THE TEMPEST

Sunday August 6th, 2006 was one of those blazing hot Texas summer days. Nevertheless, I was determined to spend my free time hiking the Chisolm Trail. It's one of those things I love to do, but don't often get the chance. So I got my stuff together, hopped into Excalibur (my car, aka the Blue Pearl) put on a large white Dave Gilmour shirt (white to repell the sun), drove out to the usual starting point, covered my exposed parts with proper sun screen, and set out for what I imagined would be a journey through the solar scorched wastes.

A routine mission.

The early parts of the Chisolm Trail, nearer to my house, are the shadiest, and the prettiest. Here there are all manner of trees and a creek flows alongside the path. There are bridges, roofed with branches, where brooks babble underneath. One can see lots of ducks, cranes, geese, and various forms of local wildlife in and near the water. It's very pleasant. I always imagine it as the Shire portion of my There and Back Again.

But as one travels further afield, things begin to change. The path veers away from the water's edge, and the trees give way to sun burnt earth and a rather wide, supposedly green belt between faraway rows of utilitarian houses. This is marked with an endless power grid of those monster metal towers with buzzing powerlines strung between them: the Mordor portion of my hobbit's journey. (I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "What happened to the Trollshaws, Bree, Rivendell, the Misty Mountains, the Great River, etc?" And the answer is: I don't know.)

I trudged out into this vast waste, beneath a merciless sun. I passed magicless, treeless little parks along the way, imagining my surroundings as being more like something from Mad Max than Tolkien. Actually, there were a number of other travellers along the way, all of them sweaty and weatherbeaten. One guy on a bike gasped, "Too hot! Too hot!" It was as if he was about to die. It got so bad for me, personally, that I took off the Dave Gilmour shirt and wrapped it around my head like a hooded shawl, with the arms tied beneath my chin as a strap. I wished for clouds to move across the sky and cover the sun.

This they did. With surprising quickness and in great abundance. In fact, I noticed a great darkness gathering in the West and approaching like giant black riders in the sky. It was getting colder, so I removed the shirt from my head and put it back on.

I was now eight miles from my starting point, with a vast homeward journey ahead of me and a massive stormfront suddenly bludgeoning in from the West. I quickened my pace, counting my footsteps to mark time. Now I was seven miles from home. Now six. And then five. The wind blew like the trumpets of Jericho, fluttering my Dave Gilmour shirt and threatening to fill it with air and take me hang-gliding. The trail was now abandoned except for me. Odd scraps of newspapers and trash tumbled by. The temperature dropped dramatically. Maybe thirty degrees. Maybe more. Down into the seventies. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I saw lightning; the kind that bullets down from the sky and strikes heavenly vengeance on the earth; the scary kind for travellers, especially those scurrying along a green belt, thick with power lines and the requisite big metal towers.


I could the smell the rain. And with it pain. And it was headed my way.

My life was becoming a Jon Krakauer book!

Droplets began to pelt the concrete and I could feel them on my shoulders and hair. A little rain was no big deal, really, and quite a relief from the heat. It felt good. But the lightning worried me and the storm threatened to go way past the merely enjoyable phase, complete with howling winds and a furious downpour. I remembered there was a park nearby, with a shelter of some kind, but I would have to sprint to beat the squall. Running would be difficult after having walked close to twelve miles already, but it was the only way. So I plunged forward along the trail at top speed. I could see the park, and a lone brick structure, some two hundred yards ahead of me. Two football fields.

I dashed the entire way, but I did not beat the cloudburst. Rain plummeted from the sky after about 50 yards and soaked me to the soul for the last three quarters of my desperate plunge. I raced into the brick enclosure, crossed its width in a (now rapid) heartbeat, and crashed into the rear wall.

It was a public restroom, and not much of one. It had little metal toilets and a roof which only covered half of it. Chance, at least, had ended my dash in the proper half of this lavatory; the half with the urinals in it. (Not that there was much possibility of me hurtling into a restroom full of naked women out there, but one can dream.) There was also a water fountain. And I was parched. But first I used the manly stall.

Then I began to feel light headed.

My heart was palpitating (from the run) as if Keith Moon had come back to life inside my ribcage. My head swam and my vision blurred. I felt hungry. I steadied myself against a wall and limped over to the fountain to get a drink. The water was hot, but I didn't care. It was wet.

I returned to the meager shelter of the bathroom and sat on the floor to get my head together. I thought, dimly: "Great, now I'm hanging out in men's rooms." As things became normal again, I got up slowly. First to my knees, then crouching, then bent over, and finally standing.

The rain was letting up. At least, it appeared so. I feared a second wave, or worse, a tornado. It's always calmest before those pirates of the plains sweep down to pillage. And this is Texas, afterall; the southern stretch of Tornado Alley, as they call it.

However, I felt better now, and I was eager to get home. So I decided to face the lessening rain (and all those scary possibilities) and soldier on.

And this I did. I worried some about lightning (which kept flashing in the sky), but the weather began to clear, and the sun began to take its toll once more. As for me, I never stopped except once; to get a drink at a fountain. I even flirted with a cute girl I saw along the way.

All the way back I went, across Mordor and The Shire, to where the Blue Pearl was docked and awaiting its captain. And then, in blessed air condtioning, I drove home to Rerun; a bath; a meal followed by strawberries and oatmeal-raisin cookies; and a tall glass of milk. I called the folks. I AIMed with Kelly. And I wrote this entry. And, if my pleasant end-of-day could be symbolized by a painting, it might look something like this:

P.S. I enjoyed every minute of it.