6812 — The Road Provides
Installment #7
The following is the seventh of many installments concerning the not-so-tragic death of a ridiculous man named Patrick.
—
I was back at the pavement-to-gravel transition a few miles outside of Jamestown, but this time I pushed on — carefully. I kept Rosie in first gear — about ten miles an hour. I watched for the little dirt-road turnoff that Michael had described. He told me to keep an eye out for a sign for the Ceran St. Vrain trailhead. It was right where he said it would be. I rolled down the dirt road to the gravel lot where a few Subarus and a well-traveled van with more than a few bumper stickers were parked. I set Rosie on her kickstand and started to gather my gear for my campsite. I grabbed my tent, hammock, a knapsack full of MREs, that can of promised bear spray, and a change of clothes. I was more than a little weighed down. I suddenly recalled Michael telling me there weren’t any empty campsites for the first couple miles of the trail. I was in for a trek. At least the scenery was good.
The lot where I had parked was nestled in a pocket of a valley surrounded by steep hills covered in evergreens. The air — like most places in that part of the world — constantly held varying strengths of the scent of pine. A mountain stream added a natural song to the land. It was probably a different length of the same stream I explored earlier in the day. It tumbled among the ancient boulders that had either toppled down the hillside in ages gone by or had been exposed by centuries of water eroding away the earth that had covered them. The Colorado sun glowed over this tucked-away alpine paradise.
I crossed the wooden footbridge over the creek and started down the trail. On my immediately left, there was a cliff face of exposed stone. On the right, the creek bent to follow along the trail a few yards down an embankment. Under the tree cover, the darkness of the evening was really setting in. Now that I was in the woods surrounded by the twilit magic of the mountains, the miles ahead of me didn’t seem so bad. Ironically, just as I came to terms with the long walk, I found a well-suited clearing down by the stream not 50 yards down the trail. Michael and his friends must have missed it. It didn’t take more than twenty minutes to get the tent set up and the hammock hung. I even stretched a clothesline between a couple trees. My flannel was three days past fresh, and could use a rinse in that cold, mountain stream. I was more than pleased to see there was still plenty of sunlight to carry me back to Jamestown for dinner.
—
I found my same parking spot at the post office and headed into The Merc. I was greeted in by a middle-aged guy wearing a Peruvian poncho, a small cloth satchel, and moccasins. He told me to grab a seat wherever I’d like. To this day, I don’t know if he worked there or if he was just that drunk and friendly. I quickly spotted Michael and the others still on the couch. I decided to try my luck and take up a seat at a table near them. A less potent version of the beastly anxiety from earlier reared its head but was quickly evaporated when Michael began introducing me to the rest of the group. There was James, a twenty-something-year-old crew-cut, who sat to my left. Next to Michael was Ryan, a strong jawed, dark haired guy in his late twenties. Then there was the eldest, Shawn, who had just hit his 40th though you could hardly tell by how good of a time he was having. Then there was Terry who looked to be the youngest of the cohort. The latter three were brothers, but they all were close friends from a Wisconsin childhood. I couldn’t help but ask what brought all of them to the middle of the woods in Nowhere, Colorado. It was Michael’s 30th birthday, and — as they put it — what better way was there to celebrate than booze and camping?
Before I knew it, I was trading stories with the lot of them. I had ridden more than a thousand miles over the past three days with no radio, no distraction, only the whirring of my engine and the singular thought in my mind; what the hell had gone wrong in my life. Perhaps it was all that god damned thinking that finally made the words tumble out that night as though my head could only hold so many thoughts before something had to spill out. Maybe it was just Michael’s disarming grin. Whatever the reason was, I found myself telling these almost strangers about leaving my woman at home for some last ditch effort to find something worthwhile in this wild life. What they didn’t know — and what I dared not tell them — I was leaving a hell of a lot more than a set of vows.
At some point or another, we were interrupted by a mellow waiter named Joe. He came and sat at my table to shoot the breeze and eventually explain the night’s menu. I had two choices: Meat or vegetarian and large or small. I had never known a place more relaxed. I tucked into a plate of Dominican chicken and plantains on rice while I sat with new closest friends trading stories of motorcycle trips, women we had loved, camping, and everything aside. It turned out that James had taken rides all over the country on various shitbox bikes and was currently writing a blog about cross country motorcycling. He was a bit shorter than me, probably around 5’8 or 5’9, but he looked stout. His arms and chest bulged beneath his cotton v-neck tee. He kept his hair short in a stylish crew cut. You could tell by the way he talked that he had spent his fair share of time hunting down adventure and had some experiences worth listening to. He had the air of a man who knew something about most things and had enough heartbreak to especially know what he wanted out of life.
After a while, James’ speech got a bit too slurred to follow — he had been drinking and I hadn’t. About that time, the eldest of the brothers got a hold of me.
“I divorced my first wife too.” he told me without preface. The words came out of him like a man who had been holding his breath. It seemed as though he had been waiting to say it ever since I mentioned Tab earlier.
“Oh yeah? What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Shawn grinned, took a gulp of his beer, and said, “This is going to sound horrible, but she got mean, and she got fat. I could handle one of those things, but I couldn’t handle both.” The grin never left his lips, and I think I loved him for that. I can’t say the width of Tab’s hips ever made much difference to me, but I knew a thing or two about someone getting mean. I hoped I could grin about that some day. “I was 19 when I got married just like you,” he continued, “and just like you, I was getting a divorce by the time I was 23.”
I could feel my eyes glazing in a far off look, but not because I was trying to avoid what Shawn was saying. My eyes looked so far away in that moment because I was miles inside my own head passing over just how everything went so sideways. Thank god I snapped back just in time to lock eyes with a determined yet joyful gaze from Shawn as he said, “I know right now it doesn’t seem like it could ever be okay, but I promise you; you’re going to be okay.” I believed him. I still don’t know what it was about this 40-year-old video producer from Wisconsin that garnered my trust so quickly, but that night — the first night in what seemed like a lifetime of night — I knew that eventually I’d be okay.
Not too long after that, the band started up. They were from somewhere nearby and they called themselves Beyond Fused or something like that. They were good enough to get the guy in the poncho to start dancing, but then again he had been doing a fair amount of dancing on and off without any music. The conversation among the six of us died down under the grooving electric riffs, and we spent most of the night that way.
The band wrapped up. I bought the CD, and we all left, but not before Shawn invited me to hang out at their campsite. Once we made it back, we traded more stories — most of them drunkenly — around a small campfire until Michael started nodding off. They told me I should stop by tomorrow morning for breakfast. I gave a noncommittal “thanks” and decided to start the long, dark hike back to my campsite. As I passed over the night in my head, I had learned something incredibly important; plans meant nothing. I never planned to meet these men, and they never planned to meet me. When I met them, the ghosts which had haunted me for miles shrank back. Their presence taught me that the road had people and events in store for me that would mean healing, that would mean courage. I had stopped at The Merc on a whim. I had randomly stopped Michael to ask about campsites. I had never even planned on passing through little old Jamestown. Although they didn’t mean to, Michael and company taught me that if I simply pressed forward, the road would provide. It had already when it brought me to these men who gave me courage and comfort when I lacked both.
The road would provide.
