Project Eveningland

“When I’m lost with myself I see lions,
lying golden on beaches of white. 
I see men with their boats in the weather. 
Carry me as I drift in the night”
-San Fermin (“Methuselah”) 

4/10/2023 Monday Day 55

Forget yesterday. Forget our chilling encounter. Everything changed in Eveningland Meadow. Again.

First, the quotidian. Folks’ve been asking about my mileage. I’m writing this from the Quarter Way Inn, at mile 555. We are 25% done with the trail, if you can believe it. I am getting close to the second point at which I left the trail in 2021. After mile 770, my walk will be on new tread (for me).

When we left the somewhat cramped—but cozy and friendly—bunkhouse, we were greeted by cheerful chickens, pecking about contentedly. The alpacas hailed us with buck-toothed smiles that were all lower teeth. The floof-fringes that sit atop their heads make them look impossibly goofy. You are safe with us, they seemed to say. Cindy, the hostel owner, gave us a ride back to the schoolhouse on her way to work. She told us about the joys of alpaca husbandry. “The mothers and the little ones hum to each other,” she told us. Back at the school house, we resumed the trail somewhat hurriedly. I turned and saw the door to the schoolhouse closing. Perhaps a hand waving in the darkness?

We walked 13 miles today. The weather, my god the weather. Clear skies. Cool air. Pleasantly smooth tread. The only element missing, Wedge and I agreed, was shade. The leaves are coming, especially down at this elevation, but there’s no shade to speak of yet. We walked across more narrow ridges, then dipped into gentle valleys full of rushing streams and rhododendron.

Second, the transcendent. Two years ago, I reached this area on June 4. On a humdrum day, after a disappointing BBQ lunch, I walked into a meadow. The meadow. What I call Eveningland Meadow. It sits at around 546.9. A series of low rolling hills climb gently through a quarter mile or so of cow pasture.

Back in early June 2021, the grasses in Eveningland Meadow stand high, gone to seed. Rose bushes dot the landscape. A lone tree stands crooked beside the trail, a tiny patch of shade. For a cinematic reference, consider the field at the end of Shawshank Redemption. In this place I experienced an emotional catharsis on a par with what a person of faith might describe as a fleeting glimpse of the face of god. As an atheist I would describe it as a moment of absolute, total clarity and perspective. There was an almost terrifying sense that if I closed my eyes, I might see the whole of my own tiny life, adrift in the unfathomable expanse. I wept unreservedly.

I camped at the edge of the meadow, drinking cool clear water from a pooling spring hidden amid the rhododendron. I watched dusk reach the meadow. The fireflies emerged, first at the dark edges of the forest. I leaned against an old, smooth wood stile and felt peace.

It was chemical, and not supernatural. I’d say that the difference matters not at all but it does. Only a belief in the latter can sustain confidence that one has the right to tell others what to do in bed.

I wondered what might happen this time when I reached the meadow. Perhaps nothing at all, and that would be fine. That kind of catharsis doesn’t show up on demand. But still it would be nice to reflect upon the experience. It had been so special. I told Wedge to go ahead of me when we got near the meadow.

The grasses are short now, and the trees and rose bushes are still bare. The grass is a preposterous green against the skeletal brown of the gentle forested hills—reddening here and there with buds thick enough and in great enough numbers to be visible from a distance.

It began to happen again a few dozen yards before I passed the lone tree. It wasn’t like looking down from above. And it wasn’t like seeing into the future. It was more like seeing hundreds thousands of pieces—the moments of my life—clicking into place before my eyes. I am weeping again, but this time it is even stronger. And this time it would be fleeting because there will be no camping above the meadow.

I’m writing this from the cozy sitting room of the Quarter Way Inn. It’s a wonderful, idiosyncratic, rambling old country house. A VHS of Jurassic Park is playing in the next room. Friendly chatter spills out of the dining room.

I showed Wedge to the spring just north of the meadow. It is not hidden now, in April. A steam flows gently into the pool. No, that’s wrong. A stream flows gently out of the pool. The pool is the source, not the endpoint. The slope out of the pool is so gentle, and the mental schema for a stream flowing into a pond so strong, that it is hard at first to see the truth. This water comes up out of the ground and then flows downhill. I filtered and drank the cold clear water. It tastes sweet; it actually tastes sweet.

I keep thinking about what the meadow said to me. I only heard snatches. You are healed, she said. Finish the trail. Discover what comes next. Come and see me once more before the end.