How My Phone Met Its End

3:16 PM: I print out a story I still need to read for my fiction writing workshop, which starts at 3:30. No problem--only 7 pages, and I need to poop--how could the situation be more ideal?

3:21: I make it to the 1-stalled bathroom outside of my classroom. Crap. Occupied. No problem--I'll just walk to the building next door.

3:23: Ah, life is good. 2 stalls--1 occupied, but I found my seat in the vacant one, and took a moment to gather myself together. 

3:24: OK, better start reading. I whip the story out of my backpack, along with my cell phone to check the time. The cell phone goes flying straight between my legs and into the toilet. Shit. Without thinking, I plunge my hand into the bowl to retrieve my submerged communication device. Luckily, I had not deposited anything into the toilet at this point. In so doing, I splash toilet water all over the story I am supposed to be reading. I frantically try to dry the story and the phone with my shirt, rubbing vigorously. I begin to rustle around and cuss and stamp my feet--I feel self-conscious regarding my stall-mate next door, so I jam my headphones in and put on my iPod at full blast. Nothing like some nice '68 Dead to cool the brain waves.  If the boy next door tries to talk to me, I am no longer accountable--I have thrust myself into happy frantic oblivion. 


3:25: I glance into the toilet. The water is yellow. That's right folks: I dropped my phone into a toilet full of someone else's piss and wiped it all over my shirt. And splashed it all over a story I am supposed to hand back to the author. To confirm my observation, I smelled my fingers. Yep. Luckily, the piss-and-run offender seemed to have been reasonably hydrated. 


3:26: This is not funny yet. 


3:27: I realize I've neglected my original purpose in sitting on the toilet. So I try again. Meager results. Now, those of you who know me are aware of the length of the fingernails on my left hand, for guitar-picking purposes. And those of you who are familiar with the UVa bathrooms are also aware of the thinness of their toilet paper. Put them together? You get a fingernail full of you know what. 


3:28: Still not funny. 


3:29: Gather my belongings, turn up my music, wash my hands thoroughly, and get the fuck out of that bathroom from hell.


3:30: Suck down a cigarette and stroll on into my fiction writing workshop, on time, drying story in hand (yes, it dried completely, and yes, I handed it back to the writer, and yes I may be a horrible person for doing so, but urine is sterile and and and...yeah. There aren't really any good excuses for that one. Sorry 'bout that.)


6:00--10:30: I spend hours obsessively looking at all the new smart phones I can buy, the man who said he'd never own one, who now just simply NEEDS to have one. 


10:31: I realize I'm being silly and reaffirm my choice to not buy a smart phone.


10:42: Indefinitely phoneless, I laugh for the first time about the misfortunes of my day.

2nd Prize Winner in Virginia Outdoor Writers Association's short non-fiction Contest

High, Low, and In Between

            We awoke to a soft fog encircling our tarp.  The morning after a day in town was always a bit hazy, but there was nothing like the silence of dawn to readjust us to the wilderness.  We had been walking north for eight days, the two of us, Bootless and Gold Bond, from Mt. Springer, Georgia along the Appalachian Trail.  We had spent the previous day in Hiawassee, Georgia resupplying our packs for the hundreds of miles ahead.  On this morning in the lowlands of Bly Gap, just over the North Carolina border, we joked and hollered, excited to have crossed our first state line.  Our yelping broke the silence, and as the sun lifted the fog, birds began to chime in with our chorus.  North Carolina was wetter than Georgia; we had entered a rainforest of rhododendrons.  After filling up our Nalgenes at the nearby trickling stream, we strapped on our packs and continued north up the steep hillsides of the Sitting Indian Wilderness.

            As we climbed, the day grew sticky.  Clouds filled the sky, but that golden June sun persisted behind the cottony veil and wet our bodies.  The trek upward turned grueling.  We knew that once we hit the ridge, our steps would sail us smoothly across the mountaintops with views of Tennessee ahead, but as the southern heat thickened, we began to gripe about our climb and bicker.  The serenity of the morning had slipped away—no, we had left it behind in Bly Gap—and the mood turned tense and frustrated.  We were used to climbs like this after a week of negotiating the unrelenting foothills of northern Georgia, but approaching the state line, we had created idealistic views of the cool blue ridges of North Carolina.  The state’s motto “To be, rather than to seem” fit quite nicely on this heated but present ascent upwards.

            Inches away from collapsing under the humidity and our frustration with each other, we glimpsed an abnormal object thirty paces ahead.  After living in the woods for nine days, anything besides flora or fauna tends to throw a dagger into one’s expected field of vision.  We continued to approach the object and deciphered a pink plastic box, a thermos, and a journal sitting on a table.  The nature of this arrangement did not quite register at first—what was it doing in the woods? Oh—oh! Ain’t nothing like a dose of good ol’ fashioned North Carolina trail magic!  We opened the box, thermos, and journal and were welcomed with homemade fresh cookies, hot coffee, and a note reading:

Good morning hikers! Rough climb, eh? Take a break, enjoy a snack, and re-fuel for the beautiful day ahead of you. And if you will, sign your name and where you are from in the journal. Happy trails!

            Thousands of miles away from home, in the middle of the wilderness, alone but for the birds, we felt extremely loved.   We bounced onwards with a renewed passion for the trail.

            Yet again, the trail sloped gradually upwards, the coffee and cookies and love had all worn off, and we had slipped back into grunting complaints.  Why do we do this to ourselves, Gold Bond? Bootless…I have no idea brother.  We refused to rest, for resting would only make the climb longer.  We were locked into reaching that ridge before noon, and that goal consumed our minds.  We grew silent as we trudged, fooled into perceiving the wilderness as one monotonous step after another, blind to each unique bark pattern, bird chirp, and flower scent.  Yet the forest seems to save you in moments of frustration.  The trail does not need coffee and cookies to be magical.  The trail knows you, it breathes, and it breaks you only so that it can lift you up, higher, higher, into mountaintop bliss.

            Through the laurel, we saw a small opening of misty blue, white, and gray.  We suddenly felt weightless—despite the burden of our lives on our backs and our souls in our boots, we ran, skipped, like children at the carnival, towards that fresh opening in the foliage.  For the first time that morning, we breathed—a deep breath of blue air, a cool fresh taste of wind and clouds circulating through our mouths and nostrils.      

            We stood speechless for over an hour, on the top of North Carolina, watching the mid-morning fog roll over the mountains.  Struck by the power of nature, we were humbled.  We felt silly to have griped about our climb—Bootless, THIS is why we do this to ourselves.  The wilderness does not isolate you.  It connects you to the infinite whole.  It aggravates…and then calms in a soothing release, freeing you to be present to the world.  Letting the damp air coddle us, we dipped back into the rhododendrons, ready to make our next ascent into the blue.