Wednesday, December 31, 2008
On The Edge of the Cliff
A year's end: standing on the sharp edge of a cliff, and out in front of you, where there is nothing but pure air and plunging, is Future...Future....sheer, unadulterated Unknown....wow...humans are , thus, required to fly, because the alternative is to drop.
What seems true, however, is that something, somewhere, in the surrounding air enables us to float! Without even flapping our wings, we levitate into what we are destined to be and do. We can try to guide the journey with the tail feathers of our hopes and imagination, we can yearn all we want to, but the overall sensation throughout my decades of living is that there is a guiding current of air that takes us places we never thought we'd go....leads us to unimagined adventures...like a recent night on an icy highway that Peter and i shared with hundreds of other stranded cars....a night I am amazed we survived.
We had driven to The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.V. to pick up Foxy the dog from Paul and Stephen so they could enjoy the precious pup once they got here to Abingdon to spend their Christmas time with us (dogs are persona non canis at The Greenbrier), and drove the three hours to the famous resort very easily, with our two pups snuggled down and sleeping. We picked up Foxy ,once Paul and Stephen arrived from NYC, and began the trip back to Abingdon, when suddenly and very quickly we were slapped with an icy rain storm that slicked the highway totally and dangerously with layers of ice that were impossible to drive on...soon, after snail-pacing for an hour, nonetheless slipping and sliding down a 5% graded hill for 5 miles (!), we came to a traffic line (more of a clump, really) totally stopped on the road....We were soon informed that the entire highway was iced over , there had been 20 accidents between where we were stopped and a bridge 5 miles in front of us, and that no more cars were being allowed onto the road, or to drive west on it at all. It could be that we would be spending the night in the car, snuggling dogs, on an island of asphalt and black ice! Suddenly, the freezing night air was darkened by hundreds of headlights and tail lights being turned off to save gas and energy. And there we all were, alone together in the middle of nowhere!
We sat, snuggled under my fake fur coat, three dogs, Peter and I, for an hour and a half in the dark, every so often turning on the car for heat. We sat and sat and sat. When Peter took the pups out to empty their bladders, all four of them had trouble walking on the ice, but the mission was accomplished. And we sat and sat some more...at a time when we would normally have been reaching Abingdon, we were still sitting in the middle of the island of ice. We talked, we slept, we meditated...I called 911 too may times, and was told the same, uninformed info over and over...clearly, nothing could be done but to wait and wait and wait till accidents had been cleared and salt put on the road...another hour passed.
Finally, mysteriously, we moved forward, the night air lit with the turning back on of those hundreds of headlights and tail lights, and we snailed along for a bit, when, of course, we came to another total stand still, but this time on an icy bridge!! It was beginning to be not so much fun now...not such a pleasing adventure...we were hungry, tired and frustrated. And there we sat. Every time a large salt truck motored down the other side of the road, this bridge we were stranded on swayed and shook...I envisioned an icy death in the black waters below...
This was , by that time, a unique night in my life. Never had I experienced such a highway adventure...and that nagging thought of plunging to our deaths every time a large vehicle passed by was not calming.
FINALLY, after sitting on that bridge for at least another hour and a half, we snailed forward and the first exit we came to that was even possible to use, we did use, and crawled off to a warmly lit Shell station, where we dined on cold sandwiches, diet sodas, and an enormous bag of greasy potato chips.
We also went to the bathroom and emptied the pups one more time. We decided to try to sleep there, parked under the greenish lights of the gas pumps, but i was so direly uncomfortable I woke peter up and insisted we drive home...we attempted to do so, and found the highways actually cleared and salted byt his time, and every inch we moved closer to Virginia, the temperature rose by gradual degrees and soon (but not soon enough: a 3 hour trip took us 7 hours) we were speeding toward home. We arrived at 4:45 am....ugh!Ugh ! and Ugh! Exhaustion.
What seems true, however, is that something, somewhere, in the surrounding air enables us to float! Without even flapping our wings, we levitate into what we are destined to be and do. We can try to guide the journey with the tail feathers of our hopes and imagination, we can yearn all we want to, but the overall sensation throughout my decades of living is that there is a guiding current of air that takes us places we never thought we'd go....leads us to unimagined adventures...like a recent night on an icy highway that Peter and i shared with hundreds of other stranded cars....a night I am amazed we survived.
We had driven to The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.V. to pick up Foxy the dog from Paul and Stephen so they could enjoy the precious pup once they got here to Abingdon to spend their Christmas time with us (dogs are persona non canis at The Greenbrier), and drove the three hours to the famous resort very easily, with our two pups snuggled down and sleeping. We picked up Foxy ,once Paul and Stephen arrived from NYC, and began the trip back to Abingdon, when suddenly and very quickly we were slapped with an icy rain storm that slicked the highway totally and dangerously with layers of ice that were impossible to drive on...soon, after snail-pacing for an hour, nonetheless slipping and sliding down a 5% graded hill for 5 miles (!), we came to a traffic line (more of a clump, really) totally stopped on the road....We were soon informed that the entire highway was iced over , there had been 20 accidents between where we were stopped and a bridge 5 miles in front of us, and that no more cars were being allowed onto the road, or to drive west on it at all. It could be that we would be spending the night in the car, snuggling dogs, on an island of asphalt and black ice! Suddenly, the freezing night air was darkened by hundreds of headlights and tail lights being turned off to save gas and energy. And there we all were, alone together in the middle of nowhere!
We sat, snuggled under my fake fur coat, three dogs, Peter and I, for an hour and a half in the dark, every so often turning on the car for heat. We sat and sat and sat. When Peter took the pups out to empty their bladders, all four of them had trouble walking on the ice, but the mission was accomplished. And we sat and sat some more...at a time when we would normally have been reaching Abingdon, we were still sitting in the middle of the island of ice. We talked, we slept, we meditated...I called 911 too may times, and was told the same, uninformed info over and over...clearly, nothing could be done but to wait and wait and wait till accidents had been cleared and salt put on the road...another hour passed.
Finally, mysteriously, we moved forward, the night air lit with the turning back on of those hundreds of headlights and tail lights, and we snailed along for a bit, when, of course, we came to another total stand still, but this time on an icy bridge!! It was beginning to be not so much fun now...not such a pleasing adventure...we were hungry, tired and frustrated. And there we sat. Every time a large salt truck motored down the other side of the road, this bridge we were stranded on swayed and shook...I envisioned an icy death in the black waters below...
This was , by that time, a unique night in my life. Never had I experienced such a highway adventure...and that nagging thought of plunging to our deaths every time a large vehicle passed by was not calming.
FINALLY, after sitting on that bridge for at least another hour and a half, we snailed forward and the first exit we came to that was even possible to use, we did use, and crawled off to a warmly lit Shell station, where we dined on cold sandwiches, diet sodas, and an enormous bag of greasy potato chips.
We also went to the bathroom and emptied the pups one more time. We decided to try to sleep there, parked under the greenish lights of the gas pumps, but i was so direly uncomfortable I woke peter up and insisted we drive home...we attempted to do so, and found the highways actually cleared and salted byt his time, and every inch we moved closer to Virginia, the temperature rose by gradual degrees and soon (but not soon enough: a 3 hour trip took us 7 hours) we were speeding toward home. We arrived at 4:45 am....ugh!Ugh ! and Ugh! Exhaustion.
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Happy New Year to you and Peter and all the pups and visitors from wherever. After a read through your harrowing tale, I'm glad that tonight finds you warm and safe at home. So all the best from us here in Texas. Meanwhile, I find your vision of "the tail feathers of our hopes" quite...arresting and hope you won't mind if I find a way to use the phrase someday. Love...your brother.
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