Driving Into the Dark
A mountain, a dog, and what the fog taught me about grief and light
a recommended musical pairing:
I put my car in drive and tears simultaneously fell. There was no time to identify their breed. Survival quickly reminded me I was driving up the side of a mountain in the pitch dark. I offered some external reassurance that the edge was probably further away than it felt to my unbothered copper-colored sidekick. Her smelly, warm breath hitting the back of my neck left me contemplating if I should change her kibble or if she was dying and rotting from the inside out. I was fragile.
I wasn’t expecting to be here, which is a strange thing to say as you’re driving 1,500 feet into the air. A cascade of unplanned circumstances led me there, but isn’t that always the case if we’re truly being honest with ourselves?
As my green truck weaved its way up the mountain, I thought of my parents. People commonly describe moments where they press a dead person’s name on their iPhone. I’ve never been one of those people. I’ve never even had the impulse. I stopped shaming myself for that years ago. But for the first time, I desperately wanted to dial my dad’s number. I wanted to tell him where I was and ask if he had driven to the top of this mountain with my mom. I’m sure the answer lies somewhere in photographs stored on a hard drive that I can’t bring myself to look at yet. Coming to Acadia was one of the last trips they took together.
We reached the summit. Families and couples jumped out of their cars grasping thermoses and draped in blankets. I felt woefully unprepared and incredibly lonely. This was an experience after all. I should have been really ready to commit to it, or waited to share it with someone or at least stay warm. It was mid-September. I pushed those thoughts aside and knew that a long-sleeve shirt, a thick flannel, my own company and a 37 pound dog may not be ideal, but they were enough.
We had no choice but to follow the crowd. There was no pre-trip planning. I only had the energy to get myself there. We walked with groupthink only long enough to ensure we were on the right side of the mountain. Sometimes there is strength in numbers.
My dog and I wandered away from the crowd. This time I silenced my fears about being too close to the edge, and trusted the small beam of light strapped to my head would save us before it was too late. These are the things you do to get away from people who pair conversation about soccer tournaments with being some of the first to witness the sunrise over the United States.
As I searched for a spot that felt right, we passed a woman with a similar inclination. She sat, eyes closed, clearly in deep meditation and reverence. The unmistakable flow of energy radiating from her. Eventually I found a place next to a cairn. There was a rock that fit my back perfectly. We started our watch.
I turned 35 two days prior. I remembered I couldn’t wait to turn 30, convinced it would be the time where the pain stopped and everything fell into place. Less than two years into that decade and both my parents would be dead. Now, I found myself sitting, hoping maybe the second half might be better than the first.
The light began to emerge and offered reassurance that we were nowhere close to plummeting off the mountain. Unfortunately, the beautiful streaks of color I longed to see as the sun started her ascent didn’t appear. Instead, fog danced and streamed in front of us. I didn’t want to interrupt the time lapse video my phone was recording to check the time and see how much hope remained. So, I looked around for clues. People hadn’t budged. Maybe it was still early. Maybe the symbolic blast of love and light my heart needed was still possible.
I leaned against the rock, pulled my dog onto my lap, closed my eyes and performed acceptance. I was trying to bargain, hoping that the universe would notice me pretending not to grasp and reward my surrender.
After a few minutes, something did shift. Not with the weather, but within me. As I sat, my heart faced eastward, my back toward the west, I felt the physical presence of light and dark. Here at the top of this mountain, I was held in suspension. There was nothing in between us. No trees, no houses, no utility poles. I held still and the energy flowed through me. I allowed it and it did not get stuck. Then I opened my eyes.
The fog had doubled. For the first time since we assumed our post, I turned around and faced the dark. It felt like looking straight into my grief, my pain, the endless not-knowing. But it gave me a new point of reference for the fog in front of me. In comparison, it was full of light and life.
On paper, my attempts to take in beautiful bucket list vistas have been foiled by fog twice. Once at the Cliffs of Moher along the coast of Ireland and again at the summit of Cadillac Mountain on the coast of Maine.
There are moments when my ego personalizes this. It tries to tell me I am not meant for beautiful things. But what I know to be true now, what I couldn’t grasp in Ireland nine years ago, is that this isn’t personal. This is life, and maybe I’ve been given the best gift there is: the understanding that light means nothing without dark. Nothing stays luminous forever. Perhaps the gift of all this fog is the slow honing of the ability to notice the light and beauty within it.
I remember I thought the same when I turned 30 I was hoping the new decade would be magically better. Not so much.