The truck was stuck. But that didn’t surprise us. It was the third time we’d bottomed out in the soft sludge of spring runoff on the old logging trail. Because the truck was two-wheel drive, we’d had to jack it up, place fallen timbers under the back wheels, and push it out of the muddy mire twice already. There were three of us, and the two pushers repeatedly reminded the driver (and owner) that a truck without four-wheel drive is really no truck at all. It was his idea to continue past the designated parking area for the trail we were heading to and continue driving up the rugged path. He’d just bought the truck a few months earlier and was delusionally overconfident in its abilities. I may have been partially responsible for his stubbornness about driving onwards. It was May in Upstate New York, a few weeks away from my impending graduation from college. Never a big fan of changes (especially those beyond my control), and having entered a type of downward mental spiral fueled by constant fear and complete unreadiness to end my cozy collegiate life and enter the dreaded “real world,” I was lashing out at everyone and everything. There is only one picture of myself from this time. I’m standing with my parents in full graduation regalia, including the square pointy cap. It’s difficult to tell from the picture, but I had shaved my head nearly bald just days before. There is also an ugly red cut above my left eye that should have been sutured and properly tended to. I had used Vaseline and a Band-Aid instead. It happened during a pesky alcoholic blackout, which were beginning to plague me at more frequent intervals. My favorite baseball hat’s brim had also somehow torn off that night. Instead of throwing it away, I wore it around on my shaved head and scarred up face like a makeshift beany for days. This was my state of mind when we set out to go camping – a desperate attempt to escape to nature and the wild, supernatural places that had always held solace, comfort, and a sense of permanence and abiding. But the trip was doomed right from the start. My friend had traded in The Subaru Brat for this sad substitute of a vehicle. The Brat was magical and invincible. He’d had it since high school and through our countless adventures, mishaps, and legendary brushes with fate. It’s been my experience that some vehicles have a mystical mojo about them, and others simply don’t. It cannot be learned, earned, or upgraded into. From our first encounter with The Brat, we knew it was special. It was a farm car before he bought it – viewed as no longer road-worthy and driven around the cornfields of a local dairy farm primarily to haul bails of hay and to teach anyone willing to try (regardless of age) how to drive a stick shift. It was the first manual car I ever drove – without any preliminary instruction – and in my mind, The Brat remains the easiest standard transmission car I’ve ever driven. Maybe because the clutch had given out years earlier, and any combination of pressing down the pedal and shifting gears was possible. My friend was driving before I did, and on the first day he owned The Brat, he picked me up to drive to school; he shut the key off, and we got out and began to walk away. Just then, The Brat came to life – it sputtered, coughed, and let out a backfire as loud as a shotgun blast. This after-drive salute became a popular and well-loved personality trait for The Brat. Because it was unique, remarkable, and magical. And it never got us stuck in the woods. So, my part in this fiasco surely had to do with an annoying amount of ribbing, reminding, and ridiculing my friend about this newer but nerdier form of transportation. This goading only fuelled him to drive us further and further up the logging trail until we got stuck. But I was right. This truck was not The Brat. Not even close. And no amount of jacking, pushing, or swearing would get it out of the mire. We were near the bottom of Rattlesnake Mountain, in the heart of the Adirondacks. And we were the only ones that knew our location. No cell phones, GPS, or location trackers were built into cars (this was the before-times). Back then, the standard practice for hikers was to list your name and address in the trail registry located next to the parking lot. The parking lot we had driven by some time ago. The empty parking lot – nobody on the trail this early in the season but us. We were in a situation that would require self-rescuing. It was time for some serious assessment and planning of our next steps. An essential factor of consideration regarding our future plan was the beer consumption. As mentioned, my mental game was off at the time. In hindsight, I may have warranted some inpatient psychiatric care to work a few things out. I’d been drinking for days, maybe weeks at this point. But there was always beer back then, in the college days. The terms “mental breakdown” or “alcohol use disorder” weren’t used as liberally for every young person who was drunk more than sober and displaying antisocial, depressive, anxious, or suicidal behaviors. We were just kids being kids, cheered on by classic 80 movies that taught us to turn our family homes into brothels and surf on the roofs of cars at high speed. It was all in good fun. Until someone died. Then, the blame clearly fell not on the movies but our choice of music and video games. Being the before-times, no cell phones meant no cameras. And no cameras meant that the majority of shenanigans and destruction fueled by our substance abuse and mental health issues remained undocumented and anonymous – just the way we liked it. It’s also noteworthy that the now popular phrase “designated driver” was a flexible and tenuous title bestowed upon whichever person appeared to be most sober in those days. My best friend and owner/driver of the truck was usually the most sober, which was good. Still, all three of us held beer cans as we assessed the sunken bed and back axle of this ridiculous replacement for The Brat. We briefly discussed hiking back to the main road, flagging down a car, or walking to the nearest house for help. But that sounded like a buzz kill. And it would certainly take us back to the college, where graduation and “real life” loomed large. So, we all agreed that the best way to deal with this problem was to ignore it for the time being. The truck certainly wasn’t going anywhere. We removed the gear and headed up Rattlesnake Mountain to camp. Springtime in the Northeast is a season of perpetual deception. The days often start off warm enough so that three young, red-blooded college boys might feel comfortable in only their tee shirts and cargo shorts (which is what we all had on). Although we three grew up in and around the Adirondack Region, we neglected to remember that the peak temperatures of spring, especially April and May, descend quickly and uncomfortably as soon as the sun dips behind the highest peak. My best friend and I had thrown some warmer clothes in our backpacks. We also wore hiking boots. In hindsight, I don’t know why the other guy was even along for this outing. We’d known him since our freshman year at college, and he wasn’t much of what we used to call “An Outdoors Kid.” I’m unsure if this distinction exists in modern culture because so many young people have been domesticated, housebroken, and generally kept indoors. No judgment here (well, maybe a little), but the group of kids I grew up with, and my generation in general, seems to have spent a great deal more time out of doors because that is where our sources of fun, socialization, and dopamine-boosting activities were located. There were far fewer screens to stare into back then for those purposes. But this fellow’s outside ventures during those formative years appear to have been restricted to family amusement parks, supervised “play dates” with those children that were interviewed and accepted by his ever-watchful parents, and maybe an occasional campout in the backyard – always with an extension cord from the tent to the house for his nightlight and Vick’s Vaporizer machine to plug into. That degree of parental safety and hovering seems commonplace nowadays, perhaps even necessary, but in the before times, it only hindered us when leaving the safety of the family nest and establishing a social network at college. Or, more accurately, a collegiate social network that we defined as “fun.” For this reason, our buddy spent his first two semesters in college struggling to increase his tolerance for alcohol and learning anything resembling “game” with the co-eds. Many a morning, he woke up extremely hungover and covered with the graffiti we’d drawn on him using permanent markers the night before. These hazing rituals were something we’d all experienced in high school. There was no malicious intent behind them – in fact, it was generally the young female Freshmen (or is it Freshwomen now? Freshpeople?) who would violate some unwritten law of this practice and draw genitalia or leave the vilest language directly on his face. But most of us were not animals driven by Satanic rock music and Atari. We always provided a trashcan to vomit in, and NOBODY unplugged his Vicks Vaporizer machine. So, his presence on our spontaneous venture seems odd in hindsight. Perhaps he, too, wanted an escape before college ended. Maybe he saw spending time with us as a way to push his comfort zone’s limits and learn some of the survival skills we seemed to possess for life outside of the family nest. Or he had nothing better to do and no one to do it with. Regardless of the reason, he was there. Entirely unprepared and with ridiculously unrealistic expectations of our capabilities to keep him alive. His canvas sneakers were already soaked from our attempts to free the truck from the muddy streambeds. His cargo shorts and tee shirt were also streaked with dirt and grime because he hadn’t known enough to remove himself from behind the back tires as they spun like waterwheels, throwing sludge and muck everywhere. He didn’t own a backpack but had brought the items he thought were necessary in a plastic garbage bag. Among these essentials were a set of pajamas, a sleeve of Saltine Crackers, a nearly empty can of Easy Cheese, and a copy of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray. The hike to Rattlesnake’s Peak was steep but short. It’s around 1.5 miles (minus the mileage we drove before getting stuck). We reached the top, sweaty and satisfied. Like so many Adirondack mountains, Rattlesnake is the product of a series of continental collisions along with the glacial intrusion and subsequent retreat, which carved deep valleys between the peaks while also knocking off their jagged points and creating the dome-like summits we see today. There’s a lot of rock at the top, but it’s mostly smooth and relatively flat. Plenty of spots to set up the tent we’d brought but no earth to sink any stakes into. It also didn’t appear like anyone else had camped there in the past. Because nobody had. Google verified that it’s one of the now-posted restrictions (it may have been posted back then, too, not on Google but near the Trail Registry – near the parking lot – which we had driven by.) It probably wouldn’t have stopped us even if we’d known that. Rules were much more like suggestions back then before everything you did could be tracked, videoed, and proven in a court of law. The fear that our elders attempted to instill in us centered on a fictional document known as one’s “Permanent Record,” in which every curse word, failing grade, and overall shameful behavior was documented and kept for all time. We set up our tent, built a small fire pit, and dangled the few hot dogs I’d packed over the flames on sticks. We tried to substitute the Saltine Crackers for buns and emptied the fake cheese cans directly into our mouths. As dusk settled in, the temperature plummeted significantly, and the winds picked up enough to begin moving our tent around on the rock surface. To remedy this, we all climbed inside and finished what beer was left. It would be an understatement to say the night was uncomfortable with little sleep. If you’ve never slept on a rock surface in cold weather with nothing but a sleeping bag and a thin layer of tent bottom serving as your mattress, it’s difficult to describe the degree of unpleasantness (perhaps bordering on suffering) you’re apt to endure. Imagine a gas station roller grill slowly and endlessly turning such exquisite cuisine as the jalapeño cheddar smoked sausage or a cheesy pepper jack taquito. To survive the conditions I’ve described, you must become that taquito. Continual rotation is the only effective way to keep the parts of yourself in contact with the frozen ground from absorbing enough of the chill to develop frostbite. Hence, you’re in for a night filled with more rolling than sleeping. For a sane and sober person, one such experience would prove enough to never put yourself in such a position again. But I’ve had multiple instances of sleepless nights in exactly these conditions, and I was always left wondering how exactly I got myself there. At some time during that long night, the strong winds slowed to a low breeze. Then, I heard the soft but distinct sound of precipitation hitting the tent. Ironic as it may seem, rain on a tent at night is one of my favorite sounds. I’m not sure why. I can’t track a straight line back to a specific memory where I associated this sound with peace, serenity, and safety, but it’s definitely programmed deep within my neural wiring.
This sound was different than rain, though.
The beer had filtered through most of my organs and settled in my bladder, where it churned and turned with my body on the cold rocks. As much as I didn’t want to, I stuck on my boots, stumbled outside, and confirmed what I’d suspected about the change in our conditions. It was snowing. I shivered my way over to a place where the rock angled away from the tent before relieving myself (and yes, I had made the mistake of urinating in areas where it flowed back towards the tent in the past – and yes, I’d done it more than once). Once finished, I shivered my way back inside, zipped into my sleeping bag, and, with the blessed sound of the snow hitting the tent, fell into a deep sleep.
“Guys, wake up!”
It was our backyard camping buddy, and he sounded alarmed. Despite falling asleep, my body must have been on auto-rotisserie because I was face down on the rock and wholly twisted in my sleeping bag. Turning my head, I noticed that the tent’s roof had sagged significantly and was now only inches from our faces. The snow that continued to settle upon us is known in the Northeast as the heart attack variety. This precipitation is widespread in the spring when April showers combine with the last remnants of Jack Frost’s winter trickery to create precipitation saturated with wetness, which is extremely heavy and difficult to move (or to move around in). It is nature’s attempt to kill just a few more of the weaker of us off before the good weather comes. If we’d been able to stake the tent down, the roof and walls would have maintained their tautness enough to shed the slushy mess. The stakeless conditions and our quick retreat into the tent the night before were also factors in not securing the rain fly over the tent to act as a type of waterproof insulation. Unlike the thick and durable rain fly, the tent fabric was easier for water to seep through, especially if you placed a warm hand from the tent’s interior upon a much colder and heavier pile of snow sitting on the outside. Which is exactly what our friend did before we could warn him against it. Almost immediately, water began to drip upon his face and body from the imprint of his hand on the fabric. This caused him to flail about, touching the tent in several other places where it also began leaking. At this point, we all had no choice but to push, whack, and strike at the inside of the tent walls and roof in an effort to clear off the snow completely. We were somewhat effective with this method, although the tent floor was now dabbled with various puddles that continued to grow from all sides of the leaking tent. With great hesitance, we unzipped the doorway and looked outside. Nothing about what we saw outside was good. The summit’s rock surface was covered in at least five inches of thick snow, and large flakes continued to fall everywhere endlessly. Like so many instances I found myself in back then, the totality of poor planning, bravado, immaturity (with a good dash of naivete), intoxication, and factors beyond our control had culminated in this moment. It’s the moment at which one realizes they are in a genuinely sucky situation for which there is no immediate (or even a longer-term) resolution. Sucky situations were on the low to moderate end of what could progress to life-threatening situations without some type of rational adult thinking or celestial intervention. My mind did a quick inventory of the tape cassettes that would be found in my room after they discovered our corpses. Would the blame be placed on Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin or Guns N Roses? My bet was on G & R. I had another fantasy about The Brat being parked safely below the snow’s torrent in the designated parking lot. We summoned it, just like Michael Knight called on his trusty robotic car, KITT, in Knight Rider, which we’d all watched growing up. I could picture The Brat bumping and chugging up the trail, red LED light strobing back and forth on its grill, just as KITTs had, then pulling up directly in front of the tent, stopping, and firing off a beautiful backfire before the three of us piled all of our gear and ourselves in and headed back to civilization.
But The Brat was long gone. Just like the Knight Rider show. And soon, my safe, insulated college years would be gone as well.
There was no other option but to embrace the suck. Pack up the wet tent and gear into our wet backpacks (and plastic bag). Put on our damp clothes and boots (our friend had left his sneakers outside the tent all night, where they had overflowed with snow). Hike down the mountain. Slowly down the mountain. Slip and slide and shiver down the mountain. Get to the truck. Attempt to free the truck from the muck. Fail. Continue our frozen trudge to the rural road where no plow or car seemed to have passed. Walk to the nearest (which wasn’t near at all) house where a nervous man looked upon us as three characters in an updated version of Truman Capote’s classic “In Cold Blood,” while his wife and kids cowered behind him. Wait for help to arrive (outside of the house) because only our sneaker-footed friend appeared close enough to requiring medical attention to be allowed inside. Watch as four men wenched the truck free from the mire with a logging skidder. The oldest (most likely the boss – and father) was a thin and ancient-looking fellow who lit one cigarette off the stub of his last as he swore and scolded the three younger boys around. The boys looked close to our age but more muscular and not so worse for wear. They Hee-Hawed and jabbered away about college boys and flatlanders and two-wheel drive trucks, all to give us a proverbial and primordial verbal humping regarding their overall superiority in practical life skills that genuinely mattered for survival. They were right. And the humping was well deserved. We made it back to campus by nightfall. In fact, I remember being somewhere that night, beer in hand, and recounting the adventure in robust and embellished detail, albeit I can’t say for sure if I was alone or with my camping mates. I’m fairly sure that if someone had asked, “So what did you learn from all that?” my reply would surely have been, “What do you mean?”
And then three decades passed…
Of all the writings and recollections I’ve shared, this account’s reflections held the smokiest images from my memories. That’s why I hesitated to put it all down for a long time. Not that I’m particular about getting the facts straight ( I’ve always preferred fiction to reality), but more because I wasn’t sure if there was much of a compelling story here. It was some primary writing instinct I’ve developed that kept needling me to share what I at first thought would be an amusing tale about how we three made some bad decisions (including selling The Brat), but in the end, no harm was done, we laughed it all off and went on our merry way. But as I wiped away at the distorted images of the past, more was revealed. What I eventually saw from that reflection was a deeper story, one that reflected the fear, pain, anger, and lost magic of youth as I stood at the precipice of life as an adult. I know now that the human brain has not finished growing until around age 25 and that the prefrontal cortex (which controls impulses) is the last section to form. I also know that adding any addictive substances (or behaviors) to an adolescent brain will, in the simplest terms, complicate and slow this process considerably. Back then, I had no idea about these things. I only knew that, like Peter Pan, I really didn’t want to grow up. So I didn’t. My last drink and true conversion from this Neverland Mentality wouldn’t begin until age 26 – and I’m pretty sure it continues to this day. So, it was uncomfortable to go back and look at myself during that time. I’ve learned that, for me, at least, any real growth usually requires uncomfortability. I’m much more likely to eat less when my pants start to feel tight or it’s clear that multiple scales are giving me the same weight readings. I now have two kids (young adults, officially) around the same age I was when we survived the camping trip. They seem smarter than I ever was. Certainly more mature and well-rounded. But I need to remember and show empathy and compassion for the coming-of-age trials they are enduring. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it again. Especially now, in this day and age, when expectations seem far higher and the world is somehow much more overwhelming and ominous. A benefit of writing through these uncomfortable periods of my past is the nugget or two of golden memories that get uncovered and make me smile. These recollections are like well-worn, warm blankets – mystical places to cover myself and feel safe (or safer) from all that’s transpired since I took a step off the precipice from youth to maturity. The prized blanket I pulled off an old shelf of memory this time was riding around with my best friend during high school in The Brat. At the time, getting our driver’s licenses seemed like a massive leap into adulthood. Thomas Gray’s quote from 1742 says it best: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” The ignorance and innocence of those long-ago days seem truly blissful now. In this new year, with new changes and new challenges and countless ways I bedevil myself wondering how I can function and impact the adult world more effectively, I need to allow time to pull down and wrap myself in the safe and sheltered blankets of youth, naivete, and mystical memories. And I want to encourage the people around me to do the same. 2025 seems like an appropriate year to take occasional visits back to Neverland. Not to escape, or deny, or build a home there. But to run amok temporarily with the Lost Boys and to allow the magical memories of youth and fantasy to remind me that growing older doesn’t have to mean ever fully growing up.
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