life and fate and inches

vignettes to live by

The Fighting Temeraire (J.M.W. Turner, 1838)

i.

November, 2022

Biescas, Spain

So there I was. In the pitch black. Running on the shoulder of a remote rural highway that wound up into the Pyrenees mountains, stumbling over potholes and protruding veins of rock and rebellious chunks of asphalt. Nothing to light my way but a pale moon and a riot of crisp and glittering autumn stars above. A steep cliff a slight side-step to my right with only a low, rusted guardrail between me and a long way down.

Cars raced by on both sides, hurtling down the road or roaring up it, piercing the sublime stillness of the night. As they passed, some laid on their horns, probably muttering a hurricane of extraordinary Spanish insults. Some meekly moved over to give space. But most kept on driving as if I wasn't there. I probably would've done the same.

I pulled up from my run, back aching from the twenty pounds of food and water I was carrying, sweat soaked through my shirt. Bent over, sucking for oxygen, legs burning with ferocity, negotiating with my nervous system to relax. Gazing out into the deep but dazzling darkness, I could feel the presence of danger as if the sky had a low ceiling, or something was looming over my shoulder. But, it was no time to think. I checked my phone. 2% battery. Still four kilometers to go. Time was running out.

In the Fall of 2022, I was studying abroad in Pamplona, Spain. Coincidentally, where Ernest Hemmingway spent a fair bit of time, sometimes writing, but always drinking and bothering the locals.

One weekend in mid-November, I decided to head out for a hiking trip in the Pyrenees Mountains—a stunning range of rolling rocky peaks that straddles the border of France and Spain—for a photographic feast.

I was too young and too broke to rent a car, so I mapped out a route by bus. Early Friday morning, I boarded the first crowded bus to Jaca, then a second less crowded bus to Sabiñánigo in the afternoon, where I bought a weekend's worth of groceries of the highest nutritional quality—a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, almonds, and a bag of tangerines—and, by some miracle, managed to hail a taxi.

My plan was perfect. I'd take the taxi to Biescas, a small sleepy town at the foot of the Pyrenees, then walk the 8 kilometers to my motel before check-in closed at 8pm. Brilliant. I'd enjoy a scenic walk after a day of sitting and save a few Euros from a shorter taxi trip. But, the buses that day were both late, and calling a taxi with my broken Spanish proved difficult. When I left Sabiñánigo, daylight was only beginning to dim, but by the time we neared Biescas, the sky's grainy and luminous blue had faded. A veil of twilight had settled on the town and yellow windows glowed with warmth as the taxi rolled up to the cobblestone central square. I wanted to ask for a ride all the way there, but I am stubborn and polite and I couldn't explain even if I tried.

With a quiet "Gracias," I got out of the taxi and started through the town, as children were called inside from playing and teenagers were huddled outside convenience stores on BMX bikes. It seemed as though with each step I took, "sort of dark" slipped silently into a thick and velvet dusk.

On the outskirts of the town, I found the road that snaked up, 1,000 feet in elevation, toward my motel. Only then did I learn it was more of a highway, with narrow and soft shoulders, and a pitch black highway at that, without a single streetlight to be seen. It was quarter to seven, a little over an hour until check-in closed, but at least a two-hour walk. I would have to run.

I turned onto the highway, took a strong first ten strides, then promptly realizing the idiocy of running up a highway in the pitch black, pulled a u-turn back to town. I rummaged through my bag for my old and failing iPhone 8, with a battery that drained by the second. There was no taxi service and all the hotels were closed for the winter or 100 Euros a night. I turned around again, back to the highway, took a strong ten steps, then stopped and looked over my shoulder to the golden glow of the town below. Cursing myself, cursing my stubbornness, cursing my stupidity, I then looked up at the dark snaking highway ahead. "This is so dumb." I started to run.

So there I was, running on the side of a country road in the raw rural darkness, up a steep and steady hill. Never having hitchhiked before, I dared to extend an arm, hoping a car might stop and offer a lift. But none did.

After forty minutes of running, climbing, cursing, panting, burning, I saw a single sodium lamp light in the distance. My jog picked up in pace. I cut across the highway and up a final hill to Residencial Bubal, a 2-star motel with yellowing linoleum floors and peeling wallpaper and popcorn ceilings, but nestled neatly into the Pyrenees.

With 30 minutes to spare, I checked in, found my way to my cabin, took a hot shower, and collapsed on the couch, legs like lead, too tired to move.

But, despite all that had happened, all the trouble my foolish frugality had gotten me into, the most half-witted thing was next. I texted my girlfriend at the time, who was at an Oxford University dinner a few thousand kilometres away, "I did something really stupid." Then went to sleep.

ii.

May, 1992

Stonehenge

A cold rain was falling in sheets from the soft and gray sky. My parents, only a few years married, full of excitement and expectancy, were on their first trip to Europe. They had spent a few days in London, then picked up a rental car at Heathrow to complete a clockwise trip through England and Scotland.

One casual and commonplace afternoon, after finishing a tour of Stonehenge, they climbed back into their car. I'm sure my Dad was still mulling over the history of England—the Anglos and Saxons, wars over roses, Henry's and Richard's and Edward's—as he checked all of his mirrors, checked them all again, and started to pull out of the parking lot and toward the main road. I'm sure my Mom had their accordion map of the UK spread across her knees, the same one that’s tucked away in our living room credenza today, as the car rolled up to turn onto the small one-line highway. I'm sure of it.

My Dad flipped on his left-hand turn signal. Tik tik tik. Rain kept beating down from the soft and gray sky, harder now, drumming on the steel roof and splattering on the windshield in fat drops, turning the whole outside world a milky white. Tik tik tik. He paused. He looked left. No cars coming. All clear. He turned left into the lane.

All of a sudden, a bellowing horn blared, loud enough to feel in your chest cavity. A two-ton military transport truck, flying down the highway, was barreling up behind them. The solider in the truck slammed on the brakes, the pressed pedal shooting pressurized fluid through narrow lines, pushing pistons that squeeze calipers that clamp like a snake's jaw onto spinning metal rotors, all in a split second, slowing the rapid rotation of the wheel. Driver gripping wheel, brake pads gripping rotors, rubber gripping road. The wheels locked and the truck skids, governed by the same physics of running on a hardwood floor in socks.

Finally, the truck came to a halt, with a big mechanical wheeze, short of their back bumper by a couple of inches. My parents both let out a guttural exhale, clenched muscles slowly uncoiling. The sky still soft and still gray. It was one of those times, so they tell me, when your life flashes before your eyes and eternity is seen in the seconds.

A few seconds later and they would've been crushed in their compact car. Spines snapped in seventy-two places. The abrupt end of their big, exciting trip to Europe. And my existence.

iii.

July, 2024

Greenland, Newfoundland

Waves began to crash into each other, foamy and white, the unapologetic midday sun scorched the surface of everything it saw, and a strong west wind picked up, pushing our twelve-foot inflatable Zodiac boat more than a kilometer from the coast, with nothing but endless ocean gaping in front of us. And that's when the motor quit.

A few hours earlier, to celebrate my last week in Newfoundland, we decided to go out for a final fishing trip. The wind was a little stronger and waves were a little higher than normal, but nothing we worried about on the safety of the shore.

After fishing in the cove for an hour and catching nothing, we decided to venture out further to sea to see if our luck would change. A good fisherman always blames his location. I pulled the ripcord on the boat's old but enduring four-stroke Yamaha motor, and after a brief cough and sputter and choke, it roared to life and we putted out into deeper waters. I cut the engine and we continued to cast, hoping to catch at least one or two cod but nevertheless enjoying the growing warmth of the day, as the sun mounted higher in the cloudless pale blue sky. A few other fishing boats cruised by but, with similar luck, had all continued on.

Being in a boat, especially a small boat, when there's a strong current is a curious illusion. It never feels like you're moving much, yet when you look back at the shore, fix your eyes on some anchor point, you realize you've moved a mile.

And then it happened.

As the wind picked up and the waves frothed white, I realized the rocks on the coastline had shrunk to small specks. The rocking of the boat changed from rhythmically relaxing to rough. My friend went to start the motor. He yanked on the cord. The motor coughed and sputtered and choked, but then went silent. He yanked again. This time only a cough and a sputter. Each pull of the cord became violent and desperate, as the realization of the real danger we were in became clear. I threw my fishing rod down and raced to the oars to try to keep us from blowing any further out from shore. As hard as I rowed, the boat barely moved. After one minute, then two minutes, then five minutes of trying, the wind still howling down, where time felt hot and sharp and painfully slow, we had to abandon all hope the engine would start. It was like stepping into a sauna of fear.

There were all the ingredients of a true tragedy. We had no cell phone, no food and hardly any water. Not a single other boat was in sight. I leaned into the oars twice as hard. It was pull or perish.

After ten minutes of rowing we had moved a tad closer to the coast. There was a solid chance we would reach the shore, but it would take hours. High strung nerves started to relax. Panic melted into anger at our own stupidity. Progress was slow and arduous. Then the wind picked up again, howling down more harshly than before. Doubt seeped back in like a slow poison.

But then, around an outstretched arm of rock, a beige motorboat appeared, first far away but drawing closer. An elderly couple, locals, with leathery lines in their faces that sang of innocence and experience, happened to see us morons rowing a kilometer off the coast and came to see if we needed help. Yes. Yes we did.

They threw over a tow line and, slicing through the choppy water, guided us back to shore. It was one of those "kiss the earth" kind of moments. A near miss with a nautical disaster.

iv.

Why am I telling you this? What's the point? What's the thread that stitches these stories together?

Nothing. Nothing really. Besides that they are stories worth telling. Stories I want to remember. Stories that occupy some liminal state between fact and fiction, yet will weave into the tapestry of family legend and lore, like all the stories told and re-told over kitchen table coffee and backyard brunch and Thanksgiving dinner for years to come, yet somehow get better at each telling. In actuality our lives are made up of days, but in reality our lives are composed of stories. It is one big sweeping saga, with hundreds of sub-plots beneath. And it is stories that furnish the room of our memory and adorn its wanting walls. As we consign more and more of our life to the dim and unstable domain of memory, as we endlessly acquire new loves like artifacts, as we only remember more and more, even when remembering fills us with such a sweet and vicious pain.

Nothing connects these stories besides, of course, the profound and paralyzing fact that fate, my friends, is decided by inches.

Come by for coffee soon,

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