Happy Afternoon.
Here is a quotation that I really like.
"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain."
That is sort of cobbled together from a book I'm reading.
Reading that line in my bed last night reminded me of a little experience that I had a couple of days ago. Myself and the Kempers took off in Alan's Jeep on Sunday morning, out from the cabin in Weaverville, NC and on to some mountain that Josh Bagwell had been telling Alan about. The Bagwell family has a rustic cabin on top of this mountain, and Josh had been saying to Alan for years that he needed to get up and there and take in the view. The morning had finally arrived.
Alan had been told by Josh's dad that there was a tree down, blocking the road, and that it would have to be moved in order for us to make the climb. "Don't worry", he said. "I've got a chainsaw for you to use. I always keep it gassed up and ready to go. You never know when the lights are going to go out." What a very manly thing to say. I like that.
Allison, Alan's wife, had never been off-roading before, and this was definitely off of a road, but she took the bumps and the jumps like a professional. We were in four-wheel drive, bouncing to and fro, having the branches nick us as we came close to the edge of the woods.
Finally, we come to the part of the trail that is blocked by the long, dead tree. We can't go over it. We can't go under it. We can't go around it. We've gotta go through it.
Allison stays put at first, while Alan and I hop out of the Jeep with the usual gusto of men who are going to have the delight of using a chainsaw. The important thing to remember in all of this was that I went to that wedding on Saturday without a change of clothes because I figured that I would be coming home that night. But there were spots in the cabin and good people all around and so I just could not go home right away.
Thus, I find myself on this dusty, dirty trail in khaki pants and dress shoes.
Alan puts on the safety goggles. He adjusts the choke. He clenches the gas. He pulls the cord. He pulls again. It sputters and then gives out. He pulls again.
I stand there like one of those idiots that knows that its not okay to sit in the car, but doesn't know what else to do, so I watch.
And he continues to pull. And then I say, "Why don't I give it a go?" If I had gotten the thing to start, I would have definitely cut off my leg. Alan tries some more. 20 minutes have passed, and by this point Allison is out of the car, observing our desperation. She goes on a hike to see what is up ahead.
You can't see anything but just that bit of road above you and it is a solid wall of green on either side. The sun is starting to shine and there is a swarm of nats floating around my head. My dress shoes are getting scuffed. At this point, we really don't know what it is that we're working for.
Finally, we realize that the chainsaw is completely out of gas. "Bone dry", Kemper says.
So we try to push the tree out of the way with our own super strength. As Seinfeld once said, "All men secretly believe that they are super heroes. Why do they read Batman, Aquaman, Superman as children? These are not fantasies. These are options. This is why you see a guy going 55 down the highway with a mattress strapped to the top of his car and his arm hanging out of the window, his hand holding onto the mattress. Because this guy thinks that if a wind catches that mattress, then his arm is somehow going to stop it. 'Don't worry about it', the man says with bravado, 'I'm holding it with my ARM!''
That is what Allison returned to see from her hike.
So we tie off straps to the jeep. We are very strategic. Alan begins to pull the tree with the jeep and it clears it mostly out of the way. We had to stop though, because we were afraid that we were about to pull the entire thing out into the road.
So you then try to drive around what is left. No go. We try to drive over that little bit. We build a ramp of rocks. We spent ten minutes building that ramp, up and then over the tree.
No go.
So finally, we resorting to pulling again with the jeep, and finally the tree breaks and there is freedom. And off we go, up this bumpy trail, in the four wheel drive through the woods, steep as steep can be.
But when we got to that view- how worth it was it?
We sat up there for a long time. We talked about how, if we had been alone, then we would have never made it. We knew, even when we were in the middle of our little dilemma, that we would have given up easily if we were by ourselves.
But when you get people together, they just have this thing inside of them that compels them to overcome obstacles. People are amazing creatures, we keep learning and relearning little things. Like what they said was true, "Joy costs pain."
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