damonjustisntfunny.com

There comes a time on every trip (and maybe in every relationship) where things just seem to have fallen entirely apart. Where you look around and don’t even recognize where you are or how it was you came to be where you were or how you could ever get out of the predicament you were in. It’s like when a happy marriage falls apart, and the couple looks at each other one morning and wonders where all the anger came from and where all the love had gone and whether or not they had ever really known each other.

In the Grand Canyon, this came for me at a resting place halfway up the final vertical push. I was drinking cold water from a faucet with my hand when I looked down to find a squirrel drinking water with me. The tops of his ears were brushing the underside of my hand. I was having trouble walking, at this point, and I was leaning heavily against the stone fixture, and I was overcome with the absurdity of the whole situation. Here was this squirrel — and here was I. How did this all come to be?

This happens when I am kissing someone for the first time. There is kissing and it is happening to me and I am not sure how it all came about. Everything I have known has fallen apart and everything I had thought was important up until then has ceased to be. It’s like looking at the squirrel that shouldn’t be touching my hand. It’s like watching Ben dive headlong into a bush of thorns, laughing all the while. It’s like realizing you are hungry and have no way of getting any food.

No matter: both of us wanted to keep playing.

Those first pedals on that second morning were both depressing and invigorating. Depressing because I was miserable and invigorating because we were so cold we had to sprint hysterically to keep warm. And, in sprinting, the wind whipped us even colder than before so we sprinted faster. We had a goal in mind: we were going to make our thirty-mile push early and then be camping at Mount Rainier for the entire weekend — glorious Mount Rainier! We would have provisions and a campsite. They would be serving us breakfast in our sleeping bags and providing soy hot chocolate in front of warm fires. #6 would join us for the weekend and we would relax our legs (not wanting to push them too far too early) while going on, perhaps, a leisurely hike around the summit of our glorious mountain. So waking up without any food certainly wasn’t good but it wasn’t all that bad. There was promise and, what is more, it held reward for our trials.

We came out of The Dalles campground at a few moments past seven and began up a hill. It was our first real hill. It isn’t appropriate, really, to use the article “a” when describing this hill because, for us, it was the hill. It was Mount Rainier. We had vertical feet to pedal up in order to get to our breakfast and we were at the start of it.

Slowly, we worked our way towards the entrance to the Mount Rainier National Forest, craning our heads at every possible chance for a glimpse at the majestic mountain that eluded us. Slowly, we passed a sign for food and lodging six miles in the wrong direction which promised to be at the top of a ski area and slowly we continued onward as a single driver of an SUV turned up the access road for hot cocoa and tea. Slowly, we made our way towards the entrance to the campgrounds and the visitor’s lodge, slowly we rode up the hills as hunger truly began to set in. Slowly, we ate our last piece of fruit and drank from our dwindling supply of water. Slowly, we came across a sign on the side of the road. And slowly we read it.

This was not a very good road sign. Typically, a road sign contains useful information — information that is pertinent to the traveler on her journey. This is the purpose of a road sign. It establishes that miles have passed, that a town has been reached, that a turn should be made, that lodging is available, etcetera. However, the sign that Ben and I read first from a distance and then, horribly, as we drew closer, took the wind from our sails and the breath from our chests. A sign that represented all that was wrong with the world. A sign that I cannot, even now, bring myself to conjure up in my minds eye.

A sign indicating that all services, all campgrounds, all everything that ever was at the Mount Rainier National Park were CLOSED.

DAMON: Dear God, it’s June 24th, 9:15a. Ben and I have just finished climbing for an hour and fifteen minutes. We’ve made it twelve miles. We’re at the entrance where our joy and wonderfulness was supposed to begin. However: we find two signs: telling us that both the lodge, where our food would be, is closed, and the campsite, where we are supposed to sleep, is closed. We have three more miles to make it just to the pass, which is at the high point, 4,600 feet, and then another twenty something mile before we get to Packwood. [Voice begins to show signs of hysteria.] We don’t even know what the town looks like! It could just be a post office and a dump. But whatever food they can serve, be it veal, venison, bison meat. It shall be consumed. And we shall go no further. Despair has set in. End note. [Laughter -- or perhaps sobbing -- is heard.]

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