Guess who’s back... back again...?
I spent the last 15 days in the US, living it up like a true gypsy. I spent 5 days in my car, hitting up each of the places I have called home, and generally making a whirlwind tour of the Southeastern US. I visited my favorite coffee shop in Raleigh with a friend from high school, snacked on pancakes and fried egg sandwiches at the best diner in Atlanta ("serving food that pleases since 1929") with an Emory friend, saw people I had not seen in 15 years at my family’s old church in Florida, spent the night on my aunt and uncle’s farm in central GA, ate bacon with a friend who never thought he would see the day I became a carnivore, reminded the congregation of Community Christian Church in Beattyville that the Rodeo Queen lives, and realized that being in shape and climbing around on mountains all summer does not mean that eating croissants and quiche every day is a good idea.
The highlight of the vacation-from-my-vacation-life-in-Paris, though, was definitely the night I spent on The Mountain in Kentucky. I worked last summer at this ridiculous and completely insane pseudo-episcopal camp exactly 1.3 kilometers from the dead Center of Nowhere, USA. (See entry from mid-November trip to Alsace for exact location of Centre de Nul Part, France.) That means that the exact Center is on the property of this camp. The camp happens to be the place where one severely handsome Backstreet Boy grew up, and that is a huge part of the reason I took the job to begin with. Because let’s discuss the concept of me working on a mountain for 10 weeks. First of all, I went, nearly immediately, from an electricity-free mountain to freaking Paris, France. But if you can get past the culture shock there (which I nearly didn’t), there is still the fact that it was me working on a mountain. I am not even Episcopal! I showed up for my first day of work only to find... no one. So I drove the circle of camp, and the first living soul I saw was this crazy Jesus-hippie-grizzly bear looking man on a roof. All I could think was that there was no way I was going to blend in.
Anyway, I, little Miss pretend-I-am-French, lived on this mountain, away from civilization, air conditioning, and the real world, for two and a half months or something. I wore no makeup (none, not even concealer. Not even lip gloss, I was down to just chapstick!)... let my hair air dry every morning and then put it in a ponytail (which for me is huge because if there is one thing you should know about me it is that I. Never. Put. My. Hair. In. A. Ponytail.). I even wore a polo shirt every Sunday for this place. Now that is dedication. (But I still rolled the sleeves up to make it a little less New England rich lame Jcrew prepster.) And then, to top that off, I lived in a building shared with several mice, hiked mountains in pouring rain or blistering sun (dragging kids along with me), and spent mornings at least once a week clambering through a cave full of bats by choice. I sweated through my shirt (like, literally through it) almost every day, but the kicker is that by 10 in the morning I was counting the minutes till I sweated through it, because once you do that, you cool down much faster. If ever there were a preconceived notion about me, if ever there were a situation that the majority of the world could not see me in, this would be it. The only thing I could see myself doing less than that would be hitchhiking. Or being put in jail. One down, one more to go, I guess. Anyway, despite my huge fear that I would not fit in, that I would be fired for being too prissy, that I would be the only one there who didn’t know everyone else, etc., it ended up being one wicked cool summer.
Hence the highlight of my trip. So I am getting dressed to go to the mountain last Saturday morning, and all I can think as I am trying to figure out what to wear is, "I really don’t want to go hiking. I am not in the shape I should be to do so, and plus it is cold. So, what can I wear that will be a legitimate excuse to not hike in? I know! Concert tee, black jeans, Chucks. Perfect." Little did I know what was in store...
The entire staff sans one showed up for the night, and we all decided to spend the night. So my boss tells us we can have Patterson, the building where the Bish stays when he comes to visit, so in theory it should be nice, but everyone knows that not only is it haunted but it is also crawling with mice and the value it is insured for, I suspect, greatly outweighs the value of the building. This summer the toilet in it broke, we found multiple dead (and worse, live!) mice, something went wrong with the electricity and the faucet on the outside wall started electrocuting people every time they touched it, the PA system running through it never worked, and there was at least three well-documented ghost sightings in the building. But with five ex-summer staff sleeping there, we thought we’d be fine. Oh, the mice didn’t get me. And the ghosts left us alone. But the rest of the staff? That’s a whole ‘nother banana.
We started the night at the campfire, where we made s’mores until the fire started to die and none of us could handle the idea of more soggy graham crackers. Post-campfire, we headed to the dining hall, which has this industrially-equipped restaurant-style kitchen that no one uses in the middle of the night... except us. So at midnight we stood in there, leaning against the counters and cooking chicken wings, fried cheese sticks ("what do you think would happen if we baked these?"), and spaghetti, and gorging ourselves on peanut butter brownies and cupcakes left over from dinner. Just like old times.
Eventually we head back to the building where we are going to spend the night, turn on the flame-lit furnace-slash-heater, and hang out doing absolutely nothing for hours at a time. It was just like over the summer after the kids had gone to bed, except that this time we didn’t have to be awake at 730 the next morning.
At 300am, we raided the cupboards of the building where we were, finding nothing but a freezer-burned bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and a half-empty box of nutri-grain bars. I am 100% sure that I ate the other half of that box over the summer when I was hanging out in that building.
At 330, someone turned on Seinfeld.
At 345, we actually ate the Nutri-Grain bars... AND the biscuit.
At 4, I decided to go to bed, on the loveseat where I was laying.
At 405, the boys sneaked up behind me and roared loud enough that I jumped out of my skin and rolled onto the floor, giving me too much adrenaline to go back to sleep... for the moment.
At 500, I declared it really was time for bed, and that I still hate Seinfeld.
At 510, someone dogpiled me on the loveseat, but when I refused to move, I was picked up and carried across the room, in the arms of a guy three inches shorter than me.
At 515, only the three guys and I were awake. Suddenly one of them declared, "we’re going for a sunrise hike!" I quickly realized the ramifications of this proposition and immediately played possum, thinking maybe then I wouldn’t have to go.
At 517, he tried to pull one of the other guys into the hike, who replied, "I’m not going unless Blair does," knowing there was no way I would go.
At 518, I looked at the clock and realized I had to be up in 3 hours anyway... so why not?
The four of us– three ridiculously buff mountain men and me, the girl scared of cave crickets– headed to the camp store to equip ourselves, more out of force of habit than the actual need for provisions. Armed with nothing but a room-temperature bottle of water stuck in my back pocket and a worn-out hoodie, we took off. The trail was thick with fallen leaves, it was dark, I was in Chuck Taylors worn smooth from miles schlepped through the Paris subway, and it was muddy. But we made it... nearly. They were all fine... but I nearly bit it twice. Once I started to slip, remembered I was in my favorite black jeans, and managed to break my fall without my pants touching the mud. But I had forgotten what it was like to live on the mountain. Before I had hit the ground, before I even really knew I was falling, all three of them were laughing at me. But that is how you function when you live on a mountain in the general vicinity of Nowhere. If it had been them (which it never would have been), I’d have done the same. We got to the bottom of the cliff thing you have to climb up for the view of the sunrise, it was still foggy, and we realized it was still just as dark as it had been at midnight.
"What time is sunrise again?"
"Oh, I don’t know, somewhere between 7 and 830."
"What time is it now?"
"545."
They had decided we would watch it from the top of Wolf Pen, my favorite hike and probably the only reason I decided to go with. But to get to the top of Wolf Pen, you have to pull yourself up this mega-rock with ropes that have been there for ages. Not a problem if it is hot, and you are in hiking boots. Also not a problem if you are named Cliff and one of your parents is a mountain goat. But if you have spent the last four months climbing nothing more strenuous than a pseudo-mountain somewhere in Spain to see an ancient military fortress... and it is dark... and you are wearing tractionless Chucks...it’s a little more difficult. Because when it is cold, grabbing a rope just burns. But somehow we made it to the top, where I was convinced I saw an actual wolf. After ten minutes of hanging out on the top, one of the guys voted for leaving:
"Look how dark it is! The sun has got to be hours from rising! Let’s go get breakfast. I bet the cooks are here already..."
Another mountain goat-boy replies, "No, come on, we’ve got to stay! We’ve made it this far, and plus, everyone knows that it’s always darkest right before the sun comes up!"
The rest of us exchange looks.
I call him out on it: "Look, I am not even from the country and I know that bluegrass gospel song that says so... but I really think that is just a song meant to be, you know, figurative? I think once the sun is down it is dark, and if it’s dark, how can it be any darker? There are degrees of light, but not really degrees of dark. Either something is dark or it isn’t."
Long pause.
"The sun will be up soon. We’re staying."
We clambered around on the top, noticing the places where names are engraved, and how completely different the view is when there are not leaves obstructing it. We re-enacted our favorite hikes from the summer; "YOU ARE LOST!" and "Just take your time, there’s no rush..." and the girl who we had to carry up and the one that kicked Trina in the face, and the time I tried to run back from the Saddle, wiped out and still have the jagged scars to prove it and the time my boss forbid us to go and the time we girls went anyway, bear whistles blowing intermittently all the way. And then, what else are you supposed to do when you find yourself on a mountain, in the cold, before dawn? We spooned.
Anyway, soon the sun began to rise, lightening the whole sky almost immediately. We stood around and watched it and tried to stay warm with the geek button and hoods and whatever else we had, until we realized it was too cloudy for a good one, but we could see the parking lot and the cooks’ cars, and we knew breakfast was calling our names. I think that morning was the first time I ever made it to breakfast before my boss. Wearing last night’s clothes but otherwise none the worse for wear, we served breakfast and I remembered just exactly why, despite never meeting anyone more famous than Andy himself, I loved the mountain. (Hint: large kettles of grits, pans of country ham, fresh hot coffee at all hours of the day, and free Ale-8 in returnable bottles, the only kind worth drinking.)
Said my goodbyes after breakfast and took off, back to Beattyville, where I somehow managed to stay awake until 9pm (that has got to be some kind of record, really...). And before that weekend, the last time I stayed up all night by choice and not to study was... well... a really long time ago.
Thanking God I’m a country girl,
B