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At a Hardee’s, on a Mountain, in Tennessee
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me…
I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.– from “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman
Our existences are predicated on change: a changing world around us, a culture constantly in flux, our own changing bodies, and minds. We make every attempt at planning our futures, meticulously moving the variables in our lives toward preconceived outcomes. We neglect to understand, though, that the variables we are oh-so-carefully nudging might as well be vapor in our hands. It was Nabokov that said that our lives are “. . .brief crack(s) of light between an eternity of darkness,” a poetic, even prescient, sentiment, but Nabokov got the causality wrong. Every step we take in this life is one into darkness. We do our best to illuminate those steps through knowledge, careful observation, and looking back at our previous steps, but the darkness persists. The fact that we stumble upon each other in the dark, altering the paths of all involved, is unavoidable. Yet none of us have total control over our lives, and places that we find ourselves in along the way can be surprising, enlightening, and completely unpredictable. There are moments in our lives, though, when the fog lifts and we see clearly through the darkness. Such moments of illumination are precious, and we should embrace them as the rare jewels that they are.
I do not remember dreaming about my future when I was a child. I often tell my wife that the kind of lives we (my siblings and I) lived did not provide the raw material for dreams; I did not think about what my life would be at 43 because the 43-year-old men I knew didn’t have lives. Oh, they were alive, but they didn’t have lives. They trudged to and from factories for their graveyard shifts, spending their off-hours blasting themselves into oblivion with booze and drugs, or staring mindlessly into televisions. By the end of my high school days, that was “the plan” for me. I remember thinking that I would: graduate, go work in a factory, and die–in that precise order. What occurred between my first day at the factory and my death was not only irrelevant, it was practically non-existent. I did not foresee anything as outlandish as becoming a teacher or having a beautiful, thoughtful wife, and I certainly did not see myself sitting at a Hardee’s on a mountain in Tennessee.
Let me backtrack a little.
Last March, my wife and I made a one-day road trip from our home in rural western Kentucky to Atlanta. It’s quite a haul from western Kentucky to Atlanta. We trek through Nashville, to Chattanooga, through norther Georgia, and finally to Atlanta, and we then make the same trek back in time to give the horses their evening grain. My wife, with an English degree of her own, has her own interesting career that she never envisioned: a breeder of champion standard poodles. It’s a unique profession, one that has allowed (required, actually) us to travel all over the country in search of dog shows and specialized vet clinics for genetic testing. Along the way, our paths have converged with other “doggie” people, each of whom are on their own respective journeys. On this particular trip, we were returning a dog to his delightful owner in Atlanta. On the way back we search for hole-in-the-wall attractions like odd landmarks and local museums. The drive through northern Georgia was uneventful, but the path up I-24, between Chattanooga and Nashville, was quite interesting. The interstate winds through the densely wooded terrain of the Cumberland Plateau in south-central Tennessee. The Cumberland Plateau is a beautiful place, one that everyone should visit if given a chance. Making our way north on I-24, we climbed up and down the mountains, taking in the scenery as we went. From our perch on the plateau, we could see the lovely green valley below, dotted with rustic farmhouses and green fields. Some intrepid homeowners had even carved out lives on the sides of the mountains, waking each morning to the spectacular view my wife and I were experiencing for the first time.
As we approached the summit, we decide to grab a bite to eat while taking in the view. Normally, we’d go out looking for some off the beaten path restaurant, but on this sunny afternoon we stop at the Hardee’s just off the interstate in Monteagle, Tennessee. As we eat, I stare out the window at the rolling plateau around us. My wife, with an ease of quiet elegance I’ve never quite understood, leans against the windowsill, finishing her lunch. The tableau–wonderful, unplanned, unexpected, and incredibly lovely–was suddenly complete. In this moment, perhaps stimulated by the new environment, I had a moment of singular clarity: I never planned any of this, and yet I am here. This is not the life I wanted or even one I could have envisioned, but it is the life that I have, the life that I love. It is a gift I never asked for, never sought, yet it has turned out to be a greater joy than I could ever have imagined.
I suppose this is my roundabout way of stating a fact that took me years to understand: the uncertainty of our existence isn’t a bug; it’s a feature, one that leads us to unpredictable places and little surprises and joys that we can not possibly predict. For years, I fought against myself, tried to enforce my absolute will upon life, unaware that I was a mere child thrashing away at the illimitable river of existence. Better to ride the waves as they come and accept that much of it is out of your control. Oh, there will be times to make your choices, and you should do so wisely, but very often we sabotage our own happiness by demanding that life play by our narrow, myopic set of rules. Will there be pain along the way? Of course, there will; pain is coin of the mortal realm. But there will also be joy and love and meaning, and for these things, there is really only one proper response: gratitude.
I hope and pray that each of you finds your own way through the darkness. Until then, I will stop and wait for you here, on a mountain in Tennessee.
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What a beautiful piece! I found myself right there with you in that breathtaking view. It’s funny. I don’t see life as moving into or through darkness, myself. It’s more like mystery to me, uncertainty, unpredictability (except for those rare things I put on the calendar). Like so many people I was a control freak, until I realized that there was next to nothing that I could control. Gradually I became more comfortable riding the waves of the unknown, but habits are hard to break: I still cringe at some things that catch me off guard. But it is a journey, a process, learning how to open to possibility, isn’t it? It sounds like you have learned, and continue to learn, that lesson well, @mbrandongodbey.
As soon as you said Hardee’s on a mountain, I thought of Monteagle. When you mentioned I-24, I was sure that’s where you were talking about.
I went to my sophomore year in high school in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I went to Henley High School which served a mostly rural population, not Klamath Falls High School, in the town itself. Henley had about 500 students, and Klamath Falls had about 1,200 as best I recall, but the effect was that we were in different athletic divions, so we didn’t play each other.
If you look at a map, Klamath Falls is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. For athletic competition, our teams had to travel at least 60 miles. We were in the Rogue River Conference with schools in towns like Medford, Ashland, and Grants Pass.
As some of you probably know, Klamath Falls is on the brown side of the Cascades, and the three aforementioned towns are on the green side. It must have been on a track trip that the bus I was riding in came over the top of the mountains from almost desert country into the lush western side of the mountains. There, far below, was a little emerald green valley; so green it almost took your breath away. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.
@M. Brandon Godbey Thank you for sharing your observation with all of us. My fortunate path through life with family, friends, a teaching career, a concurrent military reservist career, and now a new chapter overeseas often creates similar contemplative impulses. The beauty of the open road in a vehicle or over hills on a bicycle radiate a feeling that produces thankfulness inside. Wonderful post.
Brandon,
Thank you for your moment of singular clarity. I enjoyed it very much. All good things to you and yours.
Regards,
Jim
I enjoyed that. Thank you.
Thank you so much, M. Brandon Godbey, for writing so beautifully the thoughts many of us never take the time to fully appreciate. You are absolutely right, of course, that life often takes a course that has little to do with our plans, and that is indeed a blessing at times.
Like Randy Webster, I immediately thought of Monteagle when I saw the title of your post. I drove 18 wheelers across the country for a few years and spent many a night on top of that mountain. The original truck stop is gone now, replaced by a Pilot truck stop. But I remember my first meal in the original diner there. The waitress, who took my order with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, looked like she could have whipped anyone within a 5 mile radius of the place.
The booth where I sat featured a uneven seat cushion which dumped me onto the floor. Whereupon the trucker at the next table said, “You wanna eat here, you gotta sit down an hold on.” I obeyed, of course.
Funny how the memories flood back, along with the occasional, “moment of singular clarity,” as you so poetically described it. Thank you so very much for sharing your story with us and giving us a chance to savor our own moment of clarity.
I’m learning, as a middle-aged man, to ride the current instead of fighting it. When I was a young man, I had a tendency to impose myself on people because I was sure my point of view was not only the correct one but the only one. Kierkegaard was right: when you let everything go is exactly when you get it back, and you get it back in its proper role in your life. :)
Every time we feel like a number, we should simply look back at the path that got us where us are. None of them, none of them, are the same. We all have our own unique, beautiful journey. In an odd way, we all make that journey alone and together. I can’t quite explain it, but I know it to be true.
You’re welcome. Thank you for your service to our country. You seemed to have lived many lives in one. I bet there are still many lives to go.
You’re welcome. :)
My wife and I stopped at the same Pilot on the way down to Georgia. LOL. There’s a Wendy’s attached to it now, my favorite guilty pleasure restaurant.
As for our “moments of singular clarity”, I try to notice them as they are happening, which is more difficult than you’d think. They are utterly unpredictable, and I find that if I try to “make” them happen then their chances of happening are virtually nil. It’s almost like they take you unawares. The emotion is so powerful that we’ve had some of our greatest minds fumble it from time to time: Jung called it synchronicity, Taoists call it qi, Buddhist call it Dharma, and Baptists call it the holy spirit. No matter how you slice it, the river that runs through our lives is as real and firm as the earth beneath my feet.
A simple thank you will have to suffice for all the beauty and truth you managed to put into this one piece for me to enjoy. And I confess I almost didn’t read it, as I couldn’t imagine anything with “Hardee’s” in the title being what I needed at this moment.
I am sitting here in the dark, the wood for tonight’s fire neatly piled, the two dogs snoring on the couch beside me, the stars about to peek out in the sky, and the need to connect to someone else who understands exactly what I have been feeling all day long.
Life offers us so much and so little. When I look about the rugged and forested hills of my new home territory, and think back to all the years I spent inside cities, I still pinch myself in wonderment that this might just be a dream from which I will wake up.
“Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.” Today I definitely got the bear. Your words made a perfect ending to the evening.
If I could just write something once a day that gets this kind of reaction out of people, I could die a happy man. :) Isn’t that why we write? Why we communicate? To reach out a hand into the darkness and feel the warmth of a hand reaching back. There is nothing more human.