Moonlight Mile

We were in the teeth of the blizzard from nowhere, sliding down the winding mountain roads in the dark like a fifteen thousand pound toboggan, when Tyler Durden asked me what I was going to wish I’d accomplished before I died. I had no idea what to tell him. Nothing came to mind. 

As we rounded a long radial bend, already halfway into the oncoming lane and fishtailing slightly, we emerged into a steep downward straightaway only to find a Tyree Oil tanker truck suddenly materializing from the undulating curtain of snow, skidding across the road barely two car lengths in front of us. He was zig-zagging lanes with abandon and treating the guard-rails on either side like those bumpers they put down in the gutters at the bowling alley for kids’ birthday parties. I downshifted instantly, but studiously kept my foot off the brake. 

My seven-ton toboggan is actually a full-size Dodge Sprinter, loaded to the gills with construction tools. It’s over twenty four feet long, ten feet tall, and has a turning radius of fifty three feet. It doesn’t do anything on a dime. So any use of the gas or brake on this slope, in the snow and ice, would set us to doing the same jig as Mr. Tyree in a heartbeat. The best I could hope for was to not add insult to injury for the guy. I began to realize that there was method to his madness, as he was actually using the rails to bump and grind against to spend his momentum without killing himself. As he thumped to a hard stop against the right-side rail just in front of us, I slalomed around him in a wide, lazy arc, trying to keep it on the road. I just took it in stride. 

Hell, it wasn’t even the most dangerous thing that had happened that day.

That long and perilous day had begun over twelve hours prior with my business partner Ron and I traversing this same mountain pass in the opposite direction toward the rocky Oregon coast. We’d made our way to the tiny coastal town of Yachats on an errand of mercy that was supposed to net us a thousand bucks for a day’s work. Two days before, Mother Nature had thrown the very first recorded hurricane at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village and had done fairly extensive damage. It mostly consisted of roofs being ripped off, one of which we’d been called to make emergency repairs on. The hurricane had only been a category one, with sustained winds of seventy-five, gusting up to ninety, so the town was still standing but had been given a black eye. Easy money.

The specific house we were going to work on belonged to a friend of a friend who was trying to turn it into a rental income property. She’d paid cash for the fixer-upper, had yet to score a tenant, was already upside down in equity and up to her ears in a project she wished she hadn’t bitten off.  She lived in the Willamette Valley like us, and the property in Yachats was separated by two hours of hard miles in the Coast Range along the western-most edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire. So by the time she’d gotten the news that the empty house had been seriously damaged by the unprecedented hurricane winds, the place had already been flooded for days. To say nothing of the fact that most of her roof was in the Post Office parking lot. Since it was already an anchor in danger of sinking her, the owner had elected to forgo insurance on it, so she needed somebody to stanch the bleeding before the entire house became financially irreparable for her.

In February of 2012 we were a fledgling construction company, having survived our first anemic year with our heads held high. But the Holidays had just passed and Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day is typically a no-man’s land in the world of construction that’s vanquished many a company, so our edge-of-desperation mindset—even more so than our compassion for the hapless owner—overwhelmed our better judgment and sense of self-preservation. So we charged head-on into the maw of the next storm-front stacked up behind the hurricane, teeth bared and twelve-hundred square foot sail in hand. There’s no feeling in the world quite like betting Mother Nature a thousand bucks that she can’t kill you before you get your job done. And you’d best believe that bitch took us up on it without hesitation. Easy money. 

The inside of the house was already ankle-deep in water, and it was still pouring out of the walls and ceiling. It had that mildewy stench of standing water—humid as a swamp and sickly warm like it had a fever. Long experience had taught us that standing water was a breeding ground for nasty surprises, but that wasn’t our problem. Except that the power was out, which meant that we were on the clock and burning daylight. We put our biggest extension ladder up to gain access to the second story and went right to work. It was a flat roof—always a mistake in Oregon—but since we’d be stretching out a thirty-by-forty-foot roll of super-strength polyethylene sheeting and manhandling it into place over the entire perimeter of the roof in sustained winds of fifty-plus miles-per-hour, I was glad not to be concerned about my footing. I had plenty of other things to worry about.

The house was one of a dozen shoehorned in on a narrow spit of land jutting out into the Pacific, and with no barriers between us and the howling wind coming in off the sea, we were immediately battered pretty hard just trying to cut the cut the requisite amount of polyethylene sheeting off the huge roll. The rain was mixed with an ultra-fine hail of ice that scoured our faces in the frigid gale, and things only got worse as we began trying to unfurl the massive sheet. On a normal day, spreading a tarp of this magnitude on the coast is pretty difficult, but doing it in the face of sustained winds in the fifties and regular gusts into the seventies is well-nigh suicidal.

The only possible course of action was to secure the west-facing windward edge under the eaves to deny the freezing typhoon wind its leverage under the tarp. Which is exactly what Ron set out doing from the relative safety of the second story balcony, while I arranged as many weights, 2x4 cleats, and anchors as possible to keep the rest of the edges held down on the top-side of the roof. By then I’d been in construction for almost twenty years and was well acquainted with dangerous work. When I came into the trades it was with an innate fear of heights and power-tools, and a D in Shop Class under my belt. I was definitely not built to be a carpenter in my personality or temperament, so I’d learned the hard way how to grab hold of my emotions and cold-stare fear into submission. 

The first time I ever set foot on a framing top plate was a moment of sheer terror. Imagine a balance-beam the height of the ceiling in your house and the width of your palm. Now, strap twenty pounds of tools to your waist and get going back and forth across it for days on-end. That first attempt, I froze in pure panic, completely unable to move. After a minute or two, I realized that I’d never have another job in construction if I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other, and do it right then. So I did, and the Almighty was subject to the loudest, most insistent prayers He’d ever heard. Next thing you know I was up on top of a second story wall, twenty five feet off the ground with no safety net, no ropes or harnesses, and being told to do it faster. Then you do that, or you don’t have a job. And so on. 

Over the previous decades, I’d had trusses dropped on me from a crane, forcing a jump off the wall to avoid being crippled. I’d gone over backward off a wall falling sight unseen toward the ground. I’d lost my footing and slid down the bare plywood sheeting of a new 12/12-pitched roof toward the precipice of a third story drop. I’d always survived thanks to a bit of dumb luck—or providence, depending on your politics—extraordinary reflexes, and a dead-calm mind. None of that prepared me to be tossed straight up into the air like a toy in the hands of Mother Nature.

As Ron was working his way across the ocean-facing side of the house—rolling the tarp under the eaves and securing it to the rafters from a ladder on the balcony—I was stretching it out and pulling it taut across the roof. But as that windward opening continued to narrow, the howling wind was being forced under the tarp through an ever-decreasing gap with exponentially increasing force as it shot through. I’d secured it temporarily with 2x4’s along the edges, screwed into the roof plywood, but the fury of the near-hurricane winds forcing their way through the remaining gap began to tear the sheeting free from those cleats. I was on my ass with my heels dug in, with a death-grip on the edge of the thick plastic, being drug across the roof as I shouted at the top of my lungs for Ron to hurry the fuck up before the tarp was ripped from my straining grasp. 

He couldn’t hear a word under the din of the howling wind and rain, or over the furious snapping and ripples of the tarp. If it actually tore free before he could finish that all-important leading-edge, we’d lose almost two hundred bucks worth of the most advanced plastics chemistry had yet come up with and have to drive a four-hour roundtrip to get more. So I laid out face-down on the roof, arms and legs splayed as wide as possible like I was making a snow angel, and thought the heaviest thoughts I could think, desperately hoping Ron could seal the gap before we lost that bet. At that point, between my beer gut, my heavy-duty rain gear, and the stupidly-massive tool bags I wear, I represented a two hundred fifty pound paperweight, defying Mother Nature to move me. 

This she did with ridiculous ease.

The tarp tore loose from the mooring on the edge where I was laying and lifted straight up into the air with me on top of it. It whipped and furled like the biggest flag in the parade, me clinging to it with two handfuls clutched in my white-knuckled grip. At the apex of the lift was a moment of null-gravity equilibrium and the most distilled terror I’ve ever imagined. There was nothing else to grab, no one who could reach me, and no getting off. I was utterly at the mercy of the whims of the wind, with only my Grandma’s prayers as a bulwark between me and the easiest possible route down to the Pacific. One, two, three. It lifted me up and slapped me down, lifted me up and slapped me down, lifted me up and slapped me down. I came up off the roof about six or seven feet into the air and slammed back down into it face-first, three times in quick succession. All I could do was hang on for dear life. 

And then it was over. I barely had time to register the fact of my continued existence as Ron got the front edge sealed. Then he hopped up on the roof and we worked the perimeter edges together, pulling them taut until the piece was solidly down. It took several more hours, stretching out longer than it should have, the daylight fading as we worked with the wind, rain, and sleet continuously pelting us. Eventually we succeeded in encasing the entire roof in a virtually indestructible membrane created from the end-state of unimaginable ancient bones. Then we beat feet for home.

Almost nine hours in those hazardous conditions made for a long day, but believing that we were out of danger just because we were headed home was an illusion. That maelstrom chased us all along the rocky promontories and buffeted us mercilessly through the treacherous switchbacks of the rugged Oregon coastline. In profile, my van is as big as a billboard and aerodynamic as a brick, so the wind slamming into us broadside pushed us hard toward the oncoming traffic, forcing me to turn into the wind—toward the cliff edge—to keep going straight. Occasionally the wind would die down unexpectedly so that the compensatory steering would become an overcorrection and we would suddenly find ourselves swerving out toward the precipice.

The sea was a roiling mass of whitecaps as the wind tore at its surface and drove waves into the Devil’s Cauldron with a percussive force that we felt in our bones. And so the battle went, for about an hour until we pulled into the outskirts of Florence, one of the bigger coastal towns. From there, we would strike east and into the mountain passes to get back to the Willamette Valley. After the nerve-wracking day, and the tense drive, I was almost looking forward to the twisty paths and narrow lanes of the pass where the high winds couldn’t reach us. As if reading this foolish thought, Mother Nature took one more swing at us, on a straightaway at the north edge of Florence. The Bitch laid a broadside haymaker on us, a powerful gust hard enough to put us up on two wheels, very nearly pushing us over.

This had been the longest stretch of my life spent in such a constant state of primal, fight-or-flight, lizard-brain fear. There was no quarter given, no respite, no sanctuary anywhere. Hell, not even a freakin’ coffee break. The adrenaline playing constantly along my nerves for so many straight hours had left me feeling jangled and fried, humming like a high-tension powerline. I was a little jumpy, and a lot frazzled, and began to have a new empathy for those who spend their lives like this for years on end. This wasn’t a war-zone by any means, but I felt as if I’d looked into the heart of one from afar and it was already too much for me. So as we entered the foothills of the mountain pass and heavy, wet flakes of snow began to take the place of rain, sleet, and hail, I cursed the Bitch for clutching at us one more time. 

Owing to the lateness of the hour and the increasingly dangerous road conditions, the pass was unusually deserted. As we climbed deeper into its rocky folds, the falling snow picked up pace. Before long, the interplay between the headlights and the squall’s shifting undulations created the illusion that we were at the threshold of hyperspace, seriously messing with our sense of relative motion. Visibility shortened to mere car lengths. Unfortunately, once you’re in the pass you’re pot-committed. It’s one lane in either direction, no rest areas, and no turning back. So the worsening snow seemed like Mother Nature’s coupe de grace. Now she had us right where she wanted us. There was nothing to be done about it, so Ron just kept refilling my coffee cup like a good work-wife as the music played low in the darkened cabin.

By the time that Tyree tanker truck suddenly came into view we hadn’t seen a car in either direction for over twenty minutes. So his appearance from nowhere, and already totally out of control, was like a last-ditch shot across the bow. Being close enough to read the company’s signage even through the blasting snow was a surreal moment of slow motion. The Pixies were wailing “Where Is My Mind?” and for some reason a particular moment in “Fight Club” came to mind. In it, Tyler Durden lets go of the wheel and their car drifts into oncoming traffic. He then asks the three passengers what they were going to wish they’d accomplished before they died. Two of them had answers at the ready, while the main character had nothing. That was me. Nothing at all.

I gave Mr. Tyree a wide berth as he thumped to a stop against the rail in front of us, and saw his hazard lights begin blinking in the mirror before he disintegrated back into snow from whence he came. I took it as a sign of his relative wellbeing, said a quick Ave for him even though I’m not Catholic, and got back to the business of getting us home in one piece. Not like I could have done anything for him in any case. Our speed decreased to barely twenty five, which was less than half the speed we usually took the pass at. But the slippery build-up of snow and near white-out conditions had to be respected. I could only tell by the terrain and pitch of the road that we were nearing the tunnel at the top of the pass, which marked the point at which the road would improve dramatically. Wider, gentler turns, decreased pitch.

When we finally crept to the tunnel it was full-dark inside, no lights at all. That had never happened before, day or night, rain or shine. But the truly remarkable thing was what we found on the other side. When we emerged from the short tunnel, half a mile or so, the sky was completely clear. Not one flake of snow, drop of rain, or even a cloud in the sky. I was as though, in passing through the tunnel, we breached the rain-shadow into a different realm. The stars were shining in hard, undiluted brilliance at the top of that mountain. The moon was pregnant and full, bathing the road in luminescence and painting the corridor of tree-tops. I felt a palpable sense of relief settle in the cabin as we both breathed a heavy sigh and the icy hand of fear had eased its grip on us. It was almost as if Mother Nature was tipping her hat to us for a game well played, and had sent her best moon as a token of congratulations.  As if to say, “Alright, off you go. But don’t play at stupid games, I won’t be so tolerant a second time.”

So off we went. It was another forty minutes of driving, winding through centuries-old stands of evergreens, ever downward to home. I stared at that moon for much of that time, the van almost driving itself now that no one was trying to kill us. Something about the moon’s pallor has always been uniquely beautiful to me, the shadows cast crisp and black, but soft as a lullaby. And this one hung so close to the Earth, like a Harvest Moon in February. I hadn’t seen one so beautiful since an August night in 1995 out on Highway 89 in the badlands of Montana. For no real reason, that night still resonated as one of the best of my life. I thought back to the friends that I shared that car ride with and wondered if they were OK.

But more, I wondered what it meant that, after the deadliest day of my life, I had no answer to Tyler’s question.

It was such an unparalleled relief to have a mountain range between us and the world of trouble behind. Drinking from a bottomless cup of coffee, talking with Ron about his kids or the songs on the radio, and just letting the miles ramble under the wheels felt like the best thing that had happened in the history of, like…ever. Just watching that moon and breathing in and out, like it weren’t no thang. Simply happy to be alive and in good company. Like that perfectly ordinary night in Montana, seventeen years previous, perhaps the first moment of transcendence I’d ever experienced. I hadn’t thought about it in years. It was such an anomaly in my life that I sometimes wondered if it had even happened, or if I’d simply imagined it. Over the years, I’d tried and failed a few times to explain it to someone that wasn’t there, because it always came across as merely life-sized. “So you were driving on a road one night and a song came on the radio?”

But driving those miles home under Mother Nature’s conciliatory offering reassured me that the night in Montana was real, and that transcendence exists if you have eyes to see. So I began writing the story of the moon and Highway 89 in my head, all the way to home. When I got there, Lindsay was long asleep, so I stayed up until four in the morning, trying to corral the rush of words that had come to me along those moonlit miles home. It was like trying to catch a river in a cup, but at four AM, I summoned the courage—far more than it had taken to go toe to toe with Mother Nature—and hit the “Post” button on Facebook. The first story I ever told was published to an audience of only two, because those two also knew the truth of the moon and Highway 89. And so, along with our mistress the Moon, they collectively became my muse. The ones for whom all subsequent stories have been told.

I had my answer for Tyler. Before I died, I wanted to tell the stories. The stories of casual serendipity, mundane miracles, and the perfect timing of unimportant coincidences. The ways in which the random, inchoate world can reveal itself, even for an instant, to be a clockwork of exquisite beauty. The stories of how it all works, and of why I am the way that I am. All of the stories I could. Thanks for asking, Mr. Durden.