, though, no one was camped or parked along the road, so we walked the long winding path out of Hone Quarry, some 3 miles to Rt. 257.  As we walked on a school night, apathetic to tests and classes, we talked of all of our hopes for the future, careers, women, sang David Allen Coe, Alabama, and all of the verses of American Pie we could remember.  We were tired and wanted to get back to Milwaukee's Best at the dorm, but, realizing that we had a long road ahead of us, we just laughed and planned and poked at what life might bring.  We would go into business, we decided.  George's Seafood with the motto "If it ain't fried, you 'been denied."  Across the road from the seafood restaurant, filling the tanks of all the fried seafood eaters, I'd erect a service station named Pete's Pitstop.  Our little utopia of all you'd ever need would be down in Southside Virginia, between Buckingham Courthouse and Richmond on Rt. 60, in the land of tobacco fields, loblolly plantations, and the best pulled pork Virginia has to offer.

My friend is a teacher now, with two beautiful little girls and we don't get to talk much, but lots of nights like that one, when we walked 6 miles to find someone to pull the Chevy a couple feet so that we could go back to life, remind me of a bond that we share, much like the bond that we all share through memories and happenstance that make life the great experience it can be.  It's as if all of our plans and work and routines just serve as backdrop to the serendipitous times that come along unexpectedly, forcing us to walk a bit farther, and think a little harder, about what could be.  Whether or not we get to the destination we set out looking for, we've seen growth and change, and, at the end of a full life, that may be all that matters.

I think we're all a little too independent and overconfident to think that life might just be leading us from coincidence to coincidence, and from sorrow to circumstance, from enchantment to epiphany.  The next day, I'm sure I had classes where I sat at a lecture and learned important ideas, but none so important as that moonlit walk with wet clothes, tired legs, and invigorated spirit.