The true and bitter irony of this story is that it came about from nothing more than the decision to do a fellow a good turn. Someone once said those never go unpunished, and I reckon I’m living proof—more or less anyway—of the truth of that hackneyed old adage. In a roundabout way, though, it was my own dumb-ass fault, for if I hadn’t driven off that night with Don’s keys, I’d’ve had no reason to go back later on, and none of this would have come to pass.

It was a Friday afternoon, coming into the first weekend in December. I remember it with absolute clarity because it was the day I took my very last step. I had driven out to Orrs Island on account of I had a truckload of lobster pots that needed to be dropped off down at Pete Boudreau’s boat, following which the work week would be over and I’d be free to commence recreating in whatever manner I felt was suitable. After Pete and I had stood on the pier a good long while, looking out across the bay and jawing about the catch that year, the approaching ice storm, and all the other stuff lobstermen discuss when they aren’t out on the boat, I bid him a good weekend and got back in my car. It was at that point I first noticed the wind starting to pick up like it does when a squall line is within a few hours of reaching you. The temperature had fallen maybe ten degrees over the course of the day, and what had started out as a pretty ordinary thirty-degree day on December was preparing to make good on the weatherman’s forecast that by Saturday morning we’d be in the teens. He had also opined that by late this evening we’d be looking at several hours of freezing rain and sleet. Most of my weekend plans had, thus, taken the form of things I could do in the house, and a good deal of that I assumed would be spent in front of the television.

Having concluded my business with Pete and made my way onto Route 24 back to the mainland, I suddenly found myself inexplicably overcome with a desire to stop by Coombs’ General Store and see what was up with Don. I hadn’t visited him in what I judged an unsuitably long time and seeing as how I was in the neighborhood—or what passes for a neighborhood in coastal Maine—I made the left turn onto Mountain Road, right about where Millie’s Fried Clam stand pops up every summer, and began to make my way over toward Harpswell. It wasn’t but about five miles down a winding road that rises and dips, following the inlet bay, coursing its way through deep pine, and eventually crossing over the old wood bridge that leads onto the outer portion of the peninsula. I hadn’t been on this road in maybe two years, since on those infrequent occasions when I had visited Don in the past, I had come straight out through Brunswick on 123 and so had no reason to traverse this windy connector road. But sure as ever, I eventually made the sweeping turn around the old motor court, climbed the last short hill, and there stood Coombs’ Store, just as it always had.

By the time you reach Don’s place, you’re pretty much at the end of the point, a craggy piece of rock that sticks out into the middle of the Harpswell Sound like a dead tree branch. The entire peninsula at this point isn’t but about two hundred yards wide, and if it wasn’t for the pine trees, you could easily see both sides of the ocean just standing in the gravel parking lot. But the first thing you notice when you get out of your car is that you’re up pretty high above the water, probably a good hundred feet above sea level, by virtue of having driven up that last steep hill before arriving. If you keep on going to the end of the point, the last quarter mile or so will be nearly straight downhill, so that you’ll reach the water just about the time it reaches you. But at Coombs you’re still fairly high up, so much so that the store, which sits back only ten yards or so off the road, is built entirely on enormous piles that stretch far down the uneven cliff and disappear into the slick black rocks that comprise the coast hereabouts.

I’d been coming out to Coombs’ Store off and on pretty much my whole life. Don and his wife Verna were friends of my mother’s and had lived just down the road from us in Brunswick for as long as I could remember. He actually had two stores, one right there fairly close to his house, maybe half a mile away at Cooks Corner, and the other way out here on Harpswell Point. I never did discuss with Don what motivated him to want to build a second store so far from the house but, whatever the reason, it was much appreciated by the fishermen and other folks who lived out here year-round, as well as the tourists who flocked to the point from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and who disappeared en masse immediately thereafter. Living out on the point year-round is a serious affair and fraught with many inconveniences, including not only having to repaint your house every spring from the salt spray, but also having to endure a twenty-mile drive into Brunswick every time you need groceries. Hence, the general appreciation for Coombs opening his modest establishment out here in Harpswell. Make no mistake though—Don Coombs’ General Store wasn’t Shaw’s or anything of the kind. It wasn’t the place you went to get your family’s groceries for a month. It was really just a convenience store where you could pick up an emergency gallon of milk or six-pack of Narragansett without having to brave forty miles of driving in a snowstorm. Don had a little bit of everything but not too much of anything, if that makes any sense.

The very idea of the place was a throwback to as long ago as the fifties, for there was nothing else like it anywhere in southern Maine, at least in my experience. But for me, Coombs’ place had a more important distinction—one that had stuck with me since early childhood and made the otherwise endless drive out here in my youth an endurable one. In addition to the shelves full of basics that are characteristic of any such establishment, the ancient brass cash register still serving yeoman duty at the front, and the requisite rocking chairs on the porch, Coombs’ Store had, running nearly the full length of the building’s right-hand side, a genuine soda and ice cream counter. Inasmuch as the establishment was already a living tribute to a humbler time and place, stepping up to that ice cream counter was, particularly for a kid, like stepping out of a time machine and into a Norman Rockwell painting.

The counter was thirty feet long, more or less, with a sparkly Formica top of the sort found on kitchen table tops favored by women who haven’t redecorated their homes since the Kennedy administration. Also in that same spirit was the wavy chrome edging, held in place by a row of shining silver rivets. In front of the counter, every four feet or so, stood precisely the sort of circular spinning stools one would expect to find in front of such a counter, clad, of course, in sparkling red vinyl and supported on shining steel posts bolted firmly to the floor. Reinforcing the time travel illusion was the inevitably teenaged soda jerk behind the counter, replete with white apron and folding paper hat, who addressed every customer as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ regardless of age, and who was skilled in the nuances of soda creams, root beer floats, and hot fudge sundaes. But the memory that has stayed with me most strongly, from my earliest recollection to the present day, is the banana boat. It’s an odd distinction, because the confection was, in nearly every respect, precisely what everyone else in the world knows as a banana split. But at Coombs’ it was a banana boat, the moniker earned, presumably, by the fact that the container in which the heaping thing was presented to you was, in fact, a small but unmistakable likeness of a rowing dingy, cast in thin plastic of pale yellow or blue. Part of what makes this such an indelible memory for me is the fact that, as far as I can recall, I never, in all my childhood years, ever once ate a banana split/boat at any establishment other than Coombs’.

Aside from the ice cream counter, and the generally typical assortment of goods displayed on the shelves, there were various other aspects of Coombs establishment that bear mentioning, insofar as they set the mood, if not directly the cause, for the events that followed throughout that weekend. Because the parcel of land on which the store was constructed was nowhere even approximately flat, but rather an alarmingly sloped half-acre of cliff and rock that descended to the bay below, the structure, as a consequence, was constructed entirely on enormous piles, black with creosote along the upper three quarters, green with the twice-daily accumulation of years of high and low tide that crept up and down the posts with lunar regularity. I do not, despite years of walking amongst the great piles upon the rocks beneath, recall the number of them, except to say that they were more than up to the task of supporting the building, which assertion one might have taken cause with after spending a bit of time inside during a particularly strong wind storm. For one of the unexpected sources of the piles’ strength was their willingness to yield, ever so slightly, against the onslaught of wind or ocean. Indeed, standing inside the store during a particularly brisk nor’easter when I was in my late teens, I still recall the distinctly nautical feeling of a slight but regular back and forth movement of the structure. This, combined with the view out the back through the large single-pane windows that looked out over Harpswell Sound, provided the not-inaccurate sensation of actually being at sea. But in all those years of visiting Coombs’ Store, I never had cause to doubt the integrity of the building, for I was aware of no actions Don ever took to improve upon its soundness, save for the obligatory spring repainting that attended every building along the winter coast each spring, skipping the occasional year if the winter had been unexpectedly mild or pecuniary conditions did not allow.

In truth, I spent more of my childhood beneath the store than I did inside it. The marveling at and consumption of legions of banana boats notwithstanding, the real fascination of the place for an adolescent lay in the mysteries waiting to be discovered beneath the floor, in that forty-odd feet of space from under the floor joists to the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks of the shoreline, up through which rose majestically the supporting piles already described. There were two ways down to the water. The more hazardous, indeed borderline suicidal, path was to walk around to either side of the building, and then make your precarious way down the cliff side hand over hand until you reached the rocks below. The more practical way down was through the expedient of simply taking the long zigzagging staircase that stood at the rear of the structure, which, while plenty vertigo-inducing in its own right, presented not nearly the hazard of the alternative approach. Once down those meandering steps (of which there were precisely eighty-seven, a statistic etched in my mind long before I became a teenager), you were near the water’s edge, just how near being a function of what state the tide was in. As it happened, at the peak of high tide you’d’ve stepped off the last step of the stairway into about a foot of water, whereas at the nadir of low tide you could have walked a hundred feet or so from the end of the step before you reached the water’s edge.

Of course the joy of it for an adolescent, aside from being down there in the first place against the wishes of any rational parent, was the exploring. It was a wonderland of great round boulders, slippery with seaweed, never more than twelve hours away from a fresh rebirth by the slapping waters of the bay. You could kick a bundle of seaweed to one side (taking great care not to fall on your ass in the process) and watch dozens of small crabs scuttle sideways in search of new cover. You could kneel before tidal pools, as small as your hand or as expansive as a car hood, within which swam brine shrimp and tiny fish, darting and translucent, around and between barnacles, starfish, and sea urchins. No two were the same, each refreshed in its turn by the rising and falling sea, as if setting in motion with each cycle of the tide a renewal of life itself, a metaphor for that very first creation, albeit with Eden microcosmic and submerged.

It was an awe-inspiring thing to stand directly beneath the store, in that great shadow it cast upon the rocks, and gaze upward along the lengths of the monstrous black piles, timbers that had stood the test of hurricanes and the incessant beating of the waves at high tide, sometimes so ferocious as to splash water upward to the very bottom of the store’s floorboards some forty feet above. I remember thinking to my adolescent self that this place, with its primeval forest of pilings and the great cliff as backdrop, was not the sort of place one would care to injure oneself, for I could imagine days or weeks passing without so much as a soul venturing down in search of you. In the end, I might have paid a bit more heed to my own apprehension.

It was that evening, following my delivery of the pots to Pete, that I walked into Coombs’ Store, not having set foot in the place for several months prior. I clapped my hands together vigorously against the growing cold and drew the heavy door closed behind me. It was plenty warm inside, despite the occasional rattle from the panoramic back windows as the cold Atlantic wind beat relentlessly upon them. There at first appeared to be not a soul inside. Only then, in response to the tinkle of the bell over the door, came a guttural grunt followed by the gradual appearance of Don’s large and hairless head as it rose from behind the canned goods aisle, the lower reaches of which he had been busily stocking with green beans and tomato sauce at the moment of my arrival.

“Hidey-ho, stranger,” he said, his version of irony, seeing as how he’d known me since I was in diapers. “I didn’t expect I was ever going to see you in these parts again.”

“Good to see you too, Mister Coombs,” I responded. Didn’t matter none that I was grown up and all. Once you spend a couple of decades calling somebody something, you tend to stick with it. Least ways, I do. “Sounds like we got us a big one on the way.”

“I expect you’re right about that,” he said. “Don’t need no weatherman to tell it to me neither. Shoot, anybody lived out here more’n a month can look out over the bay and see what’s comin’ at us. Fact is, I’ll probably shut ‘er down a little early tonight. Kinda like to get back to the house before dark, if I can swing it. Most folks that need stocking up for the weekend have already come and gone, I reckon.”

“I believe that’s a right sensible decision,” I offered, unzipping my coat, uncertain whether my acting like staying might now be perceived as inconsiderate, what with him keen to leave.

“But where are my manners,” he said at last, coming out from the aisle and wiping both hands on his apron before offering one in my direction. Least I can do is offer a man a cup of coffee.”

Which was the strongest drink Don Coombs was ever likely to offer to any man, what with him being a God-fearing fellow and all. Still, coffee was coffee and the windows in the back were commencing to rattle even more than they had moments earlier when I’d stepped inside. The sun was nearly set by now and the storm clouds hadn’t yet begun rolling over in earnest, so that the few there were had conspired with the setting sun to make for a remarkably beautiful sunset.

“Mind if I have a quick look out on the landing,” I asked, reckoning that I could get a better view of the sunset standing on the platform at the top of the stairway that led down to the shoreline.

“Help yourself, son,” Don said. “But I already got her locked up.” He reached into the pocket of his apron and withdrew a key ring with but two keys on it, one for the back door onto the landing, the other an old skeleton-looking affair for what archaic purpose I could only wonder. I caught the keys out of the air as Don turned for the coffee pot. I unlocked the back door and stepped out onto the landing, closing the door behind me, so as to be considerate as possible of Don’s fuel oil bill.

“Mind the railing to your right,” he shouted out through the door. “It came a bit loose this fall and I ain’t made the time to fix it proper.”

As it happens, the back door through the store wasn’t the only way onto the landing that led down to the rocks below. There was, as well, a narrow porch that wrapped around the entire right side of the building, so that you could, if so inclined, walk around the corner and right back into the parking lot without going back inside. Don reckoned this made it a bit handier for anyone who had cause to go down to the beach when the store was closed, but who didn’t feel up to scaling the rocks to get down there. Well, I guess I must’ve stood there gazing out at that sunset and the incipient storm clouds about five minutes before Don came tapping on the window to let me know the coffee was het up. I came back inside and pulled the door to, turning to face the man and graciously accept from him the proffered steaming cup as preamble to engaging in half an hour or so of catching-up conversation that touched upon everything from his daughter’s high school graduation to the acrimonious debate surrounding the construction of a new volunteer fire house over by Cundy’s Harbor. It was two cups later that I happened to catch Don glancing at his watch and took this as my cue to bid the man and his hospitality goodbye, which I did with much gesticulating and promising to come back sooner next time. As I swung my coat back over my shoulder, Don reached down behind the counter and handed me a wrinkled paper bag in which were ensconced half a dozen mason jars of pickled beans, carrots, and rhubarb.

“Give these here to the missus,” he said, in response to which I thanked him profusely, walked briskly to my car, and started her up, reaching for the heater lever promptly thereafter. It was four or five miles down the road, with John Fogerty shouting from the radio something about looking out his back door, that I felt the need to adjust my position in the seat in response to a pinching sensation in my right pants pocket. Couple of adjustments later, I stretched up hard against the seat belt, taking care not to drive into a ditch in the effort, so as to facilitate the removal of the offending and mysterious object. It was then I discovered I’d headed off home with Don’s backdoor keys still in my possession.

Well damn, was all I could think of to think, as I slowed the car and executed a gravel-spinning turn in the first handy driveway, figuring Don couldn’t have gotten past me without my seeing, what with this being the only road back into Brunswick. Except that the flaw in my logic was that it wasn’t necessarily the case he would head directly home this way. There were several off-roads between here and the store that he could’ve taken instead if he had a mind to go over to Bailey’s Island or other such detour. After ten minutes of driving back to the store at a pace slightly more than judicious for the advancing hour and the serpentine nature of the road, I pulled back into the parking lot to discover that, sure as hell, the windows were dark, his car was gone, and I’d managed to miss him.

Being less than keen to make a special trip back out here simply to return a set of keys, I stepped from my car into the gathering wind and walked to the front door, which I knew before I touched it would be locked. It was. It next occurred to me to have a look around back, availing myself of the surrounding porch that I knew eventually arrived at the rear stairway landing and the door whose keys were the object of my current errand. Leaving the car running and the headlights on against the now considerable darkness, I started down the railed walkway that ran along the right side of the store. It was only upon reaching the back corner, some thirty paces on, that the full import of the approaching storm made its impact upon me. I drew my jacket up close around my neck and turned left, making my way to the back stairway landing. I was unsurprised to find the back door locked as well, leading me to conclude that Don either had an extra set of keys or he was content to rely upon the doorknob lock, secured by the simple expedient of turning through ninety degrees a small button on the center of the inner doorknob. I suspected the former, though, as the back door routinely accepted the full brunt of any weather from off the bay, and Don’s sense of prudence would almost certainly have required he secure the door in as many manners as was practical, but certainly two at a minimum. Despite my conclusion that Don indeed had extra backdoor keys, I, nonetheless, felt compelled, whether from Christian decency or simple human laziness, to leave the keys I had inadvertently absconded with. The best solution I could conjure at the moment was to walk back around to the front and locate someplace suitably surreptitious near the front door, to which location I would alert Don with a follow-up phone call later that evening or in the morning. Thus outfitted with the rudiments of a plan, I turned and began making my way back down the rear portion of the walkway. It was at that inopportune moment that the wind decided to have its way with me.

Don had cautioned me, not an hour earlier, about the unstable state of a bit of the back walkway railing, and it was, to my now-everlasting disadvantage, precisely this bit of unsecured rail that my hand now descended upon in response to a particularly violent gust of wind thrust against my back, seemingly intent on throwing me face down on the walkway. As things were about to transpire, I would have been far better off, had I simply acquiesced and dropped to the floor. Instead, I gripped the railing with such a fierce if only momentary force that the entire thing cracked outward with a staccato sound barely audible above the combined howl of the wind and slash of a coincident wave on the rocks below. As though these three sounds in unison—the wind, the wave, the crisp snap of failing lumber—were insufficient to the urgency of the instant, I opted to add a fourth to the cacophony, my own scream of terror as a four-foot section of rail snapped clean off the deck, all the way to the floor, and plunged, slowly spinning, to its destruction forty feet down on the black rocks below, their slippery treacherousness now barely discernible in the almost completely extinguished light of day. I went over with it, spinning madly and throwing out an arm barely in time to catch myself by one hand on the walkway floor’s edge. My other hand flailed in the air for one panicked second, two, before joining the other along the floor’s coarse edge. I hung that way, swinging in the now ceaseless wind, no light save for minute reflections of the risen moon upon the waters of the bay. I called out but to no effect, my cries lost amidst the roar of the wind and water. In the end it was a simple splinter that was my undoing. I shifted my left hand, attempting to gain a bit more purchase on the edge of the decking, and in so doing, thrust a long pine sliver directly under my thumbnail. The pain was so intense and unexpected that I drew back my hand from the edge, leaving my right to handle alone a job that both combined had struggled with. Not a second after my left hand left the edge, my right did the same and I plunged into the blackness.

Mercifully, I remember little from that moment until I awoke an hour or more later. Specifically, I have no recollection at all of landing on the rocks, though I can now conclude with some authority that I did not land on my head, else I would not have awakened at all. Whether I fell straight down or went spinning like the broken railing I cannot say. What I can say is that when I finally awoke, several things occurred to me more or less simultaneously. My first utterly incongruous thought, as I lay on my back, face aimed directly up at the floor joists of Don Coombs General Store, was that I had seen this view long ago as a child, only never before at night. It also occurred to me that, present circumstances notwithstanding, the view was not altogether an unpleasant one, the blackness of the store frame juxtaposed with the gray moonlit sky above, clouds racing in from the bay, sliding out of sight over the top of the building.

My second thought, once I had finished my brief appreciation of the view, was that it was a remarkable thing I had awakened at all. Nine out of ten people falling from that height—two, possibly three stories—would surely have been dashed to bits on these rocks, and that would have been the end of it. And then, third, it occurred to me that I was in considerably less pain than I might have otherwise expected, all things considered. In the midst of all this reflection, which, granted, likely consumed no more than a few seconds, I had made no attempt to move in any way. Finally, though, I carefully turned my head to the right, out toward the bay, in response to a lap of icy water that had reached the fingertips of my right hand. As it happened, I turned my gaze only just in time to witness a large wave slide in my direction, crashing thunderously on the rocks ten or so feet to my right, showering me in frigid sea water.

My response to this affront was twofold. First, I realized that I was very cold and very wet and fast on my way to becoming dramatically more of both if nothing changed in the near future. And then I noticed that I was only cold from the waist up, a realization that went from reassurance to concern to abject panic, all in the space of seconds. By this point, another even larger wave was making its way in to shore and, suddenly losing all concern for potential exacerbating injuries, I endeavored to rise from my prone position. After the complete failure of a couple quick attempts, I was summarily doused by the wave I had hoped to elude, this one rendering completely saturated any remaining hidden dry spots beneath my clothing that the first onslaught had missed.

“Excellent job,” I said out loud to no one, indulging myself in a moment of sardonic wit, “you’ve managed to pull off this impressive bit of self-destruction at low tide.” This fact, immediately evident upon glancing about at the black tide lines on the rocks and piles, revealed that my present position was at least five feet below the highest dark line of dried seaweed on the rocks farther up the beach. Given the general slope of the land, this translated to a need to move myself at least fifty feet up the beach, nearly to the base of the cliff that descended from the store parking lot. Well, I thought, I ought to be able to manage that, even if I have to crawl the whole thing. This, my first truly optimistic thought since the fall, was promptly erased and replaced by something far more frightening the moment I gave one more attempt to raise myself up from the rocks. There was, it turned out, a reason why I only felt cold and wet from roughly the bottom of my ribcage upward.  There was no feeling whatsoever from that point downward. Once the initial moment of panic subsided from this realization, I tested the conclusion thoroughly, going so far as to lift fist-sized rocks from the shore and bang upon either leg as far down as my reach would allow. Something, it now appeared, had gone horribly awry in the fall after all, for I had no sensation, no movement whatsoever in the lower two thirds of my body.

In the course of my self-examination, I noticed another potentially important detail. In one respect, my apparent paralysis was a blessing, if only in the short term. My right leg was broken—badly broken. I knew this, not because I could feel it, but because I could see it bent at a ridiculous angle between the knee and ankle and, as if more verification were required, because I could see the sharp point of one of my two lower leg bones sticking through the fabric of my pants leg, its off-white tip actually glowing slightly in what little moonlight still slipped through the encroaching cloud cover.

“Well,” I said out loud again, as if feeding some need to drown out the now ceaseless wind, “I’ll bet that would smart something fierce if I could feel it. Thank the Lord for small blessings.”

I supposed that with that bad of a break it was likely bleeding pretty good too. It was hard to tell at first, what with the darkness and every inch of me now soaked in sea water. Best I had managed in my sitting up efforts was to push my torso upward at a forty-five or so degree angle by thrusting my arms backward. My first attempt at this maneuver had provided another valuable lesson about my predicament. Whatever movement was going to be possible would be tenuous at best because every surface around me was comprised of nothing but large smooth, wet rocks covered with several inches of seaweed, some of which, it suddenly occurred to me, might have just cushioned my landing enough to save my ass, such as it was. I knew this because the first time I thrust my hand back in an attempt to sit up, my right palm had slipped on the seaweed, causing me to flop back down so that the back of my already bleeding head cracked pretty hard against the rock behind me.

I sat silently for a moment, glancing about, trying to develop something that might resemble a strategy for getting out of what was shaping up to be a pretty damned sticky situation. In the first few minutes of sitting there on that rock, I had been pummeled by perhaps a dozen waves, but now there suddenly came a new sensation of moisture, and I realized that the rain had begun. It was genuinely cold now, well down into the twenties, and I could see my breath with each labored exhalation. If I had been in my car driving instead of sitting alone on a rocky beach paralyzed with a broken leg, the rain now falling would have been freezing rain, the kind that sticks to your windshield wipers so hard that if you’re driving more than five miles, you’re likely as not to have to pull off the road and beat the ice off with your scraper. Out here on the rocks, though, it didn’t seem as though it could add much to the general misery of my situation.

So there I sat, collecting my thoughts and just cogitating for a moment, watching my breath blow away in the biting wind, glancing from time to time at the bone sticking out of my leg, and trying to keep my teeth from chattering. At which point, another darkly humorous thought entered my mind. Depending solely upon my own ability to extricate myself from this debacle, and pronto, I faced the very real possibility of getting to choose my means of death from three unsavory options—drowning, freezing, or bleeding to death. Given that the leg injury was to my calf, I concluded, after some thought, that choices one and two were almost certainly the odds-on favorites.

Another frigid wave rolled in. It didn’t quite break on top of me, but the amount of splash I was now catching meant that I had about half an hour to at least do something modestly ambitious if I didn’t want to find myself actually lying in seawater. The first logical step seemed to be to roll over. Only then it occurred to me that it wasn’t entirely obvious which was the easier way to move over seaweed-covered rocks using only one’s arms and hands. It was entirely possible that scooting backward on my unfeeling butt might be superior to crawling on my stomach. In any event, while the technique remained up for grabs, my course was undebatable. I needed to make my way up the beach. That’s what I kept calling it in my head—a beach—as if it were comprised of white sand and palm trees. I would be making this journey over rocks as big as me, slick with salt water and seaweed, using only my hands, and, oh by the way, doing it in near total darkness in freezing rain with waves crashing on my head. Nothing but good times.

Damn, I thought, imagine how this all might be different if I hadn’t left my cell phone in the car—the car whose headlights I could now see shining above the top of the cliff top forty feet up, an eternity away, light that was doing me not one shitload of good at the moment. It was at that moment that another sobering thought crossed my mind. Suppose, just suppose, I somehow manage to get my dumb ass far enough up this beach so as not be inundated by high tide. Then what? I’m going to climb that forty-foot cliff with just my hands? Seems doubtful. The only option that seemed even remotely feasible—remote being the operative word here—was to somehow drag my paralyzed ass up those eighty-seven steps that led to the store’s back landing—the one I’d managed to fall off.

With this tiny semblance of a goal in mind, I focused my gaze at what I judged best to be the bottom of the staircase, no easy feat, what with the increasing rain, the dark, and the salt water in my eyes. Long story short, it turned out, after fifteen minutes of trial and error, that crawling on my belly worked marginally better than scooting backward on my ass. First of all, there was some value in actually facing my destination rather than constantly trying to look back over my shoulder to make sure I was creeping in the right direction. Second, on my belly, the slip of a freezing hand on a seaweed-covered rock only meant trying again. On my back, it frequently meant slamming the back of my head down against a rock, which, let me state for the record, gets mighty old after the fourth or fifth time. Throughout this grim ordeal, I tried my best not to look backward, partly because it was unnerving to watch my lower right leg flopping around like it wasn’t connected to me by anything other than a little bit of muscle and skin, partly because there was a race going on—a race between me and the incoming tide—and I was pretty clearly losing. While I couldn’t feel it, I could, by looking back over my shoulder, see my legs from the knees down now fully immersed in the water of the bay, even when there wasn’t a wave breaking over me, which was still happening every thirty seconds or so.

In the course of attempting to negotiate the treacherous rocks, I was, in addition, to slowly freezing while making disturbingly little progress, also adding an array of minor injuries to my already busted-to-shit self. The not-infrequent slips of one hand or the other more than once caused me to bash my face or elbow into a rock, one of which instances caused me a chipped tooth. I also jammed, and possibly broke, a finger that slipped down between two rocks, either before or after I firmly grasped, with the same hand, a sea urchin that was lurking beneath a clump of seaweed. It was all starting to get on my nerves. Or at least I convinced myself of this, believing that anger was a healthier emotion than panic right about now, the former far likelier to get me up the beach, or so I believed in that moment. My mind was promptly changed on this score, however, the first time a large, icy wave descended on top of my head at precisely the moment I was drawing a deep breath, nearly exhausted from my efforts to that point. All I inhaled was sea water. And when the wave had receded, I realized that I was now lying fully immersed in the bay, only my back and raised head still above water level. I resolved to pick up the pace a bit, sea urchin spines and broken fingers be damned.

At this inauspicious moment, a strange thing happened. A thought entered my mind, as unexpected as it was disturbing, particularly given the bad and still-deteriorating circumstances. Throughout all of this madness, I had not thought, for even one moment, about home or the wife or the kids. The last thought even remotely related to home had been back in the car driving toward Brunswick when I had first realized I’d left with Don’s keys, and that thought was nothing more than annoyance at the prospect of getting home later than I’d wanted to and, as a consequence, being met with a grim look and a cold supper. But ever since then—the drive back, the walk along the deck, the fall, and everything since—nothing. At a minimum, it ought to have occurred to me that this wasn’t exactly the way I’d originally had my Friday night planned out. I expect that my failure to think about home and loved ones simply meant I’d convinced myself I could beat this thing. No big deal. Just one more rung on the long ladder of life’s challenges. The fact that home and family were now, from out of nowhere, front and center in my head? Perhaps my ability to reassure (or kid) myself was fading a bit.

I had, after a half hour or so of serious effort, gotten into a rhythm of lurching and tugging myself forward a foot or two at a time, then laying my head momentarily on the nearest rock—seaweed be damned—to collect my energy for the next burst. I had learned a thing or two as well about crawling over rocks covered in wet seaweed. Mainly what I learned is don’t grab the seaweed thinking it’s going to get you anywhere. Mostly it just comes away in your hand and you end up smacking your hand (or your head if you’re lucky) against something hard. This approach was now no longer an option, though, leastways not if I meant to continue breathing regular. I had covered perhaps half the distance I needed to escape the tide and make it to the bottom of the stairs, and I was now a damned sight colder and more tired than when I had set out. If there were odds makers following this affair in Vegas, the numbers against me were rising, and rising fast.

But as the next pre-wave swell comes in and surrounds me in another cycle of chill ocean water, I suddenly realize that the water catching up to me like this is not entirely a bad thing. In fact, this might actually constitute a break, which, if so, would certainly be my first of the night. As the swell passes by me, it lifts me slightly as well, and I suddenly find that it takes remarkably less effort to half crawl, half swim my way an additional three feet forward. The trick, though, is to grab onto something solid when the swell starts heading back out, so that it doesn’t carry me back with it and erase all of my progress. The trade-off is that after what has to have been a couple of hours of complete saturation in forty-degree sea water, my upper body is in nearly as paralytic a state as my legs. The freezing rain falls fairly steady now, as if the ocean needed any help in its efforts to freeze me solid. Even if my combined swim/crawl gets me to the bottom of the stairs, am I really in any shape to then make it up eighty-seven steps—forty feet—using only my bruised, frozen hands? When the next wave throws me five feet closer to the stairs, I conclude that I am, as they say in warmer parts of the country, fixin’ to find out.

Oddly enough, considering everything that has happened in the past few hours, I find that I actually make pretty decent time the rest of the way by riding the waves, as it were. Good thing too, since with my totally frozen arms and hands, my days of clawing my way over the rocks, dragging two thirds of my body weight behind me, are over for the night (which doesn’t bode well for the stairs. But, hey, one step at a time). In fact, as it turns out, I make a little too good time toward the end of my journey over the rocks. Just as I get to within reaching distance of the bottom step, one final swell, a little larger than usual, picks me up and throws me face-first into the bottom railing post, which opens a nice split on my forehead. Another small benefit of being nearly frozen to death—I can’t even feel what I’m sure is a pretty good dose of pain from the impact, judging by the blood now running down into my eye. That, as my good friend Chester used to say back in high school football practice, is definitely going to leave a mark.

And now arrives the moment of truth. Eighty-seven steps, six landings, forty vertical feet, three stories. However you care to say it, that’s a long way up for my frozen, paralyzed, beat to hell (and stupid for getting into this situation in the first place) ass. The good news is that by making it this far, I’ve taken drowning out of the running for what they’ll write as “cause of death” on my death certificate. However, by achieving that, I have put freezing into a strong first place primarily by virtue of dragging my way out of the surf and up onto the first couple of steps. What hadn’t occurred to me until now is that the forty-degree sea water was a damned sight warmer than the twenty-degree air (wind chill not included) on a guy who’s soaked through with said sea water. But cheer up, they say, things could be worse. And you know what? Sure as shit, things get worse, because with a couple hours of freezing rain, the eighty-seven stairs now awaiting my attention are covered with half an inch or so of solid ice, which is, of course, both cold and slippery. Cheer up, my ass.

I won’t bore you (at least no more so than I have to this point) with the next hour or so except to tell you that I decided around the time I was getting started that it might help me out psychologically if I kept a count of the stairs as I went, especially seeing as how I’d taken the trouble to memorize how many there were back when I was a kid. That’s how I know that stair number twenty-seven is the one that fucked me up the best, by virtue of my hand slipping off of it, causing me to slide, head bumping all the way, back down to number nineteen. And an odd thing—another one—occurred to me about the time I was sliding back down a few of those steps, cussing and yelling the whole way. At no point throughout this entire affair—at least not since the fall—had it occurred to me to try shouting out for help. Other than a general-purpose scream when I fell, I guess I figured that the combination of the wind and the surf and the generally late hour in a place that hardly anyone has any reason to come to anyway, there wasn’t a whole lot of point to it, besides which, as it turned out, I needed all the energy I could muster before all was said and done.

So let me just wrap this account up by saying that I made it and I didn’t make it. If it’d been up to me to claw my way all the way up eighty-seven of those ice-covered stairs, on what the weatherman would state later the next day had been a fifteen-degree night, and not the twenty I was thinking, and a twenty-five knot wind off the ocean, and me covered in a layer of salt water ice, I’d’ve been a Popsicle long before sun-up. Fact of the matter is, I lost it at stair number forty-two. Didn’t even make it quite halfway before I froze up solider than the engine in my cousin’s Buick when he forgot to put anti-freeze in it two winters ago. And here’s the weirdest part of the whole story, to my mind anyway. Doctors said the next day it was the freezing rain saved my ass, on account of the ice all over me was pretty steady at thirty-two degrees, whereas if I’d’a been dry, I’d have frozen solid that night right there on the stairs.

But in the end, I passed out just shy of halfway up the staircase, looking up at the faint glow from my car’s headlights. And the only reason I’m here now to relate this grim tale at all is that by the time I’d made it up as many stairs as I could and then passed out (the last thing I remember is wrapping one of my arms in between a couple of the balusters on the handrail so I wouldn’t slide the hell back down onto the landing below me, or hell, all the way back down into the water for all I knew) is that Don just happened to decide to come in and open the store early on Saturday morning, icy roads be damned, in case there were folks in Harpswell still needing groceries on account of the weather. I don’t know what time I gave up the climb, but Don says he showed up around six that morning. Says as soon as he saw my car sitting in the parking lot with the motor still running (good thing I filled the tank right after I left Pete’s the day before), he wondered what was up. He walked around back and saw me lying down there, called the Harpswell rescue squad, and they came out and drug my frozen remains the rest of the way up the stairs.

When all was said and done, aside from severing a couple of vertebrae in my lower spine and breaking both of the bones in my lower right leg, I had an assortment of cuts, bruises, and what-not. Oh, and I lost the tips of two fingers and a piece of one ear to frostbite. And now I got a speedy little wheelchair that they say I’ll spend the rest of my life in, except when I’m driving, which I can still do thanks to my buddy Lester, who’s got one hellacious garage over in Topsham and fixed up my car with some modifications that allow me to drive it without using my feet. It’s kind of a bitch getting from the chair into the car and back, but if I proved nothing else that night, I proved that life itself is a bitch. So what’s one more challenge heaped on top?

Last thing I remember from that morning is them unloading me at the hospital, by which time they’d gotten me thawed out a little, to the point where I was awake and chatting, though probably not making a lot of sense, with the nurses in the emergency room. As they were pulling the sopping pants off me, wouldn’t you know that Don’s key chain fell out of the pocket and onto the floor. The last clear thing I said before they knocked me out was, damned if I didn’t do it again.

I never doubted for a moment that this day would come. At some point in nearly every introductory conversation I have, the topic of children comes up. Do I have any? None, huh? Why is that, exactly? Then, sensing discomfort, awkwardness, we tacitly agree to move on to some different, safer topic of conversation. It’s at these moments that I frequently feel compelled to retort with something like, so, why did you decide to have kids? How would you rate the pros and cons? Would you do it again if you had it to do over?[1] We live, though, in a society that regards child bearing as so self-evidently worthwhile, indeed necessary to the advancement of civilization, that daring to scrutinize the process with anything approaching objectivity is on a social par with offering to show a friend your collection of pipe bombs.

Much of the time, I write with the goal of either informing or entertaining readers. In rare moments of clarity, I might even pull off both simultaneously. But every once in a while—like now, for example—I find myself writing solely for the purpose of explaining something about myself to myself—explaining, in this instance, encompassing, as well, related concepts like rationalizing, reflecting upon, airing out, possibly apologizing for. And I have to confess that this children thing does, indeed, enter my mind from time to time, usually in response to one of two primary stimuli. The first is when I witness the all-too-common meltdown in a public place of some two-year-old who has been raised to believe that the world revolves around him[2], and that failure to get his own way about what sort of cookies his mother should buy merits a tantrum that will communicate to the entire world the sort of despot he has been cursed with as a parent. In these instances, I invariably react (to myself) with a feeling best described as a satisfying blend of self-congratulations and personal vindication. Only then, just to confuse things, there come those occasional (typically non-public for some reason) times when one witnesses moments of immense sweetness, pride, and apparent joy on the parent’s part, which causes me to rethink the whole thing, at least for a minute or two.

I should state here, for the record, that the opinions expressed herein are based on actual experience, and not mere word of mouth, either for better or worse. I have had a great deal of exposure to kids during my life[3]. I have no shortage of friends and relatives who have them, covering the full age range from newborn to adolescent to those who have grown up and gone off to college. I’ve encountered, at least as a spectator, pretty much all of the good and bad moments that a parent can experience, at least as far as I know. I have seen children tell their parents they love them. I have seen those same kids scream at their parents how much they hate them and wish they would die. I’ve seen the aforementioned meltdowns more times than I can count. I have seen sons who had to be bailed out of jail by their fathers at one in the morning. I have seen two three-year-olds stand toe-to-toe and repeatedly punch each other in the face like Ali versus Frazier. I could go on.

There are, in my estimation, many reasons for having children. Focusing for the moment on the intentional ones[4], all of these reasons, save one, are bad. People have kids because of peer pressure, because of pressure from their aging parents who want grandchildren and won’t shut the hell up about it, and from a society that expects them to produce progeny lest they die bereft with a houseful of cats. They have children because their skill set does not support them doing anything else aside from raising children[5]. They have them for legacy reasons, i.e., they feel the need to perpetuate a family name, a gene line, whatever. The list goes on ad nauseum. But, I submit to you that the only valid and sustainable reason for having children is because, down deep inside, you really, really want to have them. And there, returning to the opening paragraph for a moment, is the rub. Deep down inside, I have never once felt anything beyond a passing curiosity as regards children. At no moment in my life has the thought ‘gee, raising kids looks so awesome I just have to give it a try’ ever passed through my head. It’s often occurred to me that one of the foundational pieces of information I’d like to have in order to fully process my reaction to children is the knowledge of what percentage of the adult population feels like I do on this matter. You can’t simply look at demographic studies of who does and who does not have children. As I’ve already suggested, there are all sorts of reasons for having them and for not having them. And it’s also not the sort of thing, I suspect, that a lot of people would be terribly honest about if you just came out and asked them.

I should add here that I have, in fact, encountered a few people in my life who were willing to state that they too had made active choices not to have children. Of course, you will get as many reasons for not wanting to have children as there are for having them, again, many of those reasons bad ones. I know disillusioned people who think the world is going, or has already gone, to hell, and who don’t want to bring children into such a wretched place. I know people who wanted children, but who felt they weren’t equipped to raise them effectively, either psychologically or economically. I know people who had one form or another of bad upbringings themselves and who felt that this would somehow taint their own ability to raise children without repeating the mistakes they endured during their own childhood[6].

All of which is to say that not only have I given this issue rather a lot of thought over the years, I’ve also conducted (in large part involuntarily) a good bit of field research into the subject, which, while largely anecdotal, is, nonetheless, informative and generalizable. Having spent a great deal of time aggregating and distilling that research, I feel I am prepared, at last, to put forth for general consumption (and no doubt a hefty dose of vituperation) some of my conclusions concerning children[7].

1)      Being a parent requires that you willingly shut off a significant portion of your brain for lengthy periods of time. These will be different portions of your brain at different times, depending, of course, on the particular situation. Failure to master this ability can, I believe, result in permanent brain damage. I am reminded, for example, of the repetition phase that every child seems to go through sometime between ages two and four, wherein they demand to watch the same movie in a more or less endless loop for about a year. I have encountered more than one parent so hypnotized by this behavior that they eventually find themselves walking around the office mindlessly humming the Lion King theme all day.

2)      Being a parent requires that you subordinate (and, ideally, forget completely about) everything that you actually want to do for the better part of twenty years, give or take, depending on how many kids you have. I have friends who haven’t seen an adult movie in a theater since ‘ET’ was released[8]. Having children means that you cannot have the car you want, cannot furnish your home the way you want to, cannot attend the social events you want to, and, most certainly, cannot eat a complete meal in peace in a restaurant[9]. The list is endless.

3)      Being a parent means that you will frequently find yourself doing insane, inexplicable things. You will, without thinking twice, spend a Saturday driving to every McDonald’s in your city because your daughter has to have that final novelty plastic figurine that will complete her set, and without which she will be a pariah at school, seeing as how everyone else has the complete set. You will pay phenomenal amounts of money so that your child can have enormous inflatable bouncing castles, cotton candy machines, face painting clowns, live ponies, and anything else necessary to prove to your neighbors that you can put on a better birthday party than they can.

4)      Being a parent means that your time is never, not for one single instant, your own[10]. You will spend every weekday evening and weekend day driving your kids to soccer games, violin practice, school play rehearsal, and play dates. And when you aren’t driving them from one of these activities to the next, you will be sitting at the kitchen table with your spouse carefully poring over a spreadsheet that details your child’s activity program, and within which there had damned well better not be so much as one fifteen-minute interval during which there isn’t some culturally enriching activity to occupy their time[11]. And not only will you drive them to all of these activities, you will pay (again) enormous amounts for the privilege of their participation. At risk of oversimplification, being a parent means that your life is reduced to the functions of chauffeur and ATM machine.

It’s important to concede that there are many people in the world who are okay with all of the foregoing. Thank goodness for these people, for without them civilization would doubtless crumble in a matter of decades. My personal constitution does not, however, allow me to accept any of these states of being. Which likely means that I’m selfish or intolerant, perhaps even inhuman at some level. I decided, at an early stage, that if I could not embrace the parenting lifestyle with enthusiasm, then I was best off leaving it to others. The last thing any child needs is a parent who deeply resents the myriad of sacrifices that the job demands.

Totally separate from my general psychological unsuitableness for parenting, another aspect of the experience, one characterized by the times in which we live, contributes significantly to the wisdom of my decision. The societal rules of child rearing have changed dramatically since my adolescence, and many of these changes I find either ineffective, or downright debilitating to the development of a child. I am referring, in particular, to the culture of hypersensitivity to self-esteem. In my youth, the only way in which congratulations and reward came about was in response to doing something worthy of them, i.e., earning them. You got the best grades, excelled at sports, or created something unique for the science fair. In the child-rearing world of today, children have come to expect congratulations merely for showing up. We are raising a generation of kids who believe there are no winners and losers in life, that everybody is a winner, simply by virtue of participating. We hand out certificates of accomplishment like so much toilet paper. We award diplomas and conduct elaborate graduation ceremonies at the conclusion of every grade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a bullshit way of raising children, and it sets them up for profound failure and disappointment when they enter the real world and find out that their boss isn’t going to heap praise upon them or hand them a certificate of accomplishment every day they manage to show up for work on time.

There is no conceivable way that my upbringing and worldview would allow me to function in this way with children—my own or anyone else’s—and I have little doubt that the first time I espoused these views at a parent/teacher meeting, I would immediately be branded a “bad parent” and regarded as such forever after. Stating my indignance at the prospect of springing for a cap, gown, and diploma frame so that my eight-year-old can graduate with suitable pomp from third grade would doubtless be sufficient to get a file started on me with CPS.

There is a final aspect of child rearing which, more than anything else, has contributed markedly to my decision to forego what might otherwise have been, all of my objections to the contrary notwithstanding, a rich and rewarding child raising experience. It is the fraught area of corporal punishment. I grew up in a time and place when sparing the rod was tantamount to raising a family of delinquents, or so it was widely believed. The fact that I grew up in a single-parent household didn’t help any, since the usual good-cop/bad-cop approach employed by many experienced mother/father teams was not available, leaving my over-stressed, under-supported single parent to handle all disciplinary matters. Add to this home life the public-school administrations of the time, who were not only enthusiastic believers in the salutary effects of corporal punishment, but who took things a step further by providing frequent doses of public humiliation as well, and you end up with a child whose primary psychological motivator in most matters is fear. In today’s world, parents are expected to reason with their two-year-old, to explain why perhaps striking one’s younger sister repeatedly with that baseball bat might be a bad idea and requesting that the child spend a bit of quality time reflecting on the pros and cons of his actions. In my day, you were shouted at to stop whatever unfavorable activity you were engaged in, and if you did not both acknowledge the admonition and respond appropriately to the threat (whether real or implied), you could expect to be beaten, and enthusiastically so.

I can never know what effect this background would have on attempts to raise children of my own. What I do know is that I have a bit of a temper when thrust into extremely unfavorable circumstances. And I know, as well, that no one is as capable of creating unfavorable circumstances as a young child. Whether it’s destroying some object that you hold in great value, or acting out in a public place, I have serious doubts about my ability to respond acceptably, doubts so severe that I am not prepared to place anyone at their mercy.

Aside from a boundless capacity for mischief and an insatiable ability to zero-in on the exact object that you don’t want them to go near, children also, from time to time, demonstrate a unique capacity to create emotional schisms that are better described by example than exposition. I have a good friend who saved money for years to buy his first-ever brand new car, only to have his three-year-old go out into the driveway one sunny summer day and use a small sharp stone to scratch the words “I love mommy” deeply and indelibly into the driver’s-side door. In today’s world, we would be expected to congratulate the child on his ability to express his feelings so candidly and creatively. We might even be impressed by the fact that had learned to write complete sentences at such a tender age. But we most certainly would not be encouraged to beat him within an inch of his life, which is how any such creativity on my part would have been received back in the halcyon days of my youth. And, just to be clear, I’m not arguing for a moment with the generally superior state of affairs, morally speaking, of today’s world, just saying that I am not at all confident with my own ability to behave in these ways. So, better safe than sorry.

I’ve never met a parent who, in private or public, would admit that, had they the opportunity to do it all over again, they wouldn’t have their children again. This even includes two good friends who each endured sons of such epic disciplinary failure that they had to be sent involuntarily to military academies during their teenage years. The fact that I find this so utterly inconceivable causes me to wonder if I am not predisposed to see only (or mostly) the bad in the kids I encounter around me. Or perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve never had the opportunity to attend a school play where my daughter is dressed as a tree on stage, or sat in the bleachers during the little league game when my son hits the clutch base hit in the bottom of the ninth, or struggled to sew together the perfect Halloween costume. I’m just not certain whether I should feel regret over this state of affairs or not, and that’s probably as it should be.

[2] At risk of appearing sexist, I will stick with ‘him’ throughout this discourse rather than resort to clunky devices like ‘s/he,’ ‘him/her,’etc. Let’s all just agree, in the interest of brevity, that the observations and opinions presented herein refer to, and are more or less equally applicable to, children of either gender. Any exceptions will be noted as such.

[3] The fact that this exposure has encompassed dozens of different children, rather than the same two or three every day, may color, in some way, my views. Strictly speaking, my opinions should, however, have greater statistical veracity than the views of a parent, the majority of whose views—for better or worse—will be based largely on their own family experiences.

[4] Accidents, after all, do still happen.

[5] This, like several statements in this essay, sounds a bit crass. However, I know more than one parent who will willingly admit that they believe themselves societally fit to do nothing other than create and raise children.

[6] Which, in extreme cases, possibly includes ending up in prison, since many of the practices that were perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, during the upbringing of most baby boomers, are now not only frowned upon, but are, in fact, illegal in many states.

[7] As with all generalizations, it’s important to concede from the outset that there will be exceptions to each of the following statements, anecdotes, and observations.

[8] If you can, without any thought at all, name more characters on Sponge Bob Square Pants than you can on any currently running sitcom, then you are familiar with what I am saying.

[9] An interesting phenomenon that seems to occur with every first-time parent is that in which they decide, with great optimism and enthusiasm, that they are not going to have their lifestyles modified by the mere arrival of an infant. These are the couples who bravely head out to restaurants and movies, toting their progeny (and associated mountains of apparatus) along, and pretending that everything is the same as it ever was, notwithstanding the half hour that it now requires to get into and out of the car or the fact that they have to leave a quarter of the way through the movie or the dinner. Invariably, these couples give up on this fantasy after the second or third attempt and simply stay home for the next twenty years.

[10] Unless you are pathetic enough to count your time at work as your own, in which case…well, never mind.

[11] And, of course, help them get into Harvard.

Or

Why Skiing is an Especially Apt Metaphor for

Life Itself

What do you get when you combine the annoyance factor of golf, the vast expense of scuba, and the bodily risk of skydiving? That’s right—skiing, a pastime whose origins are lost to antiquity, but which, in all likelihood, involved some Swiss or Austrian misanthrope—let’s agree to call him Gunther—living high on a mountain, who awakens one day to discover he is snowed in by a couple of feet of fresh powder from the previous night’s storm, and on the very day he had meant to go into the village at the base of the mountain for his semi-annual consignment of groceries. Well, shucks, our antiquarian hero[1] says to himself, looks like the only way I’m going to make it into town today is if I strap a couple of boards to my feet, rub a little goose grease on the bottoms to slick them up a bit, and slide down on top of all that snow. And so, for the moment neglecting to consider how he is going to make his way back up the hill with all those groceries, Gunther deftly navigates his way down the mountain and into the village, to the astonishment of his fellow citizens, who stop and stare in awe at the grace and speed with which he speeds down the village’s main street. And thus (at least plausibly) skiing is born[2].

Fast forward a few hundred years and you will find at your typical modern ski resort not socially-challenged mountaineers[3], but half-hour queues, hundred-dollar lift passes, and eight-dollar cardboard hamburgers. But, like a first-day skier staring over the precipice of a double black diamond, I am getting rather far ahead of myself here. I mean to explain all of the nuances of the sport in good time, but first a bit of back story is required, in order that you understand the context of what might otherwise come across as an unnecessarily negative exposition into what is, admittedly, a wildly popular pastime.

It will not be news to those who have participated in a sport of any kind that the earlier in life one begins said participation, the better at it one tends to be throughout the remainder of one’s life, most especially if that early start is augmented with some quality instruction, and if, of course, the individual is amenable to said instruction. All of which is a long and obtusely structured way of suggesting that I achieved none of these objectives, at least as far as skiing goes. The fact that I grew up in Maine probably counts for something in all of this. Goodness knows, I came of age no stranger to snow, though all of the terrain on which its copious quantities lay during my upbringing was unremarkably flat[4].

I not only grew up in Maine, but lived in the same house for my entire memorable childhood, save for a bit of moving about in the first couple of years, of which I have no recollection. Our family was on the decidedly lower end of the economic scale, and we didn’t engage in any of the sorts of recreation that required one to actually pay money. In fact, upon reflection, it still astounds me that I managed to grow up in Maine without once doing any of the things that people travel great distances and spend great sums to come from other parts of the world to do[5]. Oddly enough, I do not even recall having any friends in school growing up who were skiers. I include this apparent biographical digression only to help explain why it is that I first tried skiing at such a relatively late age.

It was only when I got to college, at the lofty age of twenty-four[6], that I first had the opportunity to give skiing a try. Once I mustered the verve to strap on a pair of boards and hit the slopes, I quickly[7] discovered a few things, the lessons of which I mean to impart in the paragraphs that follow. If you have never skied and are keen to give it a try, these insights will, I think, serve you well.

The very first thing you need to know is that skiing is expensive. If there existed a sliding scale that compared the prices of the various athletic and recreational activities available to the average American[8], skiing would easily reside in the upper decile. In fact, there are two related but distinct components that comprise the overall budget for ski gear. The first has to do with the skiing itself, i.e., equipment needed to make one’s way from the top to the bottom of the mountain[9]. The second tranche of expense has less to do with skiing per se, and more to do with surviving the abysmally cold temperatures during which most skiing takes place. Into the former category fall three primary items—skis, bindings, and boots[10]. Bindings, for the uninitiated, are the items used to connect the former to the latter, and whose secondary but equally important function, is to facilitate the separation of you from your skis in the event of a spill, on which topic more and copious details will soon follow. Without getting too deeply into the recondite technological details here, suffice it to say that a respectable set of new ski equipment can easily set you back in excess of a thousand dollars, though it can be had for a good deal less through judicious shopping[11].

As counter-intuitive as it may, at first, seem, the sartorial expense associated with skiing can easily surpass that of the equipment, particularly if you’re the fashion-conscious sort. It’s actually surprising how many people will scrimp on gear, but then break the bank buying the down jackets, pants, socks, thermal underwear, hats, helmets, gloves, scarves, face masks, backpacks and endless other accoutrements[12] that are (possibly) necessary in order to survive a day on a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. But the critical thing to keep in mind about these decisions is not so much the fashion element, though this is by far the bigger driver of cost. Rather, the principal concern should be the efficacy of one’s purchases. How warm will that five-hundred-dollar jacket keep you when you’re sitting on a stuck chair lift, in a twenty-knot wind, fifty feet up in the air, for fifteen minutes on a cold, cloudy day? Will your socks bunch up in the toe of your ski boot? Will your mask fog up just as you’re approaching a bump at high speed? Unfortunately, many of these critical questions are unknowable until you’ve committed to the purchase and are actually out there on the slopes freezing to death and cursing the salesman back at Sun & Ski who assured you that this was the finest jacket money could buy because of its synthetic Argentinian beaver-skin lining and state-of-the-art solar-cell rear panels, or whatever. Suffice it to say that judicious research and active solicitation of the opinions of knowledgeable friends can save you from some very pricey and frustrating mistakes down the road.

Having outfitted yourself appropriately, your sense of anticipation will, no doubt, have risen to a fever pitch as you try to sleep the night before your impending assault on the mountain. Once the big day arrives[13], the first thing you will notice about the skiing experience is that it takes a rather extraordinary amount of time and effort to actually assemble all of that clothing and gear you’ve spent the past few weeks gathering. Indeed, the first significant challenge for any new skier is that of getting from the car in the parking lot to the point where you’re in a position to actually join a lift line, on which more shortly.

Indeed, getting from the car to the lift is sufficiently challenging to almost qualify as a sport in its own right. It goes something like this. You pull into your parking spot, daunted perhaps for just a moment by the sound of the tires crunching and squeaking on the hard-packed snow. Understand that by this point you’ve typically been riding in the car for a good long while[14] after having stopped at McDonald’s and quaffed a couple of egg McMuffins and a quart or so of coffee. You’re comfortable, warm, and likely half asleep. When you reluctantly push open the car door, the first sensation that hits you is the biting cold and rarified air of what is already a pretty high-up place, even at the altitude of the parking lot. You grudgingly step from the car, remove your ungainly skis from either the roof rack or back of the car, taking care in the rapidly growing cold not to ding the cars around you (or your own) with those freshly sharpened edges. You then proceed to spend five minutes or so zipping up, buttoning down, tying together, and generally ensconcing yourself in all of the clothing you purchased in preparation for this adventure, but which you did not wear in the car on the ride up. At some point, as you’re wrapping yourself in layer upon layer, it will occur to you that you finally understand why that little boy in “A Christmas Story”[15] couldn’t get back up once he’d fallen over into the snow bank near his house. The first sobering lesson that the new skier discovers at this point is that it is a challenging thing indeed to walk across an icy parking lot wrapped in several layers of winter survival gear while carrying skis, boots, poles, and a backpack. The second insightful thing you learn is that skiing has, as one of its more charming attributes, the very real possibility of your becoming completely exhausted before even beginning the sport proper.

Having made your way safely into the lodge, two new and daunting obstacles await[16]. The first is that you must get your boots on. The seasoned skier will make this look easy. If, on the other hand, you are an infrequent skier or totally new, this will be the moment when you get your first inkling of how the rest of the day is going to go. Assuming you were prescient enough to have brought with you the same socks you wore when you tried on your rental boots back at the shop, you should be okay. If not, you may well end up with boots that are too tight or too loose. Without belaboring the point, suffice it to say that you can expect to spend ten minutes or so getting the boots to slide on, figuring out the byzantine clipping mechanism that holds them closed, and finding the precise sweet spot at which the ski pants and boot tops will meet without pinching your ankles, cutting off circulation to your feet, or allowing snow to get inside. If, once you’ve got everything jammed into place, it turns out you have gotten boots a size too small, or put on one too many pairs of socks, you can look forward to poor circulation in your toes all day and a resulting case of frozen lower extremities.

But let’s say, just for laughs, that you’ve managed to get your boots on with a minimum of aspersion, there isn’t too much pain, and you aren’t sweating that profusely yet, despite having put forth the effort while wearing a full ensemble of Arctic clothing that precludes nearly all joint flexure, and all in an eighty-degree ski lodge. When you first stand, you will notice an interesting and slightly awkward sensation. Your boots have been designed so as to force you to bend your knees slightly forward all the time, whether you want them to bend or not[17]. For now, this is merely fascinating. It will be a couple of hours before it starts getting irritating. At long last, the time has come to exit the lodge, step into line, and buy your first lift pass.

Which is not a good time to realize that you left your wallet back in the car. Because if that is the case, you now face the unenviable choice of walking back out across the icy parking lot in ski boots or swapping back to the shoes that you had on to begin with. It’s also not a good time to realize that you, in fact, have your wallet on you, but it’s in the back pocket of your jeans, which, of course, means that it’s under your ski pants and your jacket. If, however, you have managed not to fall prey to any such neophyte faux pas, you will, eventually, make it to the front of the line, where you will make the unpleasant discovery that purchasing a lift pass for a single day of skiing is, these days, about on a par with purchasing an airline ticket. Standard daily rates are now in the seventy-five to one hundred dollar range, depending on which mountain you are visiting[18]. And, to add insult to injury[19], it’s not even like you’re really buying a full day of skiing. The lifts typically don’t open until 8:30 or 9 a.m., and they’re generally closed by 4 p.m. Subtract time for lunch, and you’re really paying for five or six hours on the slopes. It also will not help your frame of mind at this point to dwell on the fact that you got up an hour and a half before sunrise and drove three hours for the privilege of laying out all this money.

If you’ve never skied before, take a moment to read that paragraph on the back of your lift pass, the one with the indecipherably tiny font. It’s hard to read for a reason, i.e., because if people read it closely, the popularity of skiing would doubtless suffer somewhat. In short, what it says is that skiing is fraught with peril and that if you hurt[20], maim, or kill yourself, either through your own actions/inactions[21] or the actions/inactions of others, the resort is not at fault and that neither you nor your designated heirs/survivors may sue the resort since you were presumably well-warned in advance. And you don’t get to check a little box or otherwise acknowledge that you voluntarily accept this state of affairs. The fact that you chose to get in line, pay for the lift pass, and affix it to your person, constitutes your acceptance of full responsibility for whatever happens[22]. And finally, the disclaimer says that you can’t get your money back if, by nine-thirty, you’ve decided the whole thing sucks, you’re cold, and you just want to get back in the car and go home[23].

But you, of course, are made of sterner stuff and have decided to go through with it. After all, you drove all the way out here. You paid for the lift pass. May as well see what the fuss is about. How hard can it be when three-year-old kids are flying past you[24] and effortlessly sliding into the back of the lift line like they were joining the lunch queue at their elementary school cafeteria? Well, pretty hard at first, as you discover the first time you click your boots into the bindings and promptly fall over before you’ve even had a chance to start moving forward. Every ski resort has this relatively flat area at the bottom—pejoratively known as the bunny slope—where neophytes can begin to get the hang of things without exposing experienced skiers to the hazards of their ineptitude. That’s the idea, at any rate. In actual practice, most bunny slopes are nothing but a relatively flat area at the bottom of the hill, that last section between the steeper upper sections and the lift line toward which all skiers regularly return. Which means that what you really have on most bunny slopes is a bunch of horrified, stumbling newbies interspersed with experienced skiers flying through and between them. What could possibly go wrong?

This is as good a spot as any to digress for a moment and remark on an important psychological issue associated with skiing, particularly first-time skiing. It’s not so much about putting mistakes behind you as in golf. Nor is success on the slopes based on a killer competitive instinct like, say, football or basketball. Introductory skiing is primarily about tenacity. Depending on your native level of athleticism, getting to the point where you can credibly get into the lift line and make your way up the mountain can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to several days. In fact, it’s difficult to learn much on the bunny slope, because they’re generally not more than a couple of hundred feet long, so that if you do manage to start moving at something faster than walking speed, or even carve out a half-decent turn or two, the whole thing is over almost as soon as it begins and then you’re crawling back up the hill on the rope tow or tee bar that serves most beginner slopes[25].

But, because we’re all optimists here, let’s fast-forward again and imagine that you’ve mastered the bunny hill and successfully made it through the lift line and onto the chair lift.[26] During the five-to-ten minutes that it typically takes to get to the top of most mountains[27] you discover the first pleasant aspect of the sport[28]. Assuming that it is a decent day and you aren’t skiing in the middle of a blizzard,[29] you will find that the views from the lift can be spectacular[30], particularly at the bigger western resorts in Colorado and Utah[31]. In fact, during the lift ride up, you will encounter numerous interesting, sometimes even humorous, sights. You will see skiers below you who make it all look terribly easy, moving with grace and skill like they’re auditioning for a Warren Miller documentary. And you will see some making their way feebly down the hill, appearing to know no more about this thing than you do, which is always heartening. You will see occasional pieces of abandoned ski equipment—a glove here, a pole there—that will make you curious about how they came to be there.[32] You will gaze upward in wonder at many of the hills you will later have an opportunity to ski down.[33] You will see the tops of trees going by your chair, from which you will frequently see hanging all sorts of incongruous items, the two most common of which are Mardi Gras beads and women’s underwear. Apparently there is a sub-sport associated with skiing whereby bored people on lifts play a sort-of ring toss game with the tops of the trees and their partners’ under-garments. I haven’t looked into this too closely yet, but it may make an intriguing essay in its own right. And, as you ride upward, you will eventually, inexorably, see, to the horror of every new skier, the station where you must exit the chair.

The reason why all new skiers regard this moment with terror is that they’ve been instructed to do so by the experienced skiers with whom they’ve made the trip that day. However, unlike all the other lies your friends may have told you down through the years, in this assertion they are correct. This is a very good time to be afraid, or at least thoughtful and prepared. You are about to embark upon the first serious challenge of skiing, getting off the chair.

Removing oneself from a chairlift, while not inherently dangerous, does present a couple of difficulties to the uninitiated. You are required to do several new things, all more or less simultaneously, during which effort events are going to unfold quickly and inexorably, whether or not you are actually prepared.  As the exit approaches, you must lift your ski tips, so as not to jam them into the rapidly approaching snow, whose distance from the bottom of your skis is fast diminishing. You must then, in a reasonably controlled manner, rise from your seated position and ski—actually ski—down a very small hill, where small could be a couple of feet or ten feet, depending on the particular mountain. This hill, though very short, will almost certainly be a good deal steeper than anything you encountered on the bunny hill, now a few thousand feet below you. Almost everyone falls the first time they attempt the dismount from a chair lift—which wouldn’t be so bad in its own right, seeing as how you haven’t really gone very far. The problem is twofold. First, when anyone falls, their natural human tendency is to grab at something, anything, in an attempt to arrest the fall. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases when getting off a chair lift, that something is the skier next to you. And this skier, even if experienced, has an excellent chance of falling as well, since he isn’t really expecting to be pulled sideways during his otherwise uneventful dismount. So now he starts falling, grabs the person next to him and…well, you get the idea. Typically, the result of all this will be a pile-up at the bottom of the little hill, comprising however many people there were on your chair[34].

Which would be bad enough if there wasn’t another full chair heading up the mountain about ten seconds behind yours. On rare occasions, the tangled morass of skiers, at least one of whom[35] has no idea what is happening, can manage to untangle itself and get out of the way before another group exits their chair and skis into the pile[36]. More commonly, an alert lift attendant will notice the calamity unfolding, and will, with great exasperation, stop the lift and walk out to help untangle things, while everyone else on the lift swings impatiently in their seats, getting cold and wondering what pinhead crashed at the top of the hill and interrupted their skiing.

The good news about this embarrassing chain of events is that you’ve unwittingly accomplished one of your key goals for the day, your first fall[37]. And believe me, it’s better to have your first fall occur on the top of the hill at slow speed than when you’re flying down the hill, out of control, screaming at the top of your lungs[38]. In fact, falling is an inherent aspect of the skiing experience. Trying to ski without falling is akin to trying to swim without getting wet.

I should state, at this point in the narrative, that there are endless tips and techniques that accompany the actual act of skiing, i.e., getting from the top of the hill to the bottom in one piece. It is not my goal to describe these techniques here, as they are copious, highly subjective[39], and, besides, no one ever learned to ski based on something they read on paper. If you’re like most people and you choose to eschew instruction, the basic approach is to point your skis downhill and see what happens. So long as you stick with the easier hills and you’re with someone who’s willing to offer advice on some of the basics[40], you will typically find that within a couple of runs, you’ve rather gotten the hang of it, and might even be having an actual good time. It is typically around this point that the new skier will have his first significant fall.

Falls are a bit of an art form in skiing. Indeed, skiing is where the original notion of the face plant came from, i.e., a fall in which the first part of your body to make contact with the ground is one’s face. Sounds implausible, I know. Yet it happens countless times every day on every mountain. A few other useful fall-related terms that you can pepper your conversation with in order to sound more informed include:

• Yard sale—Fall involving such excessive velocity that you lose both skis and poles and have to climb back up the mountain to retrieve them, since inevitably your body will tumble farther down the hill than will your unattached gear (which is conveniently designed so as not to travel down the hill when it’s not connected to you).
• Spread—A measure of fall severity calculated as the maximum distance between any two pieces of your unattached equipment. Typically, higher speeds will result in higher spreads. The higher the spread, the more impressive the fall.
• Biff—As in to “biff it.” Generic term for wiping out.

There are two principal categories of falls, those you see coming and those you do not. The former are generally those in which you’ve begun to get tired and you feel that telltale burning in your quads or your knees starting to give out, or perhaps you have begun to gain velocity in what is starting to feel like an uncontrolled manner[41]. In any of these cases you at least have the luxury of choosing the manner and, to a degree at least, location of your demise. The latter type, the ones you never see coming, are a whole different animal. These are the falls that happen the moment you think to yourself “hey, this isn’t so hard after all.” Where, just as you’ve gotten up a decent, reasonably controlled head of steam, your ski catches an edge suddenly and tries to rip one of your legs off to one side. Or maybe it’s late afternoon or overcast. Visibility isn’t so hot and you happen to catch a small mogul[42] at precisely the moment your weight is a little farther back than it should be, at which point you will do what, in the skiing vernacular, is known as “catching air.” Under normal, controlled circumstances, catching air is a favorable thing and generally regarded as one of the more fun and impressive aspects of the sport. However, when it catches you unaware and your weight is backward, what happens is that for the entire duration of your “hang time” your entire body will continue rotating backward, no matter the vigor of your thrashing and cursing, so that when you land (as you ultimately will) it will be either on your ass, your back, or your head, depending on various physical arcana like initial velocity, angular momentum, etc. In any event, you will land hard and it will hurt.

Other unfortunate types of unexpected falls include those that involve your fellow skiers. It will not surprise you to learn that there are other beginners on the mountain with you. Occasionally one of them, just like you, will get out of control and ski into you, or perhaps vice versa[43]. The best you can hope for in these circumstances is that the speed of impact is minimal. Another variation on the multi-skier accident scenario is one in which you ski into another skier who isn’t even moving, which, needless to say, that person will find rather unsettling. People frequently stop to rest while skiing, sometimes in places where other skiers can’t see them until the last second, like, for example, just over small rises on the hill.

Whatever the actual cause of the spill, an assortment of interesting things can occur as part of the practice of falling while on skis. One thing you will discover is that nylon-shell jackets are really slippery. If you happen to fall with just the right amount if speed and you happen also to land on your back, you can find yourself in the dubious position of sliding all the way down to the lodge on your back, which aside from looking funny as hell to other skiers, also causes you to endure a long walk back up to get your stuff. You will also learn during falls that the snow is utterly unimpressed with how diligently you tucked all of your sleeves, pant bottoms, etc. into each other back at the lodge, i.e., you will find snow in places inside your clothing that you cannot possibly comprehend. Finally, you will discover, if you should fall hard enough to lose your skis, that getting them back onto your boots while standing on a steeply angled section of the hill can be challenging indeed. For that matter, even standing back up after a fall can be taxing, particularly if, by now, you’re tired and your legs are starting to tighten up a little[44].  But enough of all this negativity and bad energy. Let’s say, just for laughs, that you’ve begun to get the hang of it, made it down the hill a few times, fallen more than a few times, uttered some words you hadn’t previously imagined being comfortable uttering in public, and now you’re ready for your first lunch at the lodge.

And it is in the lodge, during the lunchtime respite, where the novice skier encounters two of the most challenging aspects of the entire skiing experience. You will learn, in short order, that skiing, being the energetic pursuit that it is, consumes quite a lot of calories, which, of course, makes one hungry. What you will discover at nearly every ski resort in the country is that the food is not only fiendishly expensive, but also not terribly good, considering what you’re paying. But, be that as it may, you will still buy lots of it, if only out of sheer gratitude for having made it through the morning. Still, unless you make a regular habit of eating lunch at Yankee Stadium, you will likely find it a bit shocking when the cashier looks at your hamburger, chips and coke and says, with a perfectly straight face, “That will be twenty-three dollars.”

But you will pay, because that’s what skiing is all about, i.e., paying for stuff, lots of stuff. It is at this point, after you’ve shoved your now-much-lighter wallet back into your overpriced ski jacket, that you come face-to-face with what may be the single biggest physical challenge in all of skiing—carrying a tray filled with food across a crowded lodge while wearing ski boots[45]. The degree of difficulty of this endeavor rises swiftly if you make the tactical error of volunteering to get food for others in your party while they search for a table. The horrifically unnatural gait imposed on you by the boots is transmitted upward into the food tray in a manner that makes the walk back to your table look like something out of a bad Frankenstein movie. Only it gets better. Some sadistic soul, way back at the dawn of skiing, decided to make it an industry-wide practice to not allow plastic lids for drink cups at ski resorts. When you ask about this cruel practice, they will invariably mumble something about excess trash. But the god’s honest truth is that watching someone in ski boots try to carry a flimsy plastic tray across a hardwood lodge floor balancing four large lidless Cokes is the greatest source of entertainment the underpaid staff at the lodge gets during a typical workday. The final element one can add to one’s performance, in order to garner the absolute maximum number of difficulty points, is to successfully carry the food tray back to the table while also negotiating a flight of stairs en route.

So you’ve made it back to your table, voraciously consumed your twenty-three dollar cardboard hamburger and thirty-ounce Coke[46], and begun enjoying the warmth and general joie de vivre atmosphere of the place. At which point, the second most challenging aspect of skiing smacks you straight in the face, i.e., motivating yourself to get back up, put your expensive and now sweaty clothes back on and do it all again for the afternoon. It may, in fact, be an injustice to rank this challenge as second most difficult. After all, given enough ski trips, everyone becomes reasonably facile at carrying the food tray. But, in my experience anyway, going back outside for the afternoon runs never gets any easier no matter the degree of experience[47]. Only then it occurs to you that you paid eighty bucks for a lift pass whose value expires utterly in another three hours or so and you’d damned well better get your ass out there and make use of it while you still can, etc, etc.

So the afternoon is, more or less, the same falling down and getting up as it was all morning, only now you’re a little smoother and a little faster, which, of course, means that your falls are a bit more exciting and, all too frequently, a bit more painful. Factor in your full stomach, the lunch-induced lethargy that takes an hour or so to wear off, the fact that conditions at most resorts degrade somewhat as the afternoon progresses,[48] and your now overworked and underprepared legs, and most people start actually looking forward to the lifts closing down at 3:30 or 4:00. Except you’re not quite there yet. It’s only quarter to three and it’s usually around this time—halfway up on a long chair ride if you’re really lucky—that you suddenly realize the folly of that thirty-ounce Coke you drank at lunch.

Which, alas, presents you with the last really big challenge of skiing, i.e., toiletry. Setting gender issues aside for a moment, all of the apparatus you require in order to accomplish this otherwise banal task is now buried beneath several layers of winter survival gear. Even if you’re a male and facing the straightforward matter of urination, gaining the appropriate access[49] takes several minutes of struggle and contortion, despite which there remains a decent chance that some of what you’re aiming into the urinal will end up on your ski pants. If, on the other hand, what you require involves more than standing before a urinal, then be prepared for a half hour or so of gyrations constrained by the confines of a standard, i.e., no-wider-despite-being-used-by-skiers-who-look-remarkably-like-the-michelin-man stall. But enough of this scatological discourse. On to one of the very few pleasant, indeed transcendent, aspects of skiing.

When that final run is in the books, and you’ve removed your skis, you will discover the pure human state of bliss known as removing your boots. When you do this—which, as a final gotcha—can take a good deal of effort, given how thoroughly one’s feet tend to snug down into the boots after a full day on the slopes, you will do what skiers refer to euphorically as “rediscovering your ankles.” It’s an absolutely phantasmagorical sensation that is, in itself, almost reason enough to take up skiing in the first place. Nothing feels quite like walking back across the parking lot and being able to bend your ankles while doing so. Combine with this the psychological bliss of knowing that you’re going home and you don’t have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning—it’s almost a drug-like sensation.

I suggested in the title of this essay that skiing is an apt metaphor for life itself, and, I suppose, the time has finally come to explain why on earth that is so. For starters, I would argue that, by employing suitable imagery, one can make any activity into a plausible metaphor for life, be it skiing, watching old movies, or eating a banana. That said, skiing, more so than most sports, comprises a wide array of different challenges, compressed into one single long day,[50] most of which activities exhibit a degree of difficulty greater than what one encounters simply sitting around the house on a Saturday watching TV. Presumably, at the end of the day, after having overcome all of these obstacles, you are rewarded with the knowledge that, in fact, you can do this sport and still come away with your limbs and self-esteem intact, if a bit the worse for wear. And if that’s not exactly like life, then I don’t know what is. Oh, and there’s also that ankle thing.

[2] I will, throughout the comments that follow, be referring exclusively to skiing of the downhill, i.e., Alpine, variety. The other kind—Nordic or cross-country skiing—is really nothing but glorified snow-shoeing, and it is far too much like actual work to qualify as recreation, at least in the opinion of this author. Snowboarding, on the other hand, is rather like downhill skiing, insofar as it is recreation and enjoys all of the same weather-related challenges that I will describe forthwith. On the skill side, however, you should be aware that the two sports bear strikingly little in common, aside from the general goal in both cases being to get down a steep slippery surface in one piece.

[3] Well, not too many of them.

[4] Not deathly flat, in the Kansas or Nebraska sense, just flat enough to obviate any nearby downhill skiing.

[5] Including not only skiing, but also hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, climbing, and boating, not one of which I was exposed to at any point in my childhood. The sole exception would be my having been to a “camp” for a couple of weeks one summer. As anyone who’s done both can tell you, “camping” resembles “camp” only in the sort of way that being in a band in high school resembles being in band. Yet another contextual spur which, while doubtless fascinating,  is, alas, beyond the scope of this treatise.

[6] Unlike most kids, I elected to insert six years of military service between my high school and college years.

[7] “Quickly” grossly understates the situation. These lessons were learned in ways that were painful, embarrassing, and frequently frightening.

[8] A scale on which, say, jogging defined the bottom, requiring only a pair of sneakers and some shorts, and scuba diving was at the top, requiring thousands of dollars of gear, none of which participants are typically inclined to scrimp on, what with being under a hundred feet of water, surrounded by carnivorous fauna, and all that. In this regard, skiing would compete quite favorably with scuba.

[9] Alpine skiing occurs on mountains. Apologies if I omitted this critical detail earlier.

[10] You’ll actually need a couple of poles too, though their expense is inconsequential compared to the other items being discussed here. In fact, most people would do just as well with a couple of reasonably straight tree branches.

[11] Including a willingness to own something other than the most current year’s equipment.

[12] Into this category (though outside the scope of this essay) I would also include an assortment of accessories almost vast enough at this point to merit its own category. I am referring, of course, to the enormous selection of electronic gizmos now available to the skier, including, but by no means limited to, two-way radios, GPS locators, video recording equipment, and ski performance computers (in case you feel compelled to keep track of your speed, total distance covered, trails traversed, etc.).

[13] Assuming that when the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. the next morning you didn’t simply throw it across the room and go back to sleep.

[14] An hour if you’re in Utah. Three hours if you’re in Colorado, unless you’re one of those people with the funds to have rented a mountainside condo, in which case, bully for you…

[15] Ralphie’s brother Randy. You remember—it’s that movie they show a hundred times every Christmas season, the one where the father (Darren McGavin) wins a mail order contest and receives a lamp made out of a fake stripper’s leg as his prize. Yeah, that one.

[16] The astute reader will notice a theme beginning to develop, i.e., there is absolutely nothing easy or convenient about skiing. From the moment the alarm goes off until you thrust your tired, cramped legs beneath the covers that night, it’s all difficult. Even something as banal as eating lunch is fraught with danger and excitement, but more on this later.

[17] I have frequently opined, in past writings, that there is this annoying tendency, throughout the sporting world, for the correct body position in which to pursue the sport to be that which is the most uncomfortable and unnatural it can possibly be. Skiing is, of course, no exception.

[18] And whether or not they have recently hosted a Winter Olympics or other high-visibility event, in which case add another twenty-five percent to everything.

[19] Normally I abjure the use of cliché phrases like this one, except that the notion is, in this case, altogether apt and worth considering in its most literal sense. Before the day is over, you will, indeed, almost certainly be not only insulted but very possibly injured as well.

[20] Physically or, one imagines, psychologically.

[21] Before we’re done you’ll understand why the word “inactions” is included here.

[22] There exists an organization whose sole purpose is the tracking and tabulation of skiing-related injuries and fatalities. I am not going to bore you here with the actual statistics, except to observe that the fact that such an organization needs to exist in the first place ought to be indicative of something. Besides which, if I quoted the actual numbers, you’d likely give up on the whole thing and stop reading here and now. We certainly wouldn’t want that.

[23] It’s worth noting here that, technically speaking, you are not required to purchase a lift pass to ski on the mountain. You only need it if you plan on riding the lifts to get back up to the top, which, admittedly, makes the whole thing a good deal less annoying. That said, I have actually encountered a couple of people in my life who take off their skis at the bottom and carry them back up the hill. Not exactly my cup of tea, but they were saving a fortune, on top of which they most certainly looked to be in better shape than me.

[24] Sans poles no less. And while we’re on the subject, the reason why those annoying three-year-olds are so good at skiing is that a) little kids are both stupid and fearless, a potent combination on the ski slopes, b) they are that much closer to the ground to begin with, and so have less to risk in a fall, and c) they have more pliable bones than you, so if they do fall, nothing much happens. It’s mainly about (a) though.

[25] Not to dwell too long on these two cleverly-designed torture devices, except to say that ski resorts invariably choose to provide the most difficult means of uphill conveyance for use on hills utilized by the least experienced skiers, just one of the many ironic twists you will discover if you decide to stick with the sport. It’s difficult to explain in limited space why tee bars and rope tows are, in fact, more annoying to use than the regular chair lift. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

[26] These come in sizes ranging from two-person all the way up the most modern six-person, high-speed behemoths. The difficulty of both getting on and, in particular, off at the top, is more or less proportional to the number of people on the chair, as we’ll see shortly.

[27] Which may comprise a single chair ride, or a combination of two or more, depending on the resort.

[28] Yes, despite my generally negative tone, there are a handful of borderline positive aspects to skiing.

[29] It happens.

[30] Though, skiing being what it is, most of the best views are behind you.

[31] Readers in Wyoming and Montana, spare me the hate mail. We get it. You have nice views too.

[32] Hint—a lot of it falls off chair lifts, as you may discover the first time you decide that your hands are too warm and you try taking your gloves off during the ride up.

[33] Which, through an odd sort of optical illusion that I still can’t quite explain, will look not all that challenging as you look upward at them from the lift. It’s only when you reach them coming the other way from the top that you realize the awful mistake you’ve made.

[34] One of whom will be embarrassed. The rest of whom will be deeply annoyed.

[35] You

[36] In cases where the lift attendant wasn’t paying attention, I’ve seen as many as four chairs full of people ski into the same pile. It’s actually kind of amusing, so long as you aren’t one of the ones at the bottom of the pile.

[37] All those times you fell over while trying to stand up on the bunny hill don’t count as actual falls.

[38] Which is not to say that you won’t have that experience too. Just that you probably don’t want it to be your first.

[39] As with golf and all other sports, ten different people will tell you twenty different sets of things you should absolutely, positively do (or not do) while skiing.

[40] The “basics” include, for example, not crossing the tips of your skis, trying to keep your weight forward (which is, by the way, why they made those boots with the built-in angle at the knees), and getting to the point where you can stop when you want to and execute a serviceable turn to either the left or the right (or, ideally, both). Failure to learn both stopping and turning can cause you to do embarrassing things like ski off the side of a trail and into the trees.

[41] Take heart. The very fact that you can recognize when you are out of control is a sure sign of progress.

[42] Ski term for smooth lump of snow which you are obliged to travel either over or around. Your choice. Some are small as rabbits, others big as Volkswagens. If this is your first day of skiing and you find yourself looking at one or more of the latter, give some serious thought to your trail selection. Those green, blue, and black signs are there for a reason.

[43] I have a good friend who, in his early days of learning, got a bit out of control near the bottom of the hill and skied at full speed into the back of a lift line. Imagine bowling, only with people as the ball and the pins, and you’ll get the picture.

[44] Standard advice here is to rotate your (still prone) body so that your legs are pointed down the hill, and then try to stand up. Trying to explain how to get your ski back on while at an angle would comprise a whole separate essay.

[45] I have argued, in multiple forums, that this activity is, at once, so difficult to do and entertaining to watch that it merits being an Olympic sport in its own right.

[46] This will come back to haunt you around three o’clock.

[47] I know people who find this so difficult and disconcerting that they avoid it altogether through the simple expedient of not stopping for lunch at all.

[48] Particularly if there are a lot of boarders on the hills, who tend to scrape off all the good snow and leave a layer of crust for you to ski on.

[49] Trying really hard to be suitably delicate here.

[50] Kind of like Ulysses by James Joyce, all of which action (using the word here in its loosest possible context) occurs in a single day, and for far less money than a day on the slopes. Was wondering how I might get a literary reference in here someplace.

The two men stood in the office’s small third-floor kitchenette, Gabe at the counter, pouring the last half-cup of decaf from a badly-stained pot into an only slightly less stained mug, its “Earth 2.0” logo emblazoned in navy blue on the side. He set the empty carafe back on the heater with a hiss, and reached up to one of the overhead cupboards, searching for sugar packets. He found, instead, nothing but an empty bowl where the packets should have been. Fuming, he poured the half-filled cup into the sink.

“Who in the hell can drink this stuff without sugar?” he said, annoyed. “We made dozens of countries down on earth that can grow sugar, but can we get one goddam…one freakin packet of the stuff here? Sheesh…”

He rinsed the mug perfunctorily under the faucet and set it in the dish rack.

“And I have no idea what the big meeting is about,” Gabe said. “No one knows. We all got the same memo, so what I know is what you know. Anyway, it’s the big man’s meeting—all-hands-on-deck-no-matter-what-else-you-might-have-had-scheduled-for-nine-o’clock. That’s what I know. Just so long as it doesn’t turn into more work for me is all I care about.”

“Whoa, man. Calm down,” said Peter. “I only asked you a question. What’s got you so hacked off anyway?”

“Besides not being able to get a decent cup of coffee, what’s got me so hacked off is that I got put in charge of creating and maintaining the begetting org chart.”

“What the hell are you talking about, org chart?” Peter responded. “And what’s begetting got to do with anything?”

“C’mon, you know. Enos begat Cainan. Cainan begat Mahalaleel. And on and fucking on, ad nauseum. So, of course, some poor schmuck gets to document all that nonsense, and take a guess what lucky stiff drew the short straw. And I’m thinking I can get away with a spreadsheet, but NO, it’s got to be in a PowerPoint deck because you-know-who likes things to be more visual. So now I’ve got forty-three pages of boxes and lines just on the off-chance somebody needs to know who Methuselah’s freakin great grandmother was. I got begets coming out of my ass, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t bitch so much about it,” Peter said. “At least you didn’t get stuck doing interviews for the bouncer job at Eden. Like writing the job description wasn’t bad enough—‘Must have experience wielding flaming swords in all directions.’ You know how many resumes I got for that position? And the stupidest damned interviews you ever heard in your life. Do you have experience standing for long periods and denying access to gardens whilst employing a commanding tone of voice? Honestly, some of the people who posted for that job wouldn’t frighten a fly.”

As they stepped from the kitchenette into the hallway, they were passed by a large bald man in a black suit with white shirt and black tie. The man grimaced and said nothing by way of greeting, only tightened his grip on the black leather portfolio that was tucked purposefully beneath his right arm. He did not step aside, and Gabe and Peter were obliged to squeeze past him single file. Peter made a mocking face at Gabe once the pair was safely past the large man.

“God Almighty himself calling a meeting…that can’t be good, right?” Peter said. “I mean, seems to me he’s always been more of a one-on-one type of guy. Jesus is the organizational one.”

At which precise moment, Jesus himself rounded the corner and approached the two men.

“Well, well,” said Gabe. “Speak of the dev…I mean, uh, great to see you again, Jesus.” He offered a hand in greeting and Jesus shook it with a feigned grimace.

“You boys headed for the big pow-wow too?”

“You bet,” offered Peter. “Any sneak previews on what it’s all about? Lots of rumors, but everyone seems to be pretty much in the dark.”

“Sorry to say, gents, I’m out of the loop on this one too,” Jesus replied. “All I know is the parental unit’s been looking pretty gloomy lately. I hear him mumbling under his breath about the humans this and the humans that. Makes me wonder if he isn’t having second thoughts about the whole earth thing.”

“Well, I’m not one to say ‘I told you so’,” Gabe replied, “but as I recall there were plenty of people on the original creation team who recommended sticking with plants and animals. But no, he had to have a creature made in his own image. Ask me, they’re all more aggravation than they’re worth. And free will? Whose brainstorm was that? Course, no one bothered to ask me at the time. I was just the animal guy. Well, thank goodness those days are behind me. If I never see another animal again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Yeah, the image thing,” Jesus said in a low voice, shaking his head ruefully. “Not that I can tell him anything these days, but this whole human business has been handled pretty badly if you ask me. I mean, c’mon, a tree of knowledge that’s got the best tasting fruit in the garden. Oh, and then you tell them—tell them about it, mind you—and then practically dare them to touch it. What numbskull didn’t see that one coming? So now, instead of living it up in the garden, they’re out wandering around in the wilderness someplace trying to learn how to grow wheat or whatever on their own. Good freakin luck with that.”

“Yeah,” added Peter, “And here I am stuck interviewing cherubims to be bouncers at the garden entrance. Have you seen a friggin cherubim? Not exactly bouncer material, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Oh, hey. I meant to ask you about this,” Jesus said, changing the subject, extracting a single sheet of paper from his folder. “Any idea what the story is on this?” he handed the page to Gabe, who looked at it uncomprehendingly.

“What do you mean? It’s the memo for the meeting,” Gabe said. “Same one everybody got.”

“Yeah, but look at the distribution list. Look at my name.”

“So, ‘J. H. Christ.” What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that my middle name is…well, it’s a little embarrassing, but for damned sure it doesn’t start with an H. This gets out, I’m gonna be ‘Jesus H. Christ’ for the rest of eternity.”

“Yeah, well, talk to your dad’s executive assistant, I guess.”

“Don’t think I haven’t tried, gents. And it’s not just the email distribution list. It’s on the company directory, my voicemail…everything. I tell you, I’m never going to shake this. I just pray that I never get sent down to earth for anything. Word of this gets out down there, and I’ll never live it down.”

Jesus took the memo back from Gabe and replaced it in his folder. “Well look, I’ll see you guys at the meeting. I’ve gotta go check my email first.” Still shaking his head, Jesus left Gabe and Peter in the hallway and walked toward the elevator bank.

“So what do you suppose is his middle name?” Peter asked as the two men resumed their walk to the conference room.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Gabe said, “but word on the street is it’s Lester.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Peter replied. “Lester? Jesus L. Christ? Ain’t that a hoot!? No wonder he’s so hacked about the ‘H’.”

Gabe shushed Peter with a subtle hand gesture as the two entered the conference room. They were surprised at the large crowd that had assembled to hear whatever it was God had to say. The chairs around the large oblong table were already taken and so Peter and Gabe reluctantly found seats along the side wall.

“Great,” said Gabe, looking across the room to the counter along the opposite wall. “No coffee. No donuts. Creator of heaven and earth, and the guy can’t order donuts for a staff meeting? Gimme a break. You know all those humans down on earth just champing at the bit to get into heaven? Well, somebody better send out an email and let ‘em know there aren’t any donuts up here in paradise.”

No sooner had the two taken their seats when God himself entered the conference room, wearing, to everyone’s amazement, a custom-tailored Armani suit, small Euro-look glasses, and sporting a chic new haircut and goatee. There was a murmur from the assembled staffers until God raised his hand and quieted them.

“Wow,” Peter whispered to Gabe, “looks like someone’s having a midlife crisis.”

A hush fell over the packed room as God began to speak.  He had unbuttoned the front of his double-breasted jacket and the gray silk fabric swayed gracefully with his movements, almost seeming to glow in the light of the room’s overhead halogens. His glasses had slid down slightly on the bridge of his nose, giving him a knowing, almost academic look. As the lights dimmed, a slide appeared on the screen. It was a simple bar graph, the ten or so columns descending steeply from left to right. The bottom of the chart was labeled “Time.” The vertical axis said simply “Human Morality.”

“Many of you here today were key contributors to the creation of earth and mankind some years back. Indeed, some of you remain, to this day, closely involved with that project. Let me start by acknowledging your contributions. It was a mammoth undertaking, and one that had more than a few fits and starts along the way. But, in the end, we were able to realize the difficult six-day schedule and turned out what was, at the time, a high quality product, on-time and on-budget. ”

The audience was having some difficulty relating God’s laudatory opening to the chart they were seeing behind him on the wall. And there was a subtle but palpable tension in the room as some of the old timers began to realize that God was employing the tried and true axiom of sharing a bit of good news before dropping a bomb.

“There is, however, an extremely serious problem that has developed, and it’s the reason I asked you all here this morning. It saddens me to have to report to you that humanity has sunk to a level of evil and depravity that is, frankly, unsustainable.”

He stepped to one side so that everyone could clearly see the displayed bar chart.

“You’re all familiar with the Adam and Eve debacle by now. It was my fervent hope that making an example of them would set a precedent for the humans that followed. Unfortunately it looks increasingly like giving man free will was an epic mistake, and one for which I take full responsibility.”

God clicked his remote and the image switched to a pie chart, one oddly configured in that nearly all of it was colored a vibrant red, while only the tiniest sliver of green was visible.

“As I said, an epic miscalculation…and one that requires an equally epic solution.” He paused, apparently for dramatic effect, an entirely unnecessary tactic, as he, by now, had the room’s complete attention.

“After a detailed search and a great deal of interviewing,” he said, turning to face the pie chart, “it turns out there’s only one family on earth that’s worth a tinker’s damn.”

With another click of the remote control, the pie chart slowly enlarged to focus upon the thin green sliver, in the center of which appeared an image comprising several faces—some male, some female, a couple clearly older than the rest. As the image continued to grow, God stood silently watching with the rest, smiling with contentment derived not from having discovered the one worthy family among all of humanity, but, rather, the satisfaction that comes from finally having gotten the PowerPoint animation to work just right. It would, he thought, have been even more impressive if he had been able to figure out how to insert a piece of dramatic music at this juncture, but it had taken him until nine the previous night just to get the animation right. He raised his hand to the screen and intoned, in the most deific voice he could conjure…

“The Noahs!”

A sudden murmur went up from the audience in response to the family image staring down at them from the screen.

“Which raises the obvious question,” God continued, raising his voice slightly to calm the group, “of what to do with the remainder of mankind and all of his iniquity.”

Peter leaned toward Gabe and whispered. “I don’t like where this is headed, man. Please don’t whack everybody and make us start this shit all over again.”

“Not good…” Gabe responded quietly. “This is not good. I just deleted all my animal files last week.”

“After much consideration,” God continued, “I have decided that we must cut our losses and start with a clean slate.”

The crowd had maintained its composure as long as it could and hands started going up around the room.

“Uh, sir,” said an angel near the front of the room. “What exactly do you have in mind when you say ‘cut our losses’?”

“What I mean,” replied God, “is a deluge…”

“A deluge?” said the angel uncertainly.

“Yeah…deluge…You know. A flood…A really big one.”

“And where would this flood come from?”

“Come from?” God replied, looking slightly confused. “From us. From this team. Same as every other project.”

“Shit,” said Gabe to Peter, raising his voice somewhat to be heard above the increasing din of the group. “I just spent two weeks of late nights, plus a weekend, putting forty-three-pages of Power Point together with every freakin begat since Adam, and now he wants to kill them all. Out-fucking-standing.”

But Peter scarcely heard his friend’s diatribe, so busy was he waving his hand and trying to make eye contact with God. Finally, after thirty fruitless seconds, he gave up on protocol and simply blurted out his question.

“Sir…all due respect and all, but do you mean to suggest that every man, woman, and child on earth…”

“Except Noah’s family,” God interjected with a smile and a gesture toward the screen.

“Right, right, except Noah…Every person on earth is so irredeemably evil that they must all be killed? Which, setting aside for a moment the issue of justice and all, in purely pragmatic terms, would waste all of the work this team has spent the past couple of hundred years working on? I mean, surely there must be some alternative approach that gets the message across without just shit-canning…pardon the expression, sir…wasting all of our work.”

A look of chagrin mixed with a slightly condescending smile appeared on God’s face, but Peter’s question went unanswered as others joined in the growing melee.

“So what happens after this flood is over?” shouted out a manager from the back. “What’s to stop the next round of humans from being just as big a bunch of assholes as this one?”

“And how are the Noahs supposed to survive this little pool party?” asked another voice.

By this point, the meeting had devolved into a sea of waving hands and shouted comments and questions. God stood quietly at the front, judiciously allowing his managers to vent a bit before calling the group back to order.

“Believe me, I can understand all of your concerns,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve given this a great deal of thought and you should know that I didn’t come to this decision lightly. Yes, we’ve all got a lot invested in this project. But I’ve gotta tell you, this has been brewing for a long time. And to tell you the honest truth, the principal reason I bring it up now is that, as you all know, our annual budgeting exercise starts in about a month and I wanted to make sure that the effects of this strategy change are incorporated into that work. I don’t want you to end up having to do everything over again in two or three months.

“But, sir,” came the disturbed question from the back of the room. “Why everybody? How can all those thousands of people be so completely, hopelessly vile?”

“Well, to be fair,” said God, “we did not examine every person on earth. Hell, that would have taken eons. We hired a consultant who did some statistical sampling for us,” he said, nodding in the direction of the big man dressed in black who Peter and Gabe had passed earlier in the hallway, and who was now sitting quietly against the wall near the front of the room. The man offered a perfunctory, slightly sheepish wave to the audience.

“And based on that work, I have been assured that, to within a ninety-five percent confidence limit, everyone on earth should be included in the deluge. Plus we agreed that not only would picking and choosing which humans to… uh … discipline … have been very taxing logistically, not to mention slower, we felt that doing something really high profile would be the best way to send a serious message—a message that such iniquitous behavior will simply not be tolerated.”

“Well, I can certainly understand that,” said Gabe from the back, “but what’s the point of sending a message if all the recipients are dead?”

“Well … there’ll still be Noah, and…and his family,” God replied, starting to show some genuine annoyance and a little uncertainty at the reception his strategy announcement was receiving. “Oh, and plus, don’t forget, this is all going to be written about someday, so the story will have a good deal of long-term impact, let me tell you,” he added, gesturing indignantly with his finger.

Gabe turned back to Peter and whispered, “That consultant guy looks familiar, right?”

Peter leaned forward and glanced furtively at the consultant for a moment. “I think that’s Death,” he whispered back.

Now Gabe leaned forward and stared again. “Death? With the black robe and scythe? That Death?…Are you sure?”

“You’ve never actually seen his face, right? And he’s a tall dude. I’m telling you, man. I think that’s him. He just got a makeover, like God did.”

“Son of a bitch,” Gabe responded quietly, shaking his head. “Don’t that figure…”

Meanwhile, God was still attempting to keep up with the barrage of questions. “And to answer your other concern about how Noah and his family are going to get through this thing. Easy enough. We’ll just give him a couple of weeks advance notice and a consignment of lumber so he can build a boat for the family. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Just enough space for his wife and the kids and, you know, a few days’ food.”

“So you’re killing off all the animals then.”

“The what?” God replied, looking up from his meeting notes.

“Animals,” came the question again. “We’ve got something like seventeen thousand species down there. None of them are backed-up anywhere. They’d all have to be re-created afterward…from scratch.”

“Except the fish, of course,” God replied.

“Well, yeah, I guess. Salt water, fresh water. Who knows? Anyway, it’s still an awful waste. I mean, it’s not as though the animals did anything wrong. They just went forth and were fruitful and multiplied, pretty much like we told them to.”

“Look,” said God, clearly frustrated by now, “we’re obviously not going to sort out all of these little logistical details here. I just wanted to give you the big picture of what’s coming so you can get started on planning, assembling teams, that sort of thing. Jesus here will be in charge of project managing this.”

He gestured toward Jesus, who looked up with a surprised look on his face. “He’ll be getting with each of you in the next day or two about roles and timetables and what-not. Look, I know it’s a difficult time right now for everybody, and I appreciate everyone’s buy-in and cooperation on this. Thank you. Thank you all for coming on such short notice.”

With which unceremonious wrap-up, God picked up his portfolio and hastily exited the conference room, leaving everyone else in stunned silence. Jesus sat at the end of the table, looking more dumbfounded than anyone else. The news of his leadership on the flood project had clearly not been provided to him in advance. Several of the meeting attendees had fled the room immediately after God’s departure, either in an attempt to ask him follow-up questions, or simply to minimize the likelihood of being drafted to work on the project. Peter and Gabe also made a bee-line for the back door, hoping to escape the draft. Jesus looked up just in time.

“Gentlemen!” he shouted, without needing to clarify which ones he meant. Peter and Gabe froze in their tracks. “Please join me up front here if you would.

The two men walked unenthusiastically to the front of the room and took seats on either side of Jesus.

Peter smiled as he approached. “So, Jesus… This Noah…the one who’s going to build this boat. Is he the same Noah who tried to build a barn a couple of years ago that collapsed and killed half his cow herd?”

“Gabe,” Jesus said, ignoring Peter. “Please tell me you saved all of your animal files from the creation project.”

Americans are positively infatuated with scoring in sports. I don’t mean scoring in the sense of keeping score, though goodness knows there exist more than a few hard-core fans who, not content to simply sit and watch a game, will, instead, labor over every pitch, hit, throw, and error that occurs, writing each down in arcane hieroglyphics on score-sheets, for what possible use afterward one is hard-pressed to imagine. I’m talking here, though, about our national obsession with seeing the score of each sporting contest rise to as high a level as possible. There is something ingrained in our psyche that not only fuels the need for clearly defined winners and losers, but also demands that the actual productive output of each event be both measurable and as large as possible.

It’s the principal reason why soccer has never taken off in this country beyond being a fun activity for your third grade son to participate in after school. No serious American sports fan is going to put up with investing an hour and a half in a game whose outcome might be either a scoreless tie or decided by a one-to-zero score[1]. All those Brazilian and Italian guys running around the soccer pitch, screaming and tearing their shirts off because they scored one point after an hour of play are as foreign in demeanor to us as they are in nationality. Never mind that soccer never stops for commercials, which automatically dooms it in the American market, it’s the profound lack of output that makes it viscerally unacceptable to us[2].

It’s why we like NASCAR, where the lead changes every fifteen seconds, as opposed to Formula One, where overtaking is so rare that they break into regular television programming in Europe whenever it happens. And it’s why the American public never got too terribly agitated over the steroid controversies of a few years back in baseball. Yes, we all agree, at some conceptual level, that tolerating drug use among our professional athletes might be a bad precedent to set for our young people, but there’s no denying that watching all those home runs is sure exciting. All of which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the subject of the designated hitter rule.

The Designated Hitter (DH)[3] is to baseball rather like what the “enforcer” is to hockey, except that he doesn’t get to walk out onto the field and punch one of the opposing team’s players in the face with impunity. Instead, his only function is to hit the ball, either very hard or very reliably, preferably the former[4]. His role is so narrowly defined that when he does get a hit, very frequently (assuming it isn’t a home run) he’s not even allowed to run the bases, often being substituted out for a faster runner[5]. DHs do not play a fielding position. If they were skilled enough to both hit and field, they would be doing it. Quite frequently the DH is an older guy who used to be a position player, but who no longer possesses the required agility, though he can still swing a bat reasonably well.

Since the DH rule’s inception nearly forty years ago, there has been continuous and often acrimonious debate about the relative merits of the game with and without the position. The pro-DH crowd will typically offer some hackneyed argument to the effect that surely it’s more interesting to see a skillful hitter at work than to waste one’s time watching some pitcher (who didn’t even have the common decency to pick a batting helmet that fits) make a lame, half-hearted swing at an oh-and-two fastball. This argument is not without merit, as far as it goes. Problem is, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. However, before proceeding on to the evisceration of the DH rule, allow me to enumerate the other reasons cited by the misguided souls who support it.

Not only is it arguably more entertaining to watch a bona fide hitter at work than someone for whom the task is an annoyance, there is, as well, the genuine risk of injury at the plate, either from being hit by a pitch or perhaps swinging the bat in a bizarre and unpracticed manner[6]. As if that isn’t bad enough, on the off-chance that the pitcher actually manages to get a hit, he is then obliged to run the bases, unless, of course, the manager elects to remove him for a pinch runner, in which case his pitching duties for the duration of that game are over. Not only does running the bases consume energy that the pitcher might otherwise be conserving sitting in the dugout between innings, there is, as well, the potential hazard of sliding into base, particularly if one is inclined to do so head-first[7]. The final argument for the DH rule is that, by asking only that these players hit, it has extended the careers of some otherwise marginal players whose days of fielding are long behind them[8].

I have a theory about the designated hitter rule, one I can neither prove nor which MLB would ever own up to, and it goes back to my opening observations about the American sports enthusiast’s love of high scoring. For the same reason that we don’t particularly care if our athletes are bulked up on steroids, we also don’t care if our pitchers aren’t called upon to hit. The end result is more scoring. Many baseball fans will tell you that they enjoy a good pitcher’s duel, i.e., a game in which there is virtually no hitting or scoring. These people are lying. Their proposition is no more credible than the auto racing fan who denies going to races just to see the wrecks. From that first moment in the schoolyard when everyone gathers around to watch two bullies fighting (but no one tries to stop them), we are brought up to relish the brawling aspect of competition. When it comes to baseball, which is a relatively mild sport compared to football or hockey, the only thing more entertaining than a clutch home run is the occasional bench-clearing brawl between teams, which is, alas, all too infrequent.

So why do I regard the DH rule with such contempt and, in my title, call for its abolition as an abomination? A big part of the answer to this question derives from the fundamental characteristics that distinguish baseball from our other three great American sports. The most important of these differences is that baseball is generally regarded as the most cerebral of our pastimes. Football and hockey are relatively fast-paced and violent to the point of criminality, thriving primarily on the bloodlust of the typical American male. Basketball, on the other hand, is such a juvenile and mind-numbingly repetitive activity that laboratory rats have been trained to do it[9]. Also, in the case of football and basketball, the games are played by unnaturally enormous human beings who spend most of their non-playing time struggling to find cars they can fit into and suits they can wear without tearing the seams apart.

One of the many reasons why the common man can identify with baseball a bit more readily is that, with a few notable exceptions, most of the players are of reasonably ordinary stature. When one encounters a player up-close, instead of saying “Good Christ! What have they been feeding this guy?” (a common enough reaction upon meeting a pro football or basketball player), the reaction is more likely to be along the lines of “I could almost do that,” which, while delusional, is not completely divorced from reality, questions of speed and skill notwithstanding. Another important distinguishing aspect of baseball is that each player is called upon to perform at least three pretty much unrelated activities in order to be regarded as an excellent player. One must hit the ball reasonably well[10], play a position in the field competently, and run with some measure of speed and acumen on the base paths. Don’t get me wrong here—there are precious few players who excel at all three of these endeavors, but most manage at least two[11]. It’s the breadth of responsibility, and the unpredictability with which each skill will be called upon, that is part of what makes baseball special, all of which goes for pitchers too. And while every position player is, periodically, expected to throw the ball to another player with accuracy and speed, it is the pitcher’s unique responsibility to do so more than one hundred times in each game. Calling upon him to strike at the ball with a fat wooden stick once every two or three innings, like everybody else on the team, is simply part of the job description, or at least it ought to be. The fact that pitchers are historically lousy at the job[12] only adds to the richness of the game.

A slight digression is called for at this point. It completely eludes me why it is that pitchers are historically such poor hitters. Prior to 1973 they all had to do it. The most popular explanation is that starting pitchers only take the field every fifth day, which would seem to limit their at-bat opportunities[13]. Still, though, I find this an implausible excuse for the phenomenon. There are, after all, plenty of pinch hitters who come off the bench but once or twice a week and still manage to do a passable job of making contact with the ball. Seems to me there’s a strong chicken-and-egg element to this problem[14]. Somewhere back at the start of baseball (presumably even before the ‘bambino’ proved that it was at least possible for pitchers to hit), the word got out that, as a class, pitchers weren’t going to be any good at this particular field of endeavor. With the bar thus lowered, they stopped taking batting practice or otherwise being coached in hitting, and created an (as it were) major league self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s also worth noting here that many major league pitchers come out of college programs where they played other positions and, so, were required to bat as often as everyone else on the team. Again, it makes little sense, but there you go.

Even more compelling than the sheer human pathos of watching an utterly unqualified player attempt to hit a baseball[15] are the strategic elements of the situation. One of the inconvenient rules of non-DH baseball is that if you want to stay in the game and continue to play your position, you are obliged to bat when your turn comes around. Almost without exception, pitchers get put last in the nine-man batting order, precisely because they are so poor at it. Nevertheless, their turn still inexorably arrives, like every other player, either three or four times in a typical game.[16] Very frequently, most typically in the final three innings of a game, the pitcher’s turn at bat will come up at an inauspicious moment like, for example, when their team is losing by three runs[17] and they have two men on base with two outs. If it is, say, the sixth or seventh inning and the pitcher is having a reasonably good game[18], the manager is placed in the dubious position of either letting his pitcher hit, with attendant offensive consequences, or substituting a genuine hitter into his spot, but then being obliged to bring in a relief pitcher, who may or may not be equipped to do as good a job as the starting pitcher. If the team happens, as well, to have a marginal bullpen, this makes the substitution decision all the more fraught. And, of course, there is no guarantee that the pinch hitter who takes the pitcher’s place at the plate is going to produce a hit either. It’s simply a matter of comparative mathematical probabilities. That said, many a manager has torn his hair out after yanking a competent pitcher for a pinch hitter, only to have the pinch hitter ground into an inning-ending double play.

In addition to the substitution conundrum, there are a few other, more subtle, factors that come into play when a manager is deciding whether or not to substitute a pinch hitter for his pitcher or not. In the normal course of a game, the pitcher not only uses between-inning time in the dugout to rest his arm for the ensuing inning, but also to psychologically prepare for the upcoming slate of opposing batters. Calling upon him to bat, in addition to interfering with this regrouping time (both physical and mental), presents him with the strong likelihood of being humiliated yet again before tens of thousands of people, and raises, as well, the aforementioned risk of injury while batting or, potentially, being obliged to run around the bases. On an even more subtle note, since hitting requires the use of an entirely different set of muscles and tendons than does pitching, it is by no means certain that a pitcher will perform as well on the mound following an inning in which he’s come up to bat[19].

All of which leads to the indisputable conclusion that the non-DH game is a far richer and more entertaining experience for the fan (this one, at any rate). And while we’re on the topic of entertainment, it’s worth a word about interleague play, i.e., games in which American and National League teams play each other. By MLB rules, when teams from different leagues play each other, the home team’s rules apply. This means that during two short periods of each season, the fans are treated to games in which American League pitchers are obliged to hit National League pitching. Bearing in mind that these are, then, individuals who almost never touch a bat unless it’s to see what one feels like, the five or six at-bats that each such pitcher gets during a regular season are hysterically entertaining, even if such entertainment comes entirely at the pitcher’s expense.

I should have stated at the outset that I was driven to write all of this down when I first heard that the Houston Astros are going to be demoted to the American League starting with the 2013 season. As my hometown team of the past decade or so, I felt personally and egregiously offended by the move, negotiated as part of a transition in team ownership, and agreed upon in a transparent attempt by MLB to balance out the number of teams in each division. This is a laudable goal in its own right, but it comes at the cost of inflicting upon the citizens of Houston, already sorely beset by having to support an abysmal team, even grimmer entertainment prospects for the future. It doesn’t help matters any that the team has no one on the roster who’s good enough with a bat to serve in the DH role.

[2] Interesting aside – Inasmuch as Americans love high scoring in their sports, it’s a bit curious that cricket has never gotten even a remote foothold in this country, what with their century at-bats and multi-hundred-point scores. I can only attribute it to the insufferable length of matches (particularly test matches, which drone on for five full days (taking time out for tea, of course), at the end of which a perfectly plausible/gentlemanly outcome is a draw). Aside to the aside—It is said, perhaps apocryphally, that the Church of England invented cricket in order to graphically instill in its adherents the concept of eternity.

[3] The Designated Hitter rule, or Major League Baseball Rule 6.10, was enacted in 1973 and adopted by (only) the American League. Fun DH trivia—The very first designated hitter ever in MLB was Ron Blomberg of the NY Yankees, who, on April 6, 1973, came up to bat against Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant. Blomberg rather missed the point of the new job, however, and got a walk.

[4] Very few in baseball achieve both simultaneously, despite the fact that hitting is their only job.

[5] This statement is more likely to be true late in a game when the DH is not likely to come around again in the batting rotation.

[6] Andy Pettite, the ace left-hander traded from the Yankees to the Astros in 2004, spent a large portion of that initial season on the disabled list because he threw out his pitching elbow during his very first at-bat in the National League (which was probably the first at-bat of his entire professional career, come to think of it).

[7] Head-first, in this case, being a misnomer, since all head-first slides are, in fact, arms/hands first.

[8] Never mind that keeping these reluctant retirees on the roster blocks the way for up-and-coming young players awaiting their shot at the majors.

[9] I’m not making this up. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ZW0OGp4HE. Try teaching a rat to hit a low-and-away slider sometime.

[10] A surprisingly low bar, actually, considering that failing to hit the ball two out of every three attempts (which would net you a .333 batting average) is still regarded as excellent performance at the professional level.

[11] Oddly enough, speed on the base paths is the rarest of the three.

[12] With the notable exception of Babe Ruth, who apparently was good at everything in baseball short of selling the hotdogs.

[13] A situation exacerbated by the infrequency with which starters pitch a complete game.

[14] Which came first—pitchers as inherently poor hitters or pitchers who no longer attempt to be decent hitters?

[15] A fact just dripping with irony, since the pitcher who is attempting to make contact with the ball routinely falls victim to precisely the sort of aerodynamic shenanigans that he spends the rest of the game inflicting on the other team’s hitters. I am at a loss to conjure up any examples of systemic irony in our other three major sports.

[16] Assuming they pitch the entire game, which is, in fact, quite rare in modern baseball. But, still, they’re likely to get at least two at-bats before getting yanked.

[17] Which is almost certainly the fault of the less-than-stellar pitching of the very guy standing at the plate with the bat in his hands. Yet more irony.

[18] See previous footnote.

[19] For which reason more than one pitcher has adopted the approach of never removing the bat from his shoulder, regardless of how high quality a pitch may come his way.

John Hagee – Gorenberg, pg. 177

The purpose of an introductory essay is, primarily, to establish context for the work that follows. To a lesser degree, it is, if candidly written, a means of obtaining insight into the mind of the writer, specifically why he undertook the story in the first place, and what personal characteristics inform his research and writing. That said, let’s dispatch the latter objective first, as it is the easier of the two.

My gut reaction is to state here, for the record, that I am atheist. It’s what the Sam Harris’s and Christopher Hitchens’s of the world would regard as the only truly honest and forthright approach. Still, there is a definitional problem with all of this that gives me a bit of pause. At worst, I would regard myself as agnostic and absolutely non-religious (despite having been raised in a Baptist household). At the risk of arguing semantics or splitting hairs, and at the risk of oversimplifying what is, to some, a complex philosophical discussion, the difficulty I have with these two popular labels is that there is an inherent arrogance in the word atheist, in that the word suggests certain knowledge as to the absence of any higher power. That could, one day, turn out to be a fraught position to have adopted, regardless of one’s level of scientific comfort. Agnosticism, on the other hand, conveys the idea that one neither knows nor particularly gives a damn about the existence, or lack thereof, of a god. It’s a bit of a weasel word for those who aren’t sufficiently compelled by their own belief system to simply refuse outright to believe. It’s a hedge, when you get right down to it. For an interesting thought experiment, try sometime imagining what you would say if you are, in fact, a non-believer yet one day in a distant future you, nevertheless, find yourself standing before God explaining what exactly you did or didn’t choose to believe while you were alive on earth.

Because I am a nonbeliever (he said, dodging completely the conundrum raised above), I am equally dismissive of all faiths, in the sense that I find them all terribly arbitrary and spectacularly unfounded as regards the things they require adherents to believe. Be it virgin births, horses riding into heaven, translation stones in the bottom of hats, or what have you, believers are asked to suspend disbelief and embrace the one (and only one, so far as I can tell) fundamental characteristic on which all faiths agree, i.e.,the need for faith.

My interest in things religious is, therefore, a dispassionate and strictly intellectual one. In particular, I am fascinated by the impact that religion has on the daily lives of the billions who profess to practice one. And, most fascinating of all, I am continually intrigued by the capacity for the religious to resort to violence toward their fellow man in order to protect and perpetuate their faith above all others. I said earlier that faith was the only thing that unites the religions of the world. That isn’t quite accurate, upon reflection. One other important characteristic shared by all the world’s religions is a fervent belief that your group is the only one to have gotten it right, and that all other religions (including, of course, the nonreligious) are nothing more than heretics to be a) ignored, b) converted, c) persecuted, or d) in extreme cases, killed.

Indeed, many millions throughout history have been killed, tortured, persecuted, and disowned of their possessions (sometimes all four) in the name of religion, either because of the one they practice, or because they choose to profess none. A very significant portion of this mayhem has taken place in and around the Middle East, and has occurred because of the generally fraught interactions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And if there is a “ground zero” for this conflict, it must surely be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which at thirty-seven acres, is easily the most conflict-ridden piece of real estate in the world. It is a place of special religious significance to all three groups, each monotheistic, and each adhering to a belief set that enfolds the Mount in some integral way.

A fundamental tenet of Judaism is that the end of time, from which this book’s title comes, cannot take place without first there occurring an elaborate series of events in and around the Mount, not least of which is the destruction of current structures and the erection of a Third Temple . There exist organizations whose sole purpose is the consummation of these events, the notion being that mankind can, if he undertakes the right actions, directly bring about—or at least accelerate—the end times so fervently desired by so many. Some of these organizations limit their activities to benign activities like fund raising or construction of elaborate temple models. Others have taken things a bit further and actually designed and created the garments specifically required for the ceremonies prophesied to follow construction of the temple. And still others have undertaken the breeding of perfect red heifers that are, as well, an integral part of these ceremonies. Finally, there exist less well publicized groups whose activities center around actively attempting to cause the destruction of the existing structures on the Temple Mount. Indeed, such destruction has come extremely close on numerous occasions through history, not only due to the assorted bombings that have been attempted, but by the much lauded Moshe Dayan himself immediately following the 1967 war, during which, for a short time before his rational side got the better of him, there sat bulldozers on the mount ready to begin razing the Dome. Indeed, for much of Dayan’s remaining life, he was chastised for missing what many regarded as the Jews’ best opportunity ever.

Days End is the story of three families, living very different lives in different parts of the world, but ultimately thrust together in ways that none fully understand and with consequences none can escape. All the forces described above converge, as the families converge, at a tragic crossroads. The story is, of course, fiction, but it is based on an entirely plausible sequence of motivations and actions. As events in the Levant continue their turbid journey, it will, in all likelihood, continue to be the Temple Mount that infuses the greatest passions, and results in the greatest tragedies.

Brian Kenneth Swain
Helotes, Texas

So far this novel, in its first 130 pages, has 5 distinct and seemingly unrelated plot threads. The challenge now becomes converging them together in a coherent and compelling manner. Yikes….

Brian Kenneth Swain
(210) 464-2412
Bswain2000@yahoo.com
WGA Reg. # VSHA7D9D5AC7

Two brilliant molecular biologists and a greedy corporate chieftain undertake a bold technological experiment to revolutionize global agriculture, but instead drive it to the brink of destruction.

———————————-

The story begins at the end. Philip Barett, senior scientist for Vanguard, the world’s largest life sciences company, testifies before a senate subcommittee concerning the calamitous events that resulted from Vanguard’s efforts to revolutionize world agriculture with a genetically modified (GM) technology known as Evergreen.

Robert Chase, Vanguard’s greedy, abusive, and scientifically oblivious CEO, pushes his research team to move forward with an aggressive but ill-advised schedule of crop testing in four countries—India, Belarus, Colombia, and Ecuador. Chase, in his efforts to realize as quickly as possible the economic benefits of the new technology, talks up the test plan with financial analysts and the press, promising a wealth of benefits to the world’s hungry and to the firm. We are introduced to the two primary research scientists in charge of Project Evergreen, Phillip Barett (single, ex-academic lead researcher) and Julia Croft (single mother and former academic colleague of Barett’s).

We are led through the initial test planting in each of the field locations, and introduced to numerous Vanguard field operatives who will play key roles as the story unfolds. We are also introduced to the various scientific and political issues attending the international GM debate, e.g., threats to biodiversity, corporate profit motives, health concerns, etc. Many of these are discussed as Barett conducts a number of academic symposia on the subject of GM research.

As the local field operatives keep careful track of the crops’ development, they begin to notice evidence of damage from insects, e.g., cutter ants in an Indian corn crop. This is not initially surprising, as such damage is normal in these geographies and the test crops feature differing degrees of pest resistance as part of the trials. The question of possible animal transference of the GM effects is raised at an internal Vanguard meeting, but is dismissed by the Evergreen researchers as virtually impossible. Nevertheless, we are introduced to entomologist Henry Mandell, who has been seconded from a local university to conduct tests on just such a remote possibility.

Reports begin coming in of insect species being seen near the test fields that are significantly larger than normal. Mandell shows Julia sample cutter ants that are an inch to an inch and a half long, vs. the normal half-inch. He discusses the possibility that there is a connection to the Evergreen seeds, and begins searching in earnest for such a causal link.

We are introduced to Reed Hansen, an environmental activist with a group known as EarthAlert. Hansen knows Julia from grad school, and has maintained a long-distance friendship with her under the guise that he is a reporter in Phoenix. In fact, he is exploiting her as a source of inside information on Vanguard’s GM activities. Julia and Phil begin having serious concerns about the possible involvement of Vanguard and Evergreen in the increasingly disturbing insect news they are receiving.

The first actual attack (fire ants) claims the life of a family dog in Ecuador. This is followed by a much more serious incident in which EarthAlert activists, led by Hansen, are attempting to conduct a midnight raid on the test cornfield in Calcutta when they are set upon by a massive colony of enormous cutter ants (by now, up to 2 ½ to 3 inches in length). Three of the activists on the team are consumed in grisly fashion, while Hansen and two others barely escape. Hansen calls Julia with news of the attack (first fabricating a story for his presence in Calcutta). The skeletal bodies of the dead activists are found days later in the field by the Vanguard field rep, who also brings the Calcutta police into the picture. The scene ends with Chase seeing a CNN report that discusses the Indian deaths and mentions Vanguard’s potential involvement.

Barett informs Chase about the developing insect problem and assures him that it’s almost certainly Vanguard’s fault. Chase demands that the others talk to no one and that they handle the problem so as not to jeopardize Evergreen. Mandell assures Julia and Barett that his research strongly suggests that the Evergreen genetic seed modifications have in fact transferred to the insects, and that, moreover, the newly mutated insects are unlikely to be affected by any existing pesticides, since resistance to them has been specifically built into the seeds. The three agree that all of the test fields must be immediately razed. Henry and a research assistant make plans to travel to India and Ecuador to follow up on the reports and evaluate first-hand what is happening.

Barett breaks the news to Julia that her friend Hansen has been using her as a mole to get Vanguard information for EarthAlert, leaving her to now struggle emotionally with the simultaneous shock of a friend’s betrayal and the failure of her past several year’s research work. Henry visits the Ecuadorian field operative and tours the field that has been overrun by huge fire ant colonies. At one point the accompanying research assistant inadvertently steps onto one of the mounds and sustains numerous bites to his legs as a result. The two then catch a plane to Calcutta, where they tour the cutter-ant-ravaged cornfield. The giant ants have decimated the field and begun making their way into the jungle, stripping away all vegetation in their path.

When the field operatives are instructed to destroy the test fields, each is also told to ship back to the company lab samples of the crops that have grown to that point so that they can be used to further the team’s research into the problem. The Colombian team thus packs up a couple pallets of half-grown banana plants and loads them onto a UPS cargo flight headed back to New Jersey via Miami. During the flight, numerous very large banana spiders emerge from the plants and kill the entire crew of five. Because the airplane is a relatively new, fully automated Boeing 767, it proceeds to Miami and lands by itself at Miami International Airport. Only when it then fails to taxi clear of the runway does the airport ground crew realize that something is amiss. They board the plane and find the dead crew, but unfortunately fail to find the banana spiders, which have gone back into hiding in various locations on the plane. The aircraft is parked at the UPS hangar for further investigation, and during the night, the spiders escape through nose wheel doors, etc., thus introducing into the Miami area a new, highly toxic GM spider species. The scene ends with Barett seeing a newscast about a Miami-area woman who dies because of spider bite.

By now Vanguard field operatives have shipped many specimens of the overgrown insects to the research lab in New Jersey. They have been collected in an insect storage lab being run by Mandell. Included in the GM insect menagerie are the Indian cutter ants (4” long), Ecuadorian fire ants (1” long), Belorusian armyworm moths (12” wingspans), and Colombian banana spiders (18” long). Chase visits the lab frequently and is fascinated by the giant insects, particularly the banana spiders, the feeding of which Mandell demonstrates on one occasion. Mandell also describes the precautions taken with the room to preclude the inadvertent escape of any of the specimens. These features include self-locking steel doors, hermetic sealing and the ability to gas the room if needed to anesthetize the insects.

Vanguard’s Ecuadorian operative receives a call from a local policeman indicating that a young local child has been seriously injured by a swarm of fire ants.

Chase, Barett, and Julia meet in Washington DC with representatives from the USDA and WHO to update them on what has taken place and what the potential effects on world agriculture could be if the GM insects continue to spread unchecked.

Late one Friday night, Chase, driven by his continuing fascination with the spiders, decides to visit the insect storage room alone. He enters and peers into the cage, but is disappointed that the spiders are hidden in the foliage of the enclosure. He attempts to feed them, hoping that this will coax them into view. In the course of doing so, he cracks the lid of the enclosure, activating the automated door lock system. Despite his panicked attempts to cover the hole in the enclosure, he is bitten by one of the escaped spiders. In his death throes from the fast-acting neurotoxin, he thrashes about on the floor and knocks over the enclosure of giant cutter ants, which proceed to finish off the now largely paralyzed CEO in one of the books more graphic scenes.

Julia and Phil return to the lab on Monday morning to find the horribly disfigured body of Chase in the insect storage room. Oddly, though, they notice that the ants and spider that took part in killing him are, themselves, now dead. They thus conclude that there is something about Chase’s physiology that is toxic to the GM insects. This initiates a search to create an effective pesticide based on whatever it is about Chase that killed the lab insects.

After procuring blood and tissue samples from Chase’s body, Mandell sets about determining what caused the death of the spider and the cutter ants. Examination of medical records reveals that Chase suffered from both hypertension and diabetes.

The Belorusian field operative talks with a local farmer there about what reparations Vanguard will make for his lost crops.

After careful analysis Mandell concludes that the lab insects were killed by the equivalent of coronary strokes, due to Chase’s chronic pulmonary disease.

The Colombian field representative talks with local farmers about steps they should take to combat the banana spiders and keep them out of their farms. The spiders do not pose the sort of agricultural hazard that the armyworms and ants do, but they are nevertheless highly lethal and very aggressive, as we have seen from the UPS and Miami attacks.

The chapter ends with Henry having successfully developed a genetically based pesticide that the team can use to combat the insects. They discuss the financials and conclude that the cost of manufacturing the pesticide in the needed quantities is going to be colossal (>$1Bn), since such huge areas must now be aerially sprayed.

Having manufactured and transported massive quantities of pesticide to the various test locations, we focus at last on the Indian cutter ants and the aerial assault that is mounted against them by the field operatives. We meet again our Indian pilot who has modified a WW2 B-26 bomber to spray the pesticide in large quantities over the jungle. Many such flights are required, as the area is so large. He is accompanied on these flights by Barett and the Indian Vanguard rep, who serve as navigator and spray system operator. After numerous successful spraying missions, which of necessity take place at extremely low altitude, the aircraft is heavily damaged by a massive bird strike. The plane crash-lands in the jungle, and the pilot is seriously injured and pinned in the crumpled aircraft cockpit. Realizing that they will not be rescued until morning, they settle in for the night, only to be set upon by the swarm of cutter ants sometime after midnight. They cannot run away, though, since the pilot is immobilized. They therefore rush to break their way into the pesticide tanks beneath the plane and cover themselves with the compound, which successfully allows them to remain unharmed as the ants swarm around them.

While this is taking place, there are also various additional wrap-up scenes taking place in the other countries—showing locals how to use the pesticide, etc. Julia travels to Belarus and addresses a farming convention about what has transpired and how they should use the pesticide, both now and when/if the armyworms return in the spring planting season.

Many of the insect infestations have been effectively eradicated, but we make clear here that not all have been eliminated. For example, cutter ant queens have flown far from ‘ground zero’ in Calcutta, and will start new colonies when spring returns. This is also highly likely with the Ecuadorian fire ants and the Belorusian armyworms.

Barett and Julia discuss their post-Evergreen plans, and Julia announces that she has been offered the opportunity to return to academia, which has, throughout the story, clearly been her first-love. She will depart for the university at year’s-end. Barett then shares the news that he will do the same, and will in fact be returning to the same university, where he will become her new department head. This more or less resolves the relationship issues that have been hinted at between the two throughout the book. In the final scene, we see Julia, Barett, and her son at the Bronx Zoo in New York, where they visit a special display in the insect house—a touring exhibit of the Evergreen cutter ants and banana spiders. Mandell has arranged the tour as a way of demonstrating to visitors the hazards of mingling corporate science and nature. As the three depart the zoo, they are handed a flyer from a local EarthAlert petitioner in which we learn that Hansen has become the national chairman of the organization. Julia and Barett, hand in hand, walk to his car and return to Boston to renew their lives together and their new careers at the university.

Brief but dramatic epilogue scenes include an ants-perspective view of one of the cutter ant queens flying far from the original cornfield to start a new colony deep in the jungles of Bangladesh, far from the effects of Vanguard’s pesticides. This is followed by a scene in which a young couple walks along a trail at a national park in Colombia and encounters one of the massive banana spiders. They catch on videotape an attack in which the spider catches a large wild bird and runs with it into the darkness of the woods. These scenes reinforce what the viewer already intuitively knows—Vanguard’s insect problems have by no means been resolved.

“Outrun the Devil” is currently on the back burner, though I remain excited about the story and its potential. I got about 90 pages into that project before hitting a temporary wall, narratively speaking. No worries though. The combination of Columbus’s explorations and the Spanish Inquisition is just too fraught with opportunity to pass up!