It was to be a quiet Thanksgiving, alone in the mountains of North Carolina. For days I had traveled south from West Virginia along the spine of an ancient mountain chain, camping in the eastern foothills of the Appalachians, but for this Thursday I wanted something more than a tent to keep me warm and so I chose to stay in a tiny house, still in the woods, with a private bed and a shared kitchen; the perfect place to celebrate an imperfect holiday.
But just the night before I found myself miles from Asheville snuggled up to sleep in a tent not necessarily meant for this season, but I was under a moon that was full and a sky filled with stars. It was far from warm, I was far from home, and yet there was no place in the world that I would rather be.
That morning, as always in nature, I woke at first light, but I was not the only one up at this hour. Someone was outside of my tent. I could tell by the crunch of their footsteps on the frosted ground and then the sound of the zipper being opened on the front flap of my tent.
“Hello?” I called out to whoever it was on the other side of the thin wall between us.
“I am so sorry. I am so so sorry,” came the muffled voice of a woman. “I have no idea what I was thinking. You must think I’m a lunatic.” Truth be told, I did not know what to think. Still new to camping, I was grateful she was not a bear or another animal of the night. Besides, the moon had long set and the time for lunacy had past. Or so I hoped.
With caution, I crawled out to see this strange hillside companion. Before me stood a woman with ten less years in her eyes. Around her shoulders a red blanket was wrapped. It was frayed at the bottom, but solid the rest of the way through and was doing its best to shield her from the cold cold morning air. After more unnecessary apologies she told me her name was Lindsay and she had slept in the hobbit house with her boyfriend less than one hundred yards away. Smoke billowed from the terra cotta chimney and I wondered why it was that she left the warmth of her Shire-like sanctuary to awaken me at so early an hour but then again perhaps she, like Frodo, felt the need to get to Bree.
In the pastel dawn, frosted with signs of winter to come, we watched the sun climb over the blue ridges, talking about the things you talk about when everything that is superficial is stripped away: our greatest loves, our greatest fears and our greatest hopes. For almost an hour we stood waiting for the temperature to rise like the sun, but it stayed below freezing and we stayed where we were for just a little longer.
To say goodbye, I offered her a copy of my memoir, Mosaic, and she, in turn, gave me a gift certificate to the local grocery store. She told me that whenever she has been on the road, the people she has come across have been generous with her and she wanted to pass that generosity on to me.
For that is what we as travelers do: we share our passions, our stories, and our kindness. And I will never forget the kindness shared with me on this Thanksgiving morn.
With her generosity, I went to the market and got a traveler’s feast: steak and Brussels sprouts and potatoes that were sweet. The hours that remained of the day were spent in the mountains, finding waterfalls that I had been chasing my whole life.
When the light began to fade and darkness came to take its rightful place, I made my way to the tiny cabin in the woods to spend the night giving thanks for all the days that had passed thus far on my journey and for all of the days to come.
Once there, I slowly prepared the meal that would not have been had it not been for the kindness of a stranger. When there was no more steak to be had and the Brussels sprouts remained too many, I gathered my plates to wash in the sink thinking of all of the things I wanted to do with this silent night, but the lights of a car shined into the kitchen and the sound of closing doors broke what quiet there was.
From the darkness into the light arrived three young men, each with a headlamp around his head. They smiled as they entered as if they were old friends who had come to visit from so very far away. They introduced themselves and sat in the chairs and couches that filled the room. Their skin was the color of copper and cinnamon and they moved with the mannerisms of men whose youth still resided inside of them and was in no rush to escape into the adulthood that one day awaited them. Two of them were engineers who had been roommates in college and the third was a friend from home, but their home was much farther away than my own. Khaled was from Bahrain and now lived in Manhattan, Bender was a Saudi who was to begin his Ph.D. at Duke the following semester, and Samer was Palestinian by birth, but called Pittsburgh his home.
For the whole of the night we spoke of all of the things that you are not supposed to speak about in polite company: religion and politics, America and the Middle East. We even touched upon love for as the years continue undeterred by any conceptions that I may have of time, I want the mistakes of others to be less than my own when it comes to matters of the heart, but who am I to teach what I am still learning myself?
If someone had told me that this was how I was to spend my Thanksgiving, I would not have believed them or, at the very least, thought the collision of these fates impossible. And yet here we were, four souls drifting into each other’s lives on a night of giving thanks. For hours we spoke without pretense as if this was not our first conversation together as it certainly will not be our last. There was laughter. There was understanding. There was peace.
In the morning we shared a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, coffee, and the remains of my solitary feast. When we had finished they apologized for not having anything to give me, but I had remembered the hospitality that I had experienced when last I was in Palestine and I wanted nothing more than to return the kindness here in my country.
Just before we were to go our separate ways, Bender, the Saudi Arabian, stood in the corner, sorting through the books and games that were on the shelves. When he turned around he held a book in his hand and asked if he had told us about this book. It was Bridge to Terabithia. I knew this book well. I had read it almost three decades before at a time that I needed it the most. It was the book that taught me that I was not alone in the loss of my best friend as a child. Other children knew of this ever steady grief and other mothers comforted their children in the ways only they know how.
But his connection with this book was less full of sadness and more full of joy; a family still together, a friendship still intact. “This is my sister and I’s book except that she is Jesse and I am Leslie. She studies film in Saudi Arabia and has met the man who made this book into a movie.”
I smiled the smile you smile when you know for certain that there is no such thing as coincidences. In New York just the month before I had met the very same man and at this very moment he had in possession my own copy of Bridge to Terabithia that I had kept for almost thirty years. It was to be signed by his mother, Katherine Paterson, who had written this book for her son who had lost his best friend, her son who now makes movies.
I shared with him the story I knew of Bridge to Terabithia and told him that I, too, had written a book of my own, which I had given him (and Samer) as a parting gift for the gift of presence they had given me. Holding my book in his hands, he regarded the painting that is found on its cover full of blues and yellows and reds. Ever the engineer he told me that when colors are pulled apart, they too become mosaics, just as moments such as this become mosaics, filling our lives with beauty and richness and light.
They left not soon after. I watched as they drove to other destinies, leaving this part of their fate behind and as the mist descended over the hills of Carolina, I thought to myself:
There is magic in the mountains.
There is magic in everything.
All you have to do is believe.