Ballad of the Lost Man

May 15

I felt better by morning, but Justin's leg persisted in pain. We rode toward the next town, there being no use in resigning ourselves to tents for another full day. Justin's leg gave a few times on the hills and he had to walk it twice, but soon we'd made it fifteen miles and entered Crossville.

Around the town we searched for an outlet for charging my computer a while, but in the end we weren't able. Justin called his parents while we sat outside a grocery store, telling them we made it to town and that's when they informed him that they'd already left. They were in their car with bike rack ready, on their way to pick us up. Voluntarily and out of assumed parental obligation they'd set out first thing in the morning, thinking that I'd spent yesterday throwing up and that Justin was completely incapacitated. If the situation hadn't already been poked so full of insecurities they may have been met with a bit of opposition, but, being as unsure as we both were about what to do, this came as something of a welcome resolution even if it was accompanied by a tinge of surrender.

Within a few hours they'd arrive so in the afternoon to escape the cold Justin and I buffeted, passing time in some semblance of a farewell feast. We ate three hours in a Peking restaurant, resting boothed in the warmth until a plethora of had plates passed. Then ice cream bowls were stacked tall, stretching both stomachs and seams. Perhaps the yellow-lit signs which had proudly offered “all you can eat” had not been intended for tired venturing cyclists at the end of a thirty-six hour fast, but we obeyed them all the same and then bid bye to the friendly heat, bundling up in search of a library.

Justin and I found it with a man huddled outside on a bench in a zipped-up sweater, computer in lap. That was exactly the sign I'd hoped for, telling of open internet access. Soon another hour had passed and Justin's parents drove up, parking alongside the curb.

They greeted us with eyes of unanswered questions and curiosity. All Justin's things were packed up and Justin sat down in the back left seat, hurt leg stretching lonesome across the rest of the back seat. His parents offered me some granola bars and a sports drink (to rehydrate, again they thought I'd been sicker than I'd been) and Justin's dad offered me money for a hotel which I could never have accepted and asked if there was anything else I could use. Once everyone had been appeased with hugs they went off on their hours of a drive to Greenville. At my final look into Justin's face his expression told of a combination of frustration and indignant resignation. At once upon sitting down, he'd later say, he'd been filled to the brim with longing and the need to be back on his bicycle. But alas all things don't cater to our individual plans.

While I was getting my things together to ride the man on the bench inquired about the travels. His name was Tom and he said he'd been in the navy. Having visited forty countries while sailing, he now had settled momentarily in Crossville. When he told me forty countries I asked him in awe which ones and he must've listed about twenty just from the top of his head, spanning nearly every continent. I wasn't sure exactly where I would be going that night and, becoming the implement of the traveler's blessing, Tom extended an invitation to the town's mission.

He warned me first, “It's a Christian place. I have my own beliefs and nobody's going to force theirs on me, but when we get there you might have to sit through evening mass.” He was stern and serious when he talked. I told him I didn't mind and walked with him a few blocks down the road.

We approached an unassuming white building on the left and walked around the rear to a sheltered porch, inside a line of chairs against each wall and coffee buckets at the foot of each for cigarette butts. There were a few guys sitting inside smoking and talking. Tom asked one, an old guy, shortish and thin, wearing a cap, if I'd be able to stay as an over-nighter. The man said I'd have to check in after supper.

Everyone soon began to shuffle up the building's front stairs into the upper floor. It was a room with pews on both sides, pulpit in front, and tie-dye stained glass windows lining the walls – a typical one-room church house.

“Have a seat wherever,” Tom told me.

A four person band stood at front, guitar, bass, electric percussion, keyboard, and mics for each. The next hour consisted of them playing songs, mostly lyrical hymns that had been patched over the tunes of rock songs. The twenty-odd onlookers all sat in the back pews and watched, a couple singing along with memorized words and an occasional interjection of “Thank Jesus!” Praise of the Almighty variously interpreted through a crowd of eyes.

Afterward everyone staying the night returned to the back porch and then the dinner bell rang. Volunteer high school kids said a prayer for all then stood behind a counter and served everybody down the line what burgers, dogs, chips, and your choice of cake or cookies you could eat. The people here ate well and were well and happy for it. Above each window sill and doorway, and every space between the walls proclaimed “Jesus is the bread of life.”

I gathered what I'd need with me from my bike after I'd eaten and went to sign in with the man from before. He was a caretaker of sorts, calm, soft-spoken, and inviting. He showed me around while he recited the rules, taking me upstairs to the church room and showing me my cot, the blankets, sheets and pillow provided. It was rules to take a shower each night, so I did and then afterward returned to the porch to smoke and talk with the rest.

They had their own business to speak about mostly – the tasks of finding work, what developments had unfolded in the lives of each. Speech on the porch was to be kept wholesome (rules were posted on the door) and so it was. Portraying these sorts of situations is always difficult with there being infinite complexity and flowing dynamics noticed only when one scrutinizes in detail the characters about as they interact with one another against the progressively revealed background of past interactions. Some of the men here had been here for months and the kind of play you might see among family members made an occasional appeared. They cared for one another and each others' situations and the individual pursuit of resolution.

There was Tom with his 40 countries, originally from “Joy-zee” - that's William Nathaniel Bailey II, goes by Nathan, poking fun at Tom. He wore khaki pants and a white button-up shirt untucked, brown hair a medium-length and tidy mess.

“That's the way they say it in Jersey, right? With the accent, you know, isn't that right, Tom?” He was just a kid. A tidy kid, warm and kindly-hearted to everybody.

“It's Jer-zee. Hear that? Jer-zee. Don't tell me they say 'joy,'” Tom rebutted with a tinge of feigned frustration entering his voice.

One man strayed in past dark, too late to be signed in, after a day-job all frustrated and surly. He had scraggly hair spreading out in all directions from underneath a trucker's cap, and began to passively make a ruckus.

“Well I guess if I can't get checked in then I'm trespassin' ain't I? Now I ain't tryin' to argue. I'm just saying that what you want from me is to have a real job (as you rightly said).” He directed his speech at the caretaker-man and his southern accent began picking up hostility and volume, “Now I just come back from a day's hard work with that repo-man. You all know him and you know he's an honest fella, and now you're telling me that's not a good day's work and so I need to be signed in on a daily basis. So what you're telling me is nothing I do is good enough!” Now the group surrounding, each sitting in their chairs collectively raised their hands against him.

“Don't get loud on this porch. You take that outside. This is a place of peace,” says Nathan, looking him in the eye.

Serenely, having been through it all before the caretaker-man said, “I didn't say anything like that. That's what you're saying. There's Frank, now. You go talk to him.” Frank was the owner and had just parked his truck outside, here to do last-minute business.

Things died down after that.

“I hate to see the bad apples like that, but sometimes you get them,” the caretaker-man said later.

A man in a tie-dye shirt and leather jacket warned, “And as they say 'they spoil the bunch.'”

I went up to my cot. Maybe an hour after I had fallen asleep someone else was brought in and laid down in the cot beside me. He commenced to saw the loudest logs I ever heard and now even trying to sleep in warmth became tiresome.

May 16

Inevitably, morning arrived at six and I woke to do some chores as per the rules. Mostly the regulars were already taking care of everything. Me and the snoring man shuffled around uselessly, eventually finding ourselves with everyone else on the back porch.

Weather had remained cold for the morning and rainy with a forecast of more rain and high fifty degrees. I found myself a cup of coffee then returned to talking. A few people already began leaving for a day-job at around six-thirty. On the porch a man named Daniel sat across from me and spoke with Fred, the snorer, about football. Daniel was a tall man, well built and middle-aged. He humbly brushed off comments with a smile about how he could've made it like one of the players he knew so much about.

“Oh, I used to be skinny when I played, nothing like those guys.”

The conversation meandered, leading from the places people'd been to where they hoped to go and everything in between.

Clanging from the breakfast bell shot through the air and everybody immediately got themselves up and into the dining room. After the prayer I shifted through the line with everyone else, picked out a donut, poured myself some cereal and took a seat. The room kept mostly silent. I got some seconds and then I started supposing it was about time to collect my things and get. Everybody was sifting out for the day and I said goodbye to the few still around. I held my bicycle by the handlebars and set to walking down the street. All the buildings and lights were sapped of color by a sunless sky.

Forward to the main drag and I was northbound. It felt to me like a strange while since I'd ridden anywhere as I went on down the road away from the town. Buildings turned to faded gray hills, windows were replaced by animals speckling the distant grass, bowing their heads to the plain and the trees. Rolling along by farmhouse, truck, silo, the soft touch of the dangling cloud struck cool on my face. I reflected on the past day in my roadside solitude and the meditation put on me by pedaling's repetition. I understood as I thought: these men with their troubles and magnanimous faces hold a more accurate understanding of their own context and circumstance than most care to realize or recognize. I and you put away our preconceptions and stigmas; trading in all pity for sympathy or empathy. They know more than you and I of themselves and strive.

Along came the song of a lone bird wading through the afternoon haze, reaching through my thoughts as an echo and seeming to be the ballad of the lost man – overwhelmed and under-emphasized. The song remained clear and beautiful through the softly weeping sky.

More pictures.

O difficulty, difficulty!

May 12

This date passed quickly, beautiful and uneventful. It began in early waking and preluding coffee upon the rooster's call and quick bustle to pack pre-departure. Jabez led us through the stretch of hills to town telling us each landmark which may have passed our gaze. Night still sat between the hills, but an orange glow began to show behind the eastern treetops.

I peeled the aluminum foil cap from my coffee mug as we went on, tilting my cup to heed the force of turn and slope. My eyes were peeled to the sky as color streamed into all things. I had the benefit of the windows; unfortunate Justin sat in a chair in the back of the van beside the bicycles and bags.

Jabez gave us a choice of where to be dropped off, telling us which roads would lead us where and we decided on the gas station at the intersection of two highways where we would begin to climb north. Once stopped we laid out our things in a wide pile in the parking lot. Jabez departed and we thanked him for everything, with thoughts for Susan following behind.

Quickly I packed my bike together and went on ahead of Justin to try and find some photographs of the Southern countryside in the early morning light. A few minutes down the road I found the field and watched as the sun peaked over the misty slopes and soon Justin caught up, just having filled his water bottles. The day continued slowly at first with frequent stops as the light crept up. Within a few hours Justin and I had agreed to commence our mornings at six daily. The opportunities afforded were too numerous and broad and the dawn-side temperatures too comfortable to pass.

All the day on was simplicity and clear skies, so we went – passed the Tennessee threshold before noon and going easily on to Cleveland. Immediately upon entering the town we came across the wastes left by the tornadoes, those same tornadoes who'd gifted Jabez and Susan with their rooster friend. The gifts here were less pleasant: buildings torn apart from within, each strung together with caution tape borders and a pink X adorning each side. Weeks have passed and nothing'd been done – lasting monuments for a memory slow to fade, but our way went on.

Searched out, found, and stopped in a two-story campus-side library for afternoon siesta, shoes off, writing, reading, or napping in chairs away from the outside peaking sun and asphalt heat.

Afterward time and distance went on without bother. Night came suddenly with the search for a campsite continuing late. In surrender and weariness we came upon a cemetery rising to a hilltop, a long steep drive winding around its left margin. We stopped and pressed our bicycles up the gravel tracks and in conscientiousness, with a bit of hesitation, and full due respect made shelter behind the graves, a morbid bed perhaps, but welcome (so long as we remained undisturbed!) at the close of the day.

May 13

Waking came with dawn and we gathered our things as planned upon the turn of six. We rose with the clouds and went on our way. The sky remained veiled through the rest of the day and color was lost from the dawn. When days are gray it's easy to expect less pleasant things. We went on without much event through the daytime, climbing to the top of a plateau in the mountains as rain began to fall.

Near the end of the day with the sky still a dim gray I rode up a hill and stopped during a small gap in the rain, awaiting Justin behind me. I saw his white helmet appear and noticed he was walking, hauling bicycle alongside. He slowly approached and then he told me he'd almost fallen but had caught himself, planting his right leg into the ground with the result of a jammed-up knee. He could walk with the pain, but pedaling wasn't as simple. The joint shot him with pain if moved it to either side so we sat and rested a while, wondering and weary and unsure of what may follow.

Light began fading away and the sky's shade of gray deepened. There was nothing to do but make camp, so we set off, and with one footstep to my pedal my chain popped a strained link, dragging fallen along the asphalt. The fix was quick, but the insult too obvious to miss. The day pressed me hard, but I didn't know whether to cry out to it, “O difficulty, difficulty!” in laughter or tears.

Two hills later we readied to make quick camp in the woods. A parked car sat in a shoulder-side pull-off from which descended a rugged path down to lower ground running parallel to the road. A short way along the path we found an empty space on even ground next to a shallow trickling stream. Here was where we laid our tents and sat in repose. We filled our lungs with nature air, exhaling temporal worries into a flowing and flowering wilderness night.

May 14

Turning in discomfort through night, my eyes were closed though seeing only occasional brief and fleeting dreamless sleep. The earth's rotation went on slowly and unevenly. I awoke in cycles every time initiated by pitter-patter on the tent top, single raindrops growing and collecting to a reverberant shush until sleep caught me again. The stream behind the tents swelled, its pulse and pace quickening as it fed.

I became sick to my stomach as night faded into day and the uneasiness continued. My alarm sounded at six, but I did not feel like doing anything, now having gained what felt like fever. Justin remained also in his tent, got up a couple times, but we both slept on past afternoon without much change. I had told my parents I would call them the night before, but had had no signal to do so. Justin went searching for one on the road, but acquired nothing. Returning he told me that the car at the base of the path's driver-side window was shattered out and asked me if I'd heard anything in the night. Neither of us remembered it being that way before.

Not until later did we discuss what we might do about the day. My body ached and was heavy and cumbersome having remained in my tent such a period and the air outside was yet colder and uninviting. The rain had been dropping in, on and off throughout the morning, but by late afternoon had been absent a while so with difficulty I got up and walked about. Justin's leg had not improved and I still felt queasy, shivering on my surface while hot inside and retaining a fogginess of mind. Days like this test how much you want what you think you want and make you sick for home and a bed; days like this test fortitude and teach will.

We walked down the road to where my chain had broke and were able to make our calls to the comfortable houses in heat and dry so far away. The sun was setting beyond the trees. Vehicles sped occasionally by as we walked back on the side of the road, and I watched as the waxing gibbous moon grew brighter against a sky shrinking away. We turned back into the forest to find our tents still draped with a cold moisture in the dark.

The Half-faced Moon

May 11

In the morning when I arrived at the library Justin was waiting beneath a tree. He told me about his day before while we waited for the doors to the library to open at ten. Cars were gathering around with everyone relaxing in their car seats amid the cool morning air. When doors opened we went in and I worked a while on photographs, Justin looking through books or logging details into his journal.

We set off down the road again returning to the flowing uneven land and the swelling afternoon heat. What we had done the day before we did again, me going on ahead to Cleveland, GA where I began to scout for food, then hauling up a drastic hilltop library to read. A few hours had passed since I'd arrived in town when Justin bustled into the library with a slight look of shock draped over his face. He sat down “No I was not riding that long...” and went into his story.

While I had sat and read about the Hopis he had been riding, had taken a break at the crest of a hill and soon an ambulance rolled up top-lights twisting, followed by a police car caravan with all hubbub abounding. The whole procession had thought he'd been hit. He was in fact resting because he was feeling a little sick, so they went ahead and checked him out, giving the diagnosis: too little real foods plus heat-and-hills-on-a-bicycle disease (as christened by me) and then he was back on his way.

As I had rode those hills I had noticed a couple people sitting outside on the porch of a house. I'd passed by with a wave, but Justin had had the fortune to talk with them. Eventually after we departed and rode out from the town back into hills a red truck honked and pulled off into a parking lot beside us. We went on and saw it again later, pulled over on the side of the road stopped with a person leaning out the driving window. Two of the people he had met on that porch were inside and stopped us, both having wanted to see how far we'd got and how far we'd get before day's end. They introduced themselves to me as Lisa and Ed and told us they'd decided they'd be going into Dahlonega (duh-lawn-egg-uh) which we were also headed to. Mercifully and graciously they offered us the most welcome opportunity for a truck bed ride. Justin was beat and willing and I was a little confused and we accepted, all things coming together at once. We both hopped in, all things packed in around us, and westward-ho! we were, skipping out on miles of the up-down so tiresome on two wheels.

Trees and cars and distance flew by, us wind-in-face and all out content. As the slew of forest and hills slipped by I looked up into the fixed half-face moon, white against bright blue above. Everything went by so quick below the moon – seemingly monumental but in truth just a little cosmic body sitting utterly insignificant in the scope of all things beyond, and here it seemed to us as we sat in the back of that red truck that we ourselves were the point where all things came together, the historical path of every action in the universe converging here and now to get us a bit farther on under that insignificant moon.

The road went on and on and Lisa asked us if we wanted a ride a bit farther than Dahlonega. In fact if we wanted they'd be able to give us a ride into Ellijay. O mercy and grace! So the road went on a little more and suddenly we peaked a hill barren of trees and looked out on the expanse of hills behind and valleys ahead and the green carpet stretching out and rolling on like the vast ocean rippling up and weathering down through the span of the earth, the crest and trough of every age visible in its bending lines.

And at length and with great thanks we arrived in Ellijay at once feeding on the setting sun, impelled by the beauty of the town under the sun's orange gaze. We passed through it after Lisa and Ed had departed with biddings of bottomless gratitude and goodbyes. We meandered around its streets and stopped to peruse the intersecting Ellijay River as the sun reflected from its flowing surface.

After finding some food and packing it out (for eating after finding the spot for the tents) we headed into the hills for climbing. Night was coming and the woods lining every road was thick so I decided to change methods. Knocked on a door to a house in town where two tents were pitched in the yard and there wasn't an answer. So we went on. Two more homes tried and a number of vacant houses passed and no camp made. At the top of a hill on the right hand side I saw a van and a car in the drive way of a home, so I placed my bike at the foot of the driveway and went up to and rang its doorbell.

A man answered and stepped out asking, “What can I do for you?” I told him the general plans for the trip and he said he'd be happy to accommodate us with the side of his home proving a viable camping spot. We were both welcomed inside and we were introduced to his wife. We talked for a bit about our travels and they offered us cooling water as they told us a bit about theirs. His name was Jabez and hers was Susan. They had five cats walking the house, some of who had been taken on as strays and recuperated. Outside there was a rooster, who had come upon them a few weeks ago, battered and torn up when tornadoes ran through the area. He was at that time randomly dispensed on their home and they fed and took him also under their wing. During our talk they had offered us the opportunity to shower, and with our minds already befuddled from the day's surplus of kindness, we were taken completely aback.

We soon discovered also that they were more familiar with Alaska than either me or Justin as they had both traveled to Anchorage with a church group. Jabez showed us photographs he'd captured of the landscapes on a train ride through the invigorating wilderness, vats of ocean seeping away from land revealing the vein strewn mudflats beneath, mountains shrouded in a thick misty sky with white surrounding peaks and glaciers, elk and seal and wonders resplendent.

Just after showering, as I was going outside Jabez told me what he'd already told Justin. The way ahead on the road we had chosen was twenty miles uphill and would not be a wise path. This the way into the next town which was where he worked and he instead always took the road around as, at times, the road ahead was difficult even vehicles to maneuver. He then told me he'd already told Justin he could give us a ride into that town in the morning when he left for work. So we'd wake up with the caw of the rooster at five for coffee and departure.

The night closed with us setting up tents in their side-yard and eating our long awaited dinner. Night had fallen and each star above poked its little light through the dark canopy. With all of these things on my mind I set in my sleeping bag underneath my mesh tent roof and stared up into the sky. And that same moon, half-faced and insignificant stared back at me.

More pictures to view on my facebook.