*cover photo is not my own.

Yesterday in English class our teacher asked us to think of a movie that we watched as a child and then re-watched later and interpreted differently. And no, she said, I don’t mean that you just watched it again and got all the jokes that went over your head. One guy said Forrest Gump, and a girl mentioned Gossip Girls; I hadn’t seen either. I jotted Peter Pan down on my notebook page, but I figured there must be a better example that I wasn’t remembering.

Then today I thought back to The Rookie, maybe that’s a better example. As a kid, one of the exciting parts about going to other people’s houses was their movie collection. Grandma had The Rookie. I remember watching it several times. There are a few scenes in that movie that are really beautiful. This one is my favorite:

I’m no movie critic, but that is magic in my eyes.

But anyway, there’s another scene, a short one, that I’ve also never forgotten. It goes like this in the transcript,

Kael:

What are those things?

Jimmy: What?

Those things moving up

and down?

Oil rigs.

When those things

are moving up and down,

it means times are good.

Looks like times are good.

And let me tell you friends, I saw a few oil rigs today.

I saw receipts on which people added a tip out of generosity – they chose to pay more than was required of them. And I watched a lady across the counter donate seven American dollars to an organization that helps Asian kids get a college education. I went to a free jazz concert, where the kids played for the love of music and got an encore. And I talked with a girl who started a campus piano club to teach music to anyone who wanted to learn. I ate a meal at The Cookout for $3.62, a twentieth of a day’s wages. And I drove past establishments with self-checkouts, where companies trust their patrons to pay fairly, un-supervised. This afternoon I was surprised to learn that the other five people in the room were Christians too. And tonight I left my car unlocked in our driveway, walked inside, and wrote these words. Tomorrow at 9:05 a.m. I’ll walk into history class and learn about a time when these things were not so.

Say what you will about hell in a hand-basket, but the oil rigs are still moving up and down.

I’ve been listening to Stephen West’s podcast Philosophize This! some lately. In Western Civilization 101 we were tasked with writing a seven ish page essay describing our own picks for the seven wonders of the ancient world. I decided to pick seven important philosophers. *Pro tip: use block quotes.

(photo by David Krabill)

*Pick 7 wonders from the time period of pre-history to 1683/Religious Reformation to make your own list*

Seven Wonders of Ancient Ideology

When examining the time period spanning from the earliest human civilization to the religious reformation in 1683, one finds an innumerable collection of men and women who shaped the course of history in important ways. From the time of Noah and Abraham through the emperors of Rome and rulers of ancient Africa, people have lived remarkable lives in which their decisions and actions left impressions upon not only their own time but also that which came after. Yet of all these great rulers, citizens, warriors, and nobility, perhaps none have been so fundamentally important as the ancient philosophers. In this essay I will examine seven ancient proponents of ideology who live on in history books, whose legacies and contributions to modern thought live on thousands of years after they are gone from the earth.

Democritus (7.)

Democritus was a Greek philosopher who lived from 460 to 370 B.C. and is considered a part of the atomist pluralist school of philosophers. He appears on this list of seven influential thinkers because of his ideas concerning atoms. Democritus was far ahead of his time, even if the people of his day weren’t able to see so. There is an ancient riddle that proposes the situation of a runner moving towards a finish line. The riddle supposes that there is a measurable distance between the runner’s starting position and the finish line, and that that distance can be covered in a certain, measurable amount of time. The riddle requires that we half the distance to the line, thereby halving the time it takes to reach the line. It follows then that you could also half that remaining distance and time, and divide it in half again, and so on. Eventually, there would be only an infinitesimally small space standing between the runner and the finish line. But as long as it is possible to continue dividing the remaining space in half, the runner can never quite reach his goal and the end of the race: it must go on indefinitely.

Democritus hypothesized that there indeed was a point at which the remaining space could no longer be cut in half. He said that there was a unit in nature which was the substance of everything, a very small building block of sorts. Stephen West from the podcast Philosophize This! says that,

Democritus is the guy that believed that everything we see in the world consists of atoms and void. [He didn’t] think that that process of cutting things in half can go on forever…and there must be some fundamental, unchanging, eternal building block of stuff that can explain the uniformity of the world and everything in it. That building block is the atom. (West)

This theory, proposed in its rough form in around 400 B.C., would lay the foundation for great advancements in metaphysics and science in general. Although Democritus could obviously not grasp the full importance of his idea and the weight it would carry for thousands of years, he was able to articulate the basis of atomic theory.

Pythagoras (6.)

Pythagoras lived from 582 to 507 B.C. and is said to have coined the term philosophy meaning love of wisdom. He is the founder of the Pythagorean school and often attributed with the discovery of what is referred to as the Pythagorean Theorem which states that in every right triangle: a² + b² = c². According to an article titled “Pythagoras” in The Columbia Encyclopedia,

He . . . established a secret religious society or order similar to, and possibly influenced by, the earlier Orphic cult. Since his disciples came to worship him as a demigod and to attribute all the doctrines of their order to its founder, it is virtually impossible to distinguish his teachings from those of his followers. The Pythagoreans are best known for two teachings: the transmigration of souls and the theory that numbers constitute the true nature of things. The Pythagoreans were influential mathematicians and geometricians, and the theorem that bears their name is witness to their influence on the initial part of Euclidian geometry. They made important contributions to medicine and astronomy and were among the first to teach that the earth was a spherical planet, revolving about a fixed point.

While it is not clear exactly who ought to be credited with these great discoveries, we can be sure that the ideas put forward by Pythagoras and his group of followers have been significant for the world of thought. It is interesting to note that, “Pythagoras and his followers really innovated the idea of studying mathematics solely for the sake of intellectual satisfaction” (West). Pythagoras not only coined the word philosophy, he also lived a life which led him in a pursuit of that love of knowledge.

Hippocrates (5.)

Hippocrates is recognized as the father of medicine (“Hippocrates”). He was born in 460 B.C. on the island of Cos in Greece and died in 370 B.C. Remembered less for his actual practices than his ideology, Hippocrates is thought to be the first to separate superstition from scientific observation in the field of medicine. He is revered also for the Hippocratic Oath, a document which he probably did not write, but one that lives on in the modern medical world and serves as an accepted ethical code for the field of medicine. Whether or not he was the author does not change the importance of this work, an oath that is still quoted at graduations and taken by those who practice medicine. Plato was a peer of Hippocrates and mentioned him at least twice in his works. An article written by Wesley Smith states that, “Plato’s second reference occurs in the Phaedrus, in which Hippocrates is referred to as a famous Asclepiad who had a philosophical approach to medicine” (Smith).

Hippocrates believed that, “…the goal of medicine should be to build the patient’s strength through appropriate diet and hygienic measures, resorting to more drastic treatment only when the symptoms showed this to be necessary” (“Hippocrates”). The movement away from the belief that sickness was of a completely divine cause is a very important aspect of the evolution of modern medicine. By seeking rational explanations for widely observed but not understood health problems, men and women like Hippocrates have been able to better understand how the body works and the diseases which plague it. Searching of this kind was what led to Alexander Flemming’s groundbreaking discovery of penicillin in 1928.

Aristotle (4.)

Aristotle was born in Stagiros in northeastern Greece in 384 B.C. He lived until 322 B.C. and is considered the father of the scientific method. At the age of seventeen he enrolled in Plato’s school in Athens where he remained for nearly twenty years, first as a student and then as a teacher (Howell). Around 343 B.C., Aristotle became a part of the court of King Phillip of Macedonia. Here he taught the king’s son, Alexander, who would inherit the throne a few years later after Phillip’s assassination.

An article called “Aristotle” written for the Encyclopedia of Political Communication says that,

Aristotle’s extant writings indicate that, like Plato, he was interested in the good life, which Aristotle defined as human happiness (eudaimonia) or human flourishing. However, Aristotle rejected Plato’s approach to gaining the knowledge (epistēmē) necessary to understand how to live the good life. Aristotle . . . insisted that only the knowledge gained through the human senses could be considered true knowledge. Thus, Aristotle’s pragmatic empiricism: collecting, classifying, and systematizing data that were accessible through the human senses. That which motivated Aristotle to study plants and animals . . . also apparently impelled him to examine the forms of reasoning men used in efforts to persuade others as well as the political systems men had created to govern their fellows (“Aristotle”).

Aristotle is also remembered for his idea of the golden mean. This is the idea that the good life meant living a moral life between excess and deficiency. He thought this approach of finding the middle ground ought to be applied to every aspect and dilemma of life (“Aristotle”).

Plato (3.)

Plato was born in Greece around 428 B.C. and died in the city of Athens around 348 B.C. He was the student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, yet he is best remembered The Republic, a story which proposes that humanity dwells within an intellectual cave and only a few ever succeed in freeing themselves to live in the “sunlight of reality” (Cumo). Plato founded the a school which became known as the Academy. According to an article concerning the life of Plato, “Over its years of operation, the Academy’s curriculum included astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory and philosophy” (“Plato”).

Plato is remembered in part for his ability to synthesize different, seemingly unrelated ideas to form coherent, philosophically sound arguments. An article from the World History Encyclopedia states that,

Whereas Socrates seems to have concerned himself with learning how to live an ethical life, Plato wanted to understand how proper conduct related to politics, law, mathematics, and science. If all knowledge was part of a system, then every insight was related to every other insight no matter how disparate they might seem (Cumo).

Cumo’s article goes on to state that, “All subsequent philosophy owes a debt to Plato” and that, “[Plato] is arguably the best-known philosopher of antiquity and, with the possible exception of Jesus, the best-known person from the ancient world” (Cumo). It is clear that Plato’s work and the work which his life gave birth to has been essential for the success of democracy and rational thought in both the ancient and modern world. His commentaries on the use of reason for the furthering of fair and just societies which focus on the rights of their individual citizens has established a foundation upon which later generations have built their great democracies (“Plato”).

Socrates (2.)

Socrates is perhaps the most well-known philosopher of all time. His notoriety and influence is so vast that all other philosophers are categorized in terms of whether they lived before or after him; thus the term ‘Pre-Socratic’. Born to a Greek stone mason in 469 B.C., Socrates entered into a world where physical grace and beauty were glorified. Yet later he would be known as the man who walked through the city barefoot, long-haired, and unwashed. This refusal to accept the ideology and value system of his peers became the catalyst to a life of questioning that would change the world of philosophy forever. One article about Socrates suggests that, “His lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied his spirit of questioning every assumption about virtue, wisdom and the good life. (History.com)”

In an episode concerning Socrates and the Sophists on his podcast Philosophize This!, Stephen West said,

He never started a university, he never lived in a castle, he never even wrote any of his thoughts down, he didn’t believe written text was the way to do philosophy anyway…to Socrates the ONLY thing philosophy was, was discussion, questioning and argument. His particular brand of it was called The Socratic Method (West).

In 399 B.C., Socrates was charges with corrupting the youth of Athens. A vote was taken among 500 jurors, and the narrow majority of 280 found him guilty. An article written about the death of Socrates says that,

Before drinking, without any protest, the cup of hemlock that would bring about his death, Socrates had one last philosophical conversation with his disciples, in which he argued for the immortality of the soul and the nature of human existence as a constant struggle between the body and the mind. The lasting value of this conversation, however, goes beyond the substance of Socrates’ arguments, as Plato’s Phaedo exalts the pattern of philosophic life consummated in Socrates’ death to a transcendent ideal for all people (Conrad et al.).

Socrates once said of an encounter with another man,

I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know (Socrates).

This knowledge of his own mortality and inability to know the full truth is what led Socrates to develop a method which would live thousands of years longer than him. His refusal to accept the widely held beliefs of his time is what has propelled Socrates into infamy and forever changed the field of philosophical thought.

Jesus Christ (1.)

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a city about six miles south of Jerusalem, shortly before the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.). In his later years he lived in Galilee where, after being baptized by his cousin, he began his ministry. While there are no records of any of Jesus’ writings, the accounts of his disciples, which recount many of his parables, teachings, and actions, remain central to Christianity. Because of the vast number of people worldwide who believe that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God, He is undoubtedly the most influential character in ancient history. His birth, life, and death fulfilled the promise of the long-awaited Messiah as predicted in the Bible by writers thousands of years before his time (Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2, Isaiah 42:1-4, Jeremiah 31:31). Much about Jesus is still debated. An article titled “Jesus of Nazareth” states that, “Results [from studies done concerning his life] have varied widely, from the view that there never was any person called Jesus of Nazareth to the Christian confession that he was and is the Son of God” (Norris).

No summary can do justice to the importance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as portrayed in the accounts written by his disciples. His teachings were revolutionary in his day and remain so today. Ideas like loving your enemies and returning evil with kindness do not fit into any central ideologies at any point in history. He claimed that he had come to forgive the sins of those who would believe regardless of their social standing or moral depravity. Luke 4 records an account of Jesus in the temple,

And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll . . . and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (NIV Bible, Luke 4:16-21).

Christians today often quote the apostle Peter who, when asked about who he believed Jesus was, said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (NIV Bible, Matthew 16:16).

I don’t write very many stories. But the other day I was riding down the rode and thought of this one. So here it is, a long rambling parable about what I’m not entirely sure.

1/18/18

10:24 p.m.

Westminster, SC

“Jesus spoke all these things to the crowds in parables. He did not tell them anything without using a parable.” – Matthew 13:34

And somewhere along the way his followers made up more of the parables he never got around to.

…………

There was one cold, dark night in the dead of winter which was brought to our attention on That Day. And at the word of our sister, our Lord smiled in the assembly.

In a small town there was a hotel with a reputation for shady dealings that sat on a street known for its dark temptations. As such the Christians of the town stayed away from both and set up their shops and stores on the other side of the main street. And in this hotel, with its cracking lavender staccato outer, there were was only one light on. The yellow light oozed out so that it looked like a dark monster with a hundred eyes was asleep except for one waking winking eye.

And Sarah walked down the dim hall towards that unblinking eye escorting her tired body and a glass of wine from the sleepy bar – both for the patron within the lighted window. She knocked once and entered the unlocked room. What came next was familiar, for a time. Until he suddenly grabbed her up off the bed, drug her down the stairs, and threw her into his truck. She was unclothed and horrified, miles outside of the routine. Sarah knew the nature of the men she dealt with and said nothing as they left the parking lot. And nothing as they made a right turn, and then a left. And nothing as the truck stopped and she was thrown out on the side of the highway into the bitter cold.

This came as an almost expected shock. Deep down she had always felt, almost, that she deserved some sort of retribution for the way she haunted that dark street – some repayment for the hell her profession had welcomed. And tonight along highway 23, naked, alone, and freezing cold, she knew it had come. What was there to do but walk back the way they’d come.

The pastor of the Christian church had been asleep when the phone rang, startled when it rocked in its cradle the second time, and groggy after the third ring when he said hello. The fellow who was to be the guest speaker the following morning had come into trouble. He had been delayed in leaving and then run into traffic still fifty miles out. And then ten miles out he blew a tire. The tire went out in the middle of a curve; there wasn’t time to correct, and the right side of the car smashed hard into the guardrail. So it was after the third ring and a quick explanation that he hurriedly got dressed and left the parsonage. It was a cold night to be left out beside the road. Before leaving he rang up Jerry, the town’s twenty-four hour tow man who was awake upon the first ring and answering upon the second. He was shortly up and dressed too; for a tow man hell comes calling at all hours of the day.

The pastor found his man standing beside a smashed-up Chrysler in the middle of a curve. The two laughed and tried to make light of the situation as they headed back towards town. “This ought to give me something interesting to talk about tomorrow” the un-stranded man jested. “I’m going to be preaching about staying alert – not letting the Devil take us off guard. The church today gets so distracted with worldly things, not paying attention, and then bam! the Devil swoops in and takes em out.” “Ah yes brother, I look forward to it. What is the text you’ll be using?” “1 Thessalonians 5:4-8 from the New Testament: But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. And Habakkuk 2:1 from the Old Testament, “I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart; and I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, And how I may reply when I am reproved.” “Well I shall look forward to it then indeed.”

Not long after the two men left the scene of the crash they passed Jerry and the wrecker coming the other way. “It’s a shame having to call Jerry, but there isn’t another tow man for forty miles” the driver said. “I should like to deal with someone else…but a small-town man doesn’t have much choice.” “So I take it he’s not one of your flock then?” the man in the passenger seat said with a chuckle. “No sir, that he is not. Jerry’s a dirty old sinner, everybody knows it, but can’t nobody talk to him about it and get anywhere. He went to jail a few years back for rapin’ a girl. He’s a bad man – but like I say, he’s the only tow man for forty miles.”

As they came into town the pastor slowed down to thirty-five and then came to a stop at the red light. To their left they could see the yellow light coming out of the third-floor window of the purple hotel. The traffic light changed to green, and they started off again. The pastor suddenly wished he’d taken the overpass and come into town the other way – you never know what you might see over in this part. With a visitor in the passenger seat, he thought, it wouldn’t be a good time for the town to show its darker colors. As they continued down the grimy street lit dimly by tall yellow lamps, a figure started to take shape up ahead. Then, to the dear pastor’s horror, it became apparent she was indeed a painting of the dark colors he’d hoped so badly not to come upon. Sarah had walked all the way back, shivering and half froze to death, she’d made it back where this nightmare had started. But with no one to take her into a room for the night, she had nowhere to go. She just kept on walking. Our poor pastor was mortified. Embarrassed. He flicked off his headlights so as to guard his own eyes and that of his passenger and continued on the next hundred yards by the dim streetlights. Neither man said anything of the pale, quivering prostitute walking down the sidewalk.

As the two men entered the spare room of the parsonage beside the church, Jerry too was headed for his own house. In his groggy state he’d forgotten that the truck’s winch had gone out, and the part wasn’t getting in until Monday. When he saw the figure growing larger in the distance he put on his high beams, and then slowed to a stop. Our poor Sarah was by now so cold that she’d have climbed in with the Devil himself. Neither of them said a word as they jerked away from the curb the way that tow trucks do when they take off. When they reached the garage, Jerry pulled the truck into the lot and cut off the engine. With a wave of his hand he took her to his car, and they started back to his house. Upon arrival his stomach turned, and his heart leapt. There was a light coming from his own kitchen window, and a car was parked in his driveway. The business trip must have been cut short.

Jerry hugged his wife and then explained how he’d found the poor urchin freezing to death beside the road and couldn’t have just left her out there. So Sarah was fed and clothed and given the couch – a night for free.

Some time later in a place where time really has no meaning and space works indescribably differently than here, the Queen of Sheba was standing before a great assembly of men and women that seemed to Jerry and the two pastors to be anciently older and from some bygone time. And as she sat down, without knowing why they stood up and stepped forward. And there where the Queen of Sheba had been standing stood that old prostitute who had lived and then died in that purple hotel. Without a word she pointed at the tow man and smiled up at the judge. He was seated on a great throne almost too white to see and far too bright to stare at. And he looked down and smiled too.

For Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his,

To the Father,

Through the features of men’s faces, – Gerard Manley Hopkins

In a rather unmemorable scene of a fairly unremarkable movie called “Chasing Mavericks”, Frosty tells the young man he is training to surf about watermen. These surfers, he says, are deeply acquainted with the ocean; they know that when a wave comes at them they will be able to make something happen. It’s as if the saltwater has seeped into their bloodstream. They feel a connection to the water – almost as if they know what the sea will do even before she decides it herself. It wasn’t a masterpiece of a film: I do love it though. I loved how Jay crushed on the same girl for a long long time and then got to kiss her at the end after she ran into the pizza place were he worked to get out of the rain. Maybe it’s the reason I work at a coffee shop and rent surf boards when I’m on the coast. I guess I’m still waiting for a good rainstorm.

A few months ago I was taking my Fall semester midterms in college. Honestly, none of them were very hard. Sometimes I feel a little like a geek when I catch myself feeling disappointed about how juvenile some of my classes are. It’s like I’m back in high school and re-learning all that stuff again. Except here the teachers don’t tell your parents if you cuss or don’t show up for class. In fact, I think my one teacher really gets a kick out of cussing. She’s told me twice that she is a deacon at her church; cussing during English does seem to thrill her though. I remember walking into the classroom the day of the midterm with a backpack and a pencil and water bottle and whatever else I might have been bearing and feeling totally at ease. The midterm was an in-class essay. I can’t do just a whole lot of things in this life, but if you give me sixty minutes, I’ll write you an essay. That I can do.

Every Monday I have to attend a science lab class in Fulp building on campus. It’s a three hour slot of time and really drags out a Monday. The teacher is a Russian guy with a formidable last name no one dares attempt. I discovered that while things like Newton’s laws and how to graph data is pretty universal, explaining such things is not. I have little doubt that my Russian and Nepalian science teachers grasp such things, tightly, explaining them to your average American college kid is another thing though. So usually we just read the directions, do the best we can to complete the experiment, ask as few questions as possible, and try to get done and get out.

One Monday the lab concerned electrical circuits. The instructions were vague at best. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was supposed to be happening on the board in front of me. The lab group is a pristine example of what my psychology class has taught me is termed social loafing. Simply put, my friend and I do all the work, and everyone gets an A and has a good time. But not today. It soon became quite apparent that Chase, a classic loafer, actually knew quite a bit about circuits. I just took a pencil and the sheet and kept telling him to slow down so I could record as he went. He knew exactly what to do, and did it perfectly. This is Chase, the kid who has previously proven himself quite lousy at anything intellectual. The professor set up his own circuit board beside ours and struggled to make it work. When he walked away to answer a question, Chase, walked over to the end of the table and fixed it for him, just like that. Our group finished in less than an hour. As we were packing up, I sat and watched as he lent a hand to the girls to our left who didn’t have a clue about circuits. I marveled. The man was in his element.

Just about everybody has a thing or two which they know, if given sixty minutes, they can execute. If you go fishing with my dad, he will catch more fish than you. It doesn’t matter where or what or when – he will out-fish you. If you stand my mother in a kitchen before an empty table, she can fill it masterfully, tastefully. My brother Luke is about the best fire starter I’ve ever known. If you give him a single match and something remotely flammable, he will make you a fire. We used to come home from school and build a fire everyday just for the heck of it. If you give Springsteen a room of people and a guitar, he will make the magic happen. If you give Chesterton a piece of chalk a few yards of wallpaper, he will write you a newspaper article. These gifts are, I think, a mingling of the divine with the carnal. It’s something that we are even if we can’t necessarily explain it on paper. Watermen in a thousand different oceans.

Inside our spaces, the places where know we can excel, we feel something that feels right. Buechner said that your calling, what you were made for, is “Where the world’s deep hunger and your deep gladness meet”. I have felt that gladness sometimes. Fishing, photographing, communicating, these things bring me joy. The struggle comes I think when I see a world which seems without an appetite; she is in no need of me, and she has no deep hunger for any gladness of mine. I must elbow my way through the crowd and deprive her, drive her to hunger. That is the temptation, the doubt. Jon Foreman says that doubt and faith are equally logical options. I’ve seen them both and chosen likewise.

I want to believe that somewhere in the world, apart from this website and the dozen people who kindly read its content, there’s a place for me. That sometime, maybe not too far off, I’ll make my way to a place in an ocean that is hungry for my gladness. Aye, even hungry enough to pay my rent. If not, maybe I’ll hitchhike to California and buy a surfboard – a waterman one way or another.

Javen Bear

Professor Boyter

English Composition

9/29/17

The Island

We all have certain places that draw us back time and time again, or at least we ought to. These are the things in life that call us out of the routine and beg to be experienced. And we answer the call by going back time and time again hoping there is still more to be taken from the giver. Someday, when I am old and withered, someone will ask me what my life was about, and these are the stories I shall tell them. These are the times of I heard the call and followed it into the dark woods, or in this case, a small island.

A few years ago my family was given two kayaks by some friends of ours. A kayak is hardly more than a floating piece of plastic with a hole in the middle long and wide enough for you to sit in. These were that. I remember the maiden voyage; my brother and I shoved off into a small lake a few miles from our house, and there, that first evening, we were hooked. We loved the feeling of sitting an inch above the water and gliding over the surface. As it often does, one thing led to another, and before long several of our friends had also come about crafts of their own. This was all backstory to our finding “The Island”.

To date we’ve camped out on that island more times than I can remember. There’s a core group of about five of us and a smattering of less hardcore friends who come along only sometimes. The island has come to hold a place in our minds such as that when we see other campers out there on the beaches, they are imposters, trespassers. I think it’s because of the library of things that have gone down there that we feel so possessive of the thing. We have gathered firewood from its corners, taken captive the offspring of its geese, slaughtered an entire generation of its frogs, bore its driving rain under a tiny tarp, and one rather perilous time, pretty nearly burnt the whole thing down. It was an experiment with fire that was interrupted by the catching of a gar which was then returned to and extinguished before we got arrested for arson. One might venture to say that the connection we feel rivals that of the Indians who were driven from their tribal lands by the white man; or one may not.

The unofficial name of this small, pine covered beach that rises up out of Lake Hartwell is The Cape of Pretty Good Hope. My brother deemed it that one time, and we thought it a good name. Pretty Good Hope because there have been cold, miserable nights that we’ve kept each other’s company wondering what on earth drove us to paddle across just to sleep under the stars; this is exactly the kind of thing Patrick McManus expounds on in his book, A Fine and Pleasant Misery.

There is one night from last summer in particular that really stands out in the memory of our expeditions. “It was not a silent night” as Andrew Peterson sings, not indeed. As I recall there were about seven of us going out that night. And for whatever reason we weren’t able to make our way across until after dark, which ended up being a pertinent detail in this episode. Because of the larger number of friends going out, some of them had decided to take a john boat out in lieu of kayaks. A john boat is a piece of metal with a larger hole in the middle. So there were a couple people already out on the island, a few people putting the john boat into the water at the boat ramp, and my friend Samuel and I were loading up some stuff back at my house getting ready to head for the lake. It was about then I got an urgent call from the crew at the boat dock requesting a truck and a length of chain. As is standard with these types of calls, the necessary details are hardly given so that you really don’t have a good idea of what you’re about to walk into when you arrive with the truck and the chain. For hours after the fact we sat on lawn chairs in the sand and hashed out the facts of the situation. To the best of my knowledge, it went something like this.

Being dark as it was, it was difficult to see to unload the boat off the trailer. Dustin, one of the comes along sometimes members of the group, offered to park his manual car at the top of the boat ramp and shine his headlights down the slope. The important words here are manual and slope. A manual vehicle cannot be left running while it is in gear – meaning that the only thing holding her back was the parking break. It was at some time between Dustin leaving the car at the top of the left lane of the boat ramp and the removal of the boat from the trailer that the parking break went MIA, and the car, which was borrowed, started making its way towards the drink. As it picked up speed coming down the hill, it veered to the right and jumped the barrier, went through the other boat ramp lane, trounced over the rocks beside the ramp, and landed on the wet sand, all the while gaining speed with one unquestionable destination in the headlights. In what has to be one of the most incredible car entries in the history of Oconee County, Dustin ran alongside the car, and somewhere between the changing lanes and the trouncing, jumped in and slammed the brake. Not a moment too soon. The car slid into the lake up to about the floorboards so that he couldn’t even open the door to get out until the truck had pulled him back up the hill. It was later said by the others present that during this period they heard words coming from the car they’d never heard him say before, a real exercise in vocabulary for sure.

It’s events like the ones of that night that keep us going back. There’s no doubt that waking up in a small hammock eleven times during the cold dark night is less comfortable than your own bed. But you also know that you cannot open yourself up to the adventure, the what if, when you’re lying beneath air conditioned drywall. The comradery, the freedom, the possibility that someone’s car could go sailing into the lake, it’s enough to keep a boy coming back.

Works Cited

McManus, Patrick F. A Fine And Pleasant Misery. New York, NY.: Holt Paperbacks, 1981. Print.

Andrew Peterson. “Labor of Love.” Behold the Lamb of God. Fervent Records, 2004. MP3.