Tranquility shouted its peace and chimed its placidity. To the rhythm of the cool breeze of the mountain, it hummed. As I recollected my time there, I saw it with clear eyes as opposed to the burning-red, infected ones that had seen it eleven years ago. The green blue of the man-made pond sounded the call of society muffling the beautiful woods. Giant balloons for play littered this green liquid in exhaustive colors. Each camp had derived the correct usage of these balloons and no one knew their created intent. Atop of this mountain I stood in the place where I had relinquished the soul of my elementary self and firmly grasped the beast of my middle-school manhood by the tail, as it dragged me into adolescence with as many scrapes and bruises as possible. This was necessary though, each heartache, each anxious moment, each uncourageous second, to create the man who is writing today. This man has few lasting scars. He is blessed, but here atop the mountain, the scars and blushes of ages past are slung against him with a fervent and vengeful hunger to give back to this man the elementary soul he had left there. I now am both this immature twelve year old whose free spirit and gentler voice flits again within my body, and still the maturing twenty-three year old, whose larger frame shadows the Tennessee sun this lucid moment. I was back at camp—Doe River Gorge snatched me again—two souls converged on this mountaintop, intertwining like the caduceus, and with its wings.
That comfortable and hideous sunset plaid, short-sleeved dress shirt brawled with my streaky, highlighted, white-blonde hair, and with my transition lens glasses, and my convenient pants that zipped to shorts. I was a disgusting mess of efficiency. I arrived, clenching to the coattails of the popular people I had somehow convinced to invite me to this ethereal, this mystical camp. I had heard the stories, the lusts, the fun; I was filled with the promise of forthcoming popularity. This drove me. Amidst this ragtag band of eight acquaintances, few lasting relationships were forged but by association I was to achieve a status, a membership in a whole new realm of conversations, a respect incapable of being achieved by any other means. I stood at the most important impasse of my young life ready to enter adolescence and I intended to enter it linked with the popular.
On the way up to the camp, I had ignored my burning eyes, shot with blood, and even prayed for help as I entered the urgent care center with tears of pain—more than that though, I had tears of anger for my presence there and tears of anxiety that I would be forced to stay. Thankfully my prayers were answered and that doctor, through some stroke of stupidity or perhaps compassion, let me be, with drops we both knew I wouldn’t put in. We were off again, headed to the glory I was sure would await me in those mountains. My parents were emotional wrecks every three seconds giving me advice and telling me how much I would be missed. I appreciated the sentiment, but soon their voices would fade away in the distance of the valley and my new life would begin. When we got there, I quickly found the friends whom I was going to grow close to. I stood in the shy and awkward silence of one who follows. I’m sure my presence that year has long since been forgotten, which was in fact proven this yesterday, but I was there and that was all that mattered.
Walking into the cabin, my red eyes met the intimidating brown eyes of my model counselor and the wannabe slim shady who sagged beside him a little too sweetly for the style he was professing. Their genuineness stunned me from my mumbles to silence as embarrassingly my parents spoke for me in the probably futile attempt to convince them I was a fun guy. Truth was, I wasn’t. I wasn’t interesting, I wasn’t fun, I rarely sinned, I never showed it— I was as perfect as I could get; I was boring. I shuffled into the breathtaking cabin which stood out of place with the surrounding woods, but as I entered, the soulful smells of week-old sweat and ill-placed urine slung me back on my rear—but this is what I came for. I sloughed proudly my new, sporty, burgundy duffel-bag I was carrying on a lower bunk. The bag fit in with the others as opposed to the suitcases I was accustomed, but still, I had not earned the right to climb a ladder to a top bunk. I pretended to put my drops in, squirting obscene amounts of the expensive liquid in the vicinity of my eye, pretty sure that some got through the brick wall of my blinking eyelid. My parents said goodbyes, thankfully amidst the other parents, their tears were bridled. By then though, I was in the middle of the octa-ball court getting the bageezus beat out of my shins with a soccer ball. I was in heaven. The dinner bell echoed resonantly from atop the mountain. The same meat had been pre-cooked for the week and tonight it was fashioned into a sort of I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-frozen lasagna. One person at every table was forced to clean up, and after avoiding that chore by winning “nose goes”, I set the pace for my undefeated performance in all of the other random games we held to determine a loser. After about a half-hour we were all sitting in the tent that became our chapel.
Having been told before I arrived about the woes and lengthiness of the sermons, I had tuned out to those words before I arrived, but I was still made to attend. The music blared with new generation volume as floodlights tangoed with each other around the room and projectors shot random lines of colored light shot across the roof as if fighting to give me a seizure. They succeeded in part as I was forced back into my seat eyes closed, palms sweaty—stared at, concerned about, embarrassed and pissed off. I burst onto the scene of having eyes on me in a terrible way. They were right about the sermon a long monotonous affair. I had been squeezed out of the most popular cabin by virtue of my not being in their group. I was the friend invited to the big parties, but was useless in small get-togethers. (This nature has shifted as my mindset went from blending in to standing out, but we are not yet to that part of the story). I was with a few of the people in that group, but mainly that one step closer than I was. It was fitting but it was unfortunate for my goal nevertheless. The week would bring physical challenges of which I shone, but I prayed and shook for the social obstacles which I must climb to taste that sweet oasis of popularity.
Each day met a new physical challenge, all of which I passed with flying colors. I remember one of them, where we were asked to climb across a cliff face using sporadically placed staples and a complex system of two carabineers alternately to move across. I fell accidentally, fearlessly, across the whitewater asphalt dressed with jagged rocks, smiling in my greatest moment of adventure yet. Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X: Tales for an accelerated Culture, wrote this about adventure; he said, “Adventure without risk is Disneyland”—I was relaxed on “It’s a small world after all” and missing out on the adventures right upon me. This was the first. This was the first time I had given in to not having control. That pure trust in the carabineer held me from death. After having clenched my fist around total control my entire life ‘til that moment I let go with an alighted feeling, as the cramp that had been festering for years as I hoarded control was pulled out of my fingers with the power of trust and surrender. It’s remarkable how much those two vary directly. No one cared that I had fallen; I was peripheral and attended to only for my reaction. I delivered the most admirable one there was and after my fainting at worship the night before, I had evened up the score. I had bitten into life’s peppermint stick cleanly without removing the wrapper. I tasted the sweet dissatisfaction of life, its sugars coursing through my veins without nutrients, only energy. As Lord Henry said in Oscar Wilde’s A picture of Dorian Gray, “A cigarette is the perfect type of pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” Life was my cigarette, and my goals its nicotine. It was perfect. I was never fulfilled by it and therefore I could always desire it— and men need something to desire.
Friday’s golden sun dawned on the 5th day of my expedition here. The fat of bacon and powdered eggs filled my burning mouth and throat as my throat and cheeks recovered from devouring the whole box of skittles the night before—my first experience with failing to be swayed by the glories of 99 cent food. I once more took in the beauty of the place beyond its green lake or furnished cabins. Today was the culmination of all the physical events of the week, a race my cabin was destined to win. Four foot falls met me as if I was sliding under a truck. In whitewater position and holding my breath I was shot down into the depths of the lake by the massive fall (far longer than four feet as you may imagine). Thousands of gallons of water poured over me as for a brief and far too short moment of eye-opened consciousness I was again at the mercy of Poseidon’s beast and inside its belly, floating in trust but upon the events of days before falling off the wall I did not miss this opportunity for adventure. In the same lake that the day before writhed with 7 rattlesnakes and 2 water moccasins I was drowned, if only for a moment, I lived, sunken, as if in another world looking at my previous one from underneath, gold-auburn rays refracting in the clean mountain water making myriads of colors pin their sequins to my eyes. Some sort of Zen cloaked me but it must have been from somewhere further above then natural peace or pleasure. This was truly heavenly—my first taste of beauty’s scrumptiousness. I was home among the water folk and would have held my breath till I died if I could but stay in that moment all the while. The butterfly lives only a day and the measure of his day is in seconds not years and to live this beautiful momentary life of the butterfly I would have traded all my years. With that I was rocketed, unready, unwilling, and involuntarily out of the waters shooting up to the surface cursing oxygen and life vests as I ran on to the next event—at times like that all one can do is run— Not so much to run toward something but at least to run away from anything.
Obviously our cabin won—we absolutely demolished everyone. Despite a lack of social prowess, we were left with the agility of unfettered gods. We couldn’t have lost, that would have been terrible; all that we had, to have gone to the social lions, no, no— physical victory was the only measure we had, and we knew it must be perfect. Like the number one team in the nation, we were expected to be perfect in our craft. Losing in this physical realm would have been disastrous; we would have lost all credence we had, and certainly all that we desired to achieve.
Though I was a member in this winning side of battle, I had lost the war; winning the sprint up the mountain, I missed the real glory and victory that was the beauty of the mountain itself. Our cabin, like a machine preformed every duty on the obstacle course, as a unit, under the command of perfection. I look at it now, as I stand in the dying rays of the sun and see the rocks we climbed, the log bridges we walked, the record holding zip line which zipped through the autumn trees into the green lake, the blob which without the wisdom of the 300 pound man behind me would have been my deathbed, the hill where we played football, the cabins sitting elegantly in the woods, the octa-ball pit and its fence of many colors in steep contrast to the rustic brown woods—I see it all and feel the old me tugging back, the desire to be first, to win, to be noticed, but as the years have turned me to this pondering, it is painfully evident that I would simply rather be present than victorious. I do not condemn my elementary soul which lives in the past on that mountain. It is no longer my keep and exists only in my memories. I cannot return again to this solemn mount, where adventure met me, and I learned. I failed in my quest, I was little the more popular, but I had but a story— and a new soul—one prepared for the mystery of my tomorrows, of facing moment by moment the beauty of each day. In the undying words of Omar Khayyam,
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
No I cannot return, my place no longer resides on this mount, but I will be forever thankful for all it gave unto me, and what it took away, what it taught me, and where it brought me. The sun’s last dying ray shoots up to the sky breathing its last cry from its torture to be silenced by the new night and the promise of day. And so I must leave, this solemn place has done its work in me and like the sun gives way to the stars and moon I must take my soul and die-never to return yet always to remember. One last sniff of that high air and I let go of my old soul and the past I can’t return to, and moved on toward a new direction, the bright future allowed me by the gorge.
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