Complex Numbers

The Not-Shining

Because I am a pessimist, I'm never unpleasantly surprised.

PROMPT July 27th

Write about a time you were caught off guard, surprised, or had the rug pulled out from under you. How did you recover?

At least, not that I can remember. As with embarrassing moments, my mind utterly blanks them out, hoarding them until I'm trying to sleep, at which point it dredges them up so that I can stay awake. I can only assume it's my stupid brain trying to avoid another episode of sleep paralysis by trying to avoid the "sleep" part in order to skip the "paralysis" part, and also the "dark figure menacing me" part.

But then I forget them all the next day. I'm left with the memory of a memory; the vague notion that something was keeping me awake, some self-disappointment from the past. But I can never remember what.

So I'd write about the time I literally had a rug pulled out from under me... except that never happened, so I'm left with the figurative meaning of that phrase, and I still can't remember anything of the sort. Well, my divorce, I suppose, but it's not like I didn't see that coming. Pessimist, remember?

I suppose there's the tortured tale of trails and travel, something I manage to remember probably because I wrote about it at the time. Naturally, I can't remember where. My offsite travel blog, maybe? Can't be arsed to find it right now. Link's to the left, there, if you want to look. Since so much time has passed, it's likely some of the details will be different. Memory does that.

About, oh, eight or nine years ago, I suppose, I decided to drive across the country, something that, at the time, I hadn't done before. So I got it in my head that if I'm going to drive across the country, I'm going to drive all the way across the country, from the easternmost point to the westernmost point in the continental US.

The easternmost point is easy: I parked near Quoddy Head Lighthouse, near Lubec, Maine, and scrambled across a few rocks to touch the Atlantic so I could honestly say I was as far east as I could go without getting too wet (apart from my fingers). Then I took the next several days to actually drive across the country, avoiding Canada and the interstates (nothing wrong with either, but I wanted to see the US, not Canada, and take my time doing so).

The westernmost point is a desolate spot of land in northwest Washington, near... well, it's not really near anything. There's a dot on the map called Ozette, which turns out to be a ranger station and a convenience store, with the convenience store being closed because it was December. From Ozette there's a trail through the rainforest that winds about three miles to the Pacific shore. Three miles is easy, especially since the terrain is relatively flat and like I said: trail. On level ground, such a walk normally takes about an hour; since the trail was a bit rough, it was, oh, maybe an hour and a half from the ranger station to my goal.

I got there, looked around a bit, saw absolutely nobody else, dipped the toe of my shoe (idiot me forgot to pack hiking boots) into the Pacific, and took one final look at the featureless western horizon... whereupon I noticed that the angle formed by the accursed daystar, my stupid self, and said horizon was really quite remarkably acute.

Like I said, it was December, close to the earliest sunsets of the year, and a far more northerly latitude that what I'm used to -- and while the trail wasn't too difficult, when it got dark, I'd be boned.

And it was about to get dark.

Oh, and did I mention that the PNW is crawling with brown bears? Well, the PNW is crawling with brown bears.

So I started booking ass back up the trail. Under the canopy, it got dark fast. Really, really fast. I estimated I was about 2 miles into the 3 mile return hike when it started getting difficult to see tree roots and rocks and such, though the packed dirt of the trail itself shone like a beacon between the lush, bear-concealing vegetation on either side.

I don't run. Well, I did, that evening, but normally I don't run. Tough on the knees and back. But I was motivated. Oh, and in addition to dark, it was starting to get cold, which I didn't much notice yet because I was running.

By the time I broke into the clearing at Ozette, the stars shone in the sky, but I didn't have time to appreciate them because that's when the cold hit me.

I ducked into the car, turned the heat up as far as it would go, and flipped the seat heater to High (yes, I have seat heaters, shut up).

None of it helped. I shivered all the way through to the nearest town (by "nearest" I mean "several hours away") with a motel.

The nightmare didn't end there, either. The motel was in Forks, and this was back when the Twilight movies were in full bloom. I couldn't spit without hitting a cardboard cutout of some hormonally-enhanced Hollywood vampire, werewolf, or insipid brat.

So that counts as being caught off guard, I suppose. Curse the blasted daystar and its utterly unpredictable rising and setting. But still. I'd do it again. Just in the summer. And with enough time to retreat afterward to somewhere -- anywhere -- that isn't Forks.

Preferably, a place with beer.