IN LIKE A LION PART 1: CHAPTER 3
In Like a Lion
Maps, myths, and manifestations
(a memoir)
CHAPTER 3
Shameful Solace
Soundtrack: Listen While You Read
Nightfall approached. The way down the hill was quicker than the way up. Fickle beams of light stretched above in their departure away from the steep hills and stark hollows of Natural Bridge State Park. Swiftly and severely did I devour that road, attacking the serpentine route like a slalom course in my rush to put the conundrums of the empty cabin behind me forever.
“I’ve gotten soft,” I muttered with a laugh. It was true. My belly bulged, still aching from the bag of sour gummy bears I had finished on the drive out from Lexington, where I had stopped to eat an entire carnitas burrito, followed by a pint of unfiltered India Pale Ale to wash it down. My eye sockets ached. I needed sleep. My sore knee continued to scream. I was a mess.
Once a way of life, driving out alone into the wilderness was now a feat I hadn’t braved since my fiancé and I got pregnant three years prior. The call of the wild had grown weaker. I could still feel it, but something held me captive from answering. Something dour. Something wordless. At this stage in my life, if I wasn’t sitting down to work, I was either sitting down to eat, sitting at a bar to drink, sitting in my car or sitting on the sofa.
I was uncomfortable.
I wanted to go home.
Unlike me, this outdoorsman earned his stay in the
Hemlock Lodge (8:30) amidst a grueling through-hike.
Watch above to catch the regional scenery,
and be sure to visit his channel: Bluegrass Backcountry
I parked the car at the main lodge once again and limped to the desk, sheepishly fibbing to the young clerk that while the cabin certainly seemed as nice as advertised, I could tell simply by looking at the stairs leading up to it that my injured knee wouldn’t carry me, and may I please transfer my reservation to a room in the lodge? I expected him to reprimand me or at least show a half-ounce of curiosity, yet he obliged as naturally as if I had asked for a bucket of ice, even refunding me the difference in cost.
Twenty minutes later I returned to the desk after realizing in horror that I had left my groceries up at the cabin (in a brand new cooler, no less). I was forced to contradict my previous deceit, explaining earnestly to the clerk that I had actually gotten my food into the fridge before my knee really started to go, and may I please get the key back so I could drive up to the cabin and retrieve it? Again, I expected push-back; again, my expectations were blown to dust: the clerk immediately handed me back the key without so much as a raised eyebrow.
View from the Hemlock Lodge bar
I retrieved my beer and bratwurst without incident and returned to the lodge for good, quickly finding the bar. It was an impressive room complemented by floor-to-ceiling windows, setting the ancient, jagged hills at a proximity both magnificent and safe. I sat and talked with a friendly middle-aged couple visiting from Cincinnati, soon realizing that despite having brought food to eat, I had already prepared unconsciously to settle in here for dinner. The thought of being alone in my room was distasteful at best.
We supped. We conversed. We enjoyed the local spirits. I downshifted into autopilot. I bragged about my job. I identified as an outdoorsman. I demonstrated how loudly my knee popped whenever I fully extended my leg, resulting in laughter and astonishment. The bartender could hear it crunch from twenty feet away, so she said. When our bills arrived, the gentleman from Ohio decisively ordered a flight of bourbon to punctuate the evening. I grinned, straightening up, preparing to divide and conquer in good company, when the couple abruptly offered their goodbyes. I watched incredulously as they departed the room, leaving me, five shots of Kentucky honey and the bartender to navigate the sudden silence.
*****
The bartender went out for a smoke. I swirled my liquor around and around and around, watching the sepia cyclone fall off the sides of the glass into the single-barrel whirlpool again and again and again as I muttered to myself in my head.
“How in God’s name did I end up here. Oh, right, ‘I saw it in a dream….’ Kentucky. That dream must have been a memory, though, not a vision. A memory of a time when I would’ve come here to hike a few miles, camp, sip a beer and go to bed early enough to catch the sunrise. Besides, the most memorable part of the dream was the magical city cresting the horizon. ‘Louisville…’ pretty sure I misinterpreted that one. I wandered around Bardstown Road looking for live music last night and all I found was a rainstorm, forcing me back early. And what about tonight? The final night of your trip? You were gonna play guitar and work on your novel on a screened-in porch, with owls as your muses. But just look at you here. Face it. You’re a washed out office worker, too pathetic to sleep the night in a cabin, hiding away in your safe space, enjoying—if you can even call it that—your natural habitat. A bar. Of course dreams aren’t magical. They’re just nonorganized patchworkings. Memory quilts. That recurring ‘dream place,’ the small town on the wilderness highway, is a place you used to live in: Pistol River, Oregon. One of the most remote places in the world. When you lived there, you would just up and camp the Rogue without second thought. All on your own. There’s no magic. It’s just how dreams work. Memory quilts. And the only dreams based on this trip will be about eating undercooked chicken alone in a bar, or grabbing a teddy bear from the gift shop to help you fall asleep.”
A sick sweet shock shot through my heart. My eyes tempted to well up. Something flashed in my eyes. I realized it wasn’t just about wasted time, or even that I was too soft to brave the empty cabin. It was the lie. The lie I had told myself. To say I didn’t believe in any of it…that was just something I said out loud. It had no meaning. If I could run away so childishly, then some part of me did, in fact, believe. The idea that I was strong enough to control this belief was just wishful thinking, I guess. Of course there had been nothing else in that cabin. Just me. Maybe that’s who I was most afraid of.
CLOSING CREDITS
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Writing prompts:
What is your best camping story, whether from a simple night at the campfire or a major, multi night outing?
Does nature help your mood? How?
Do bars and taverns help your mood? How?