Focused on a sudden illness (in a person I love more dearly than life itself) over the last 30 hours or so, going about the handlings of all that as crisis-handling me does (better than fine; I am good to have on hand when things fall apart), I opted for a route through a lonely national park. (I was way too tired to drive us in our tiny two-seater hybrid in the after-dark traffic of the only other route.)
By utter chance (or not?) we were passing through a remote valley just as an elderly hiker made it to the road and signaled for help. He’d done a solo hike to a mountain peak, but come down miles from his vehicle (and he didn’t know which direction those miles were in or how many they were, either). In order to help him, I had to wrangle the assistance of the only other vehicle to pass: two wary Los Angelenos who were looking for a place to target shoot (guns): their SUV was loaded to the gills and also didn’t have an empty seat, however, so I enlisted their help to stay with my husband by the side of the road, piled the hiker into my vehicle so we could find his van (turned out to be three miles up the road), and then hurried back. Happy to be of service and no longer wary, they cheerily asked if I knew of a nearby shooting range. I informed them that it was illegal in a national park, knowing full well that this may no longer be so, but it should be and, since I was the only former ranger around, I went with sanity instead of actual law. Because.
They laughed, having had no intention of trying it in the actual park. The young man said, “I’m from Arizona, and over there we just go into the woods and shoot.” And the young woman with him leaned over to peer in the window and said, “I’m from Oregon, and there we just go into the woods and shoot, too.” And I said, “Well, we’re from Mississippi and Missouri, and both theres people just go into the woods and shoot, too, but we’re always pretty clear on the fact that somebody’s liable to shoot back.” And then I told them where an old off-road shooting place outside the boundary had been thirty years before, and they were happy for the info and to have helped three strangers, and we headed our different directions for good.
In a few minutes we’d caught up with the hiker’s old camping van and then followed him 30 more miles till he turned toward his campground. It was quiet in the vehicle and outside, the only lights our two automobiles, the night sweeping past us gentle and wild. I was able to be outside what mattered most to me individually right then (or ever, perhaps), and to be reminded once more that I am just one person in a great big species, and most of us are good in our hearts, given half a chance. And serendipity—of needing a relatively car-less route home after a long 24 hours—does what it always does: nurtures the spirit of a human no matter what else is afoot.
The hiker was eighty years old and proud of it, skin lined and looking every day of every hike everywhere for years (he’d listed all the parks he’s hiked in on our search for his van), and was mighty pleased to have completed such a long, strenuous peak route alone. Eighty, I repeat, and has A-fib to boot (the heartbeat irregularity thing). Still hikes every chance he gets. If I make it to 80, I sure hope I have that many wrinkles and enough gumption to climb a peak or two and natter down in the nearsome vicinity of my automobile, unfazed and proud as heck of the day.
Dear God, but how I do love being alive. I don’t know why anyone would want to get fully enlightened so as to stop reincarnating here. (Don’t know what from on reincarnation, of course, and have no opinion on it. I just can’t see not being besotted with this earth and us all, every one.) And in that gentle light, I can lay me down to sleep and trust whatever comes to be enough. We are never quite so alone as we may feel.
