2.
In June of that same year I set off to test myself in self-sufficiency--that is, training in leaving civilized society with all its trappings and social disappointments behind. I guess I always envisioned a kind of zombie apocalypse happening at some point and I'd need to learn how to be alone and how to survive in the woods. So I set off to do just that.
Hiking and backpacking was a hobby I picked up, maybe unconsciously to counter-balance the time spent with my buddies indoors. It was always the same old same old. I was still listening to hardcore music, and had come across a Hare-Krishna band that sang about things like the spiritual realm and higher states of consciousness, and it really took a hold on me--not so much the Hare Krishna bit, but just that feeling of "is this all there is?" and wondering if there was more to life than getting drunk in our parents' basements, shooting pool, and watching reruns of Saturday Night Live.
Looking back, my parents had an admirable degree of trust in me. I asked my dad if he would drive me three hours north to a huge splotch of green on a paper map--Lackawanna County, home of Pinchot State Forest--so I could hike the Pinchot Trail. He agreed (he convinced my mom, knowingly, that "this is something he has to do") and dropped me off at the trail head. I drew an 'X' in pencil on the map where to pick me up three days later, and I said I would try to be there around mid-day. This was before cell phones, and even if I had one it wouldn't have worked in this remote part of the state. He drove away, and I set off.
I had packed light to be able to maximize my mileage. It turned out to be a little too light. My fleece blanket did not provide enough insulation to keep me from shivering all night long in my hammock, and I did not pack enough Dinty Moore soup to last all three days, so I was hungry. The fire I started kept away critters and animals...until it went out. Then it was a sleepless night filled with malicious croaks and peeps in the pitch black, waiting for the dawn. I was lonely, hungry, homesick, and strangely too, felt an acute sense of my own sinfulness and inadequacy in the ability to save myself from...I don't know what. Fate? The world? Myself? Like everything I had experienced at the basement hardcore show, it was vague, but acute, an anonymous indictment for a crime it felt I didn't commit and never lived out. It was just a sense of...smallness. I slept with my tail between my legs, ashamed of my juvenile bravado and misplaced confidence in myself.
The next morning I set off on the trail. I hadn't seen another human being the day before, and today proved to be the same kind of isolation. It was really taxing, mentally, to know there just wasn't anyone around to talk to or help or provide distraction. It was just me following my map. That is, until I lost it.
I realized it was gone after a couple miles, because when I went to pull it out of my rucksack pocket, it wasn't there. I got a sick dread in the pit of my stomach. This was bad. I retraced my steps, backtracking. Nothing. I kept walking and looking. I was getting panicky. I thought about the preacher. He prayed. Could I pray? What does that look like? I had a feeling there was a God but I didn't know His name. I cried out in desperation, "Please help me!" It was another one of those strange feelings, the kind you can't put into words without sounding crazy, but I felt a giant hand cup me, shielding and guiding me. I looked down in the brush, and there was my map. A wave of euphoric gratitude washed over me. I felt as if I had been spared from a disastrous fate, given another chance. An unknown God had heard my cry and answered.
I had never been so glad to see my dad that Sunday afternoon, right where we had agreed to meet. I had made it out alive, though not without some mental scars. I knew I had been saved from something, by a benevolent Force. By next summer, setting off to hike from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire on the Appalachian Trail and facing the same loneliness and isolation, I would learn that force had a Name, and that someone had written about it long ago, in something called "the Psalms."
[cont]
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