The Kindness of Strangers

We were up in the quiet of the White Mountains, thousands of feet above the ground, but still an hour or so from the summit. I could hear my heart beating in my ears and every once in a while the pine parted like waves to reveal the panorama of the mountains.

You remember much that you've forgotten when you're on your own like this-- you remember how the wind sounds as it moves across pink boulders, how your legs burn and your arms slip around tree roots, how many times and for how many thousands of years the path before you has been trodden. As I struggled up across the alpine and stone, however, I remembered something completely unexpected-- the kindness of strangers. Everyone who passed me (and believe me, there were many a spry sixty year old jogging jollily past my collapsing twenty-two year old body) smiled, waved, greeted me hello. Two hikers stopped for a rest offered Seb and I food, an old man emerging from the woods struck up a conversation as we walked. It seems the higher we climbed, the more trees we leaned on for support, the more streams we splashed over our faces, the more we all remembered something most people in the world have forgotten, the truth we have walked so far away from-- that we are all part of the same family.

Seven hours, and several exhaustion- induced mini-breakdowns later (which at one point led me to believe I saw a duck chilling out in the middle of the alpine trail) we were off the mountain. Exhausted, but happy we found a campground nearby and started to set up for the night. The campground manager, an older man with sandy colored hair and a wide nose, talked to us for some time about business, bears, and belated weather. We bought some firewood from him and as we were about to leave he called us back, chuckling and smiling. "You're guys are nice kids, why don't you take all that extra firewood on the ground."

That night we had the misfortune of blowing the car's cigarette lighter (otherwise known as the lifeline for our cellphones, ipods, and above all, the holy grail of travel, the GPS). The next day we dragged ourselves sadly to the nearest Toyota dealership. There the mechanic told us that the repairs would cost hundreds of dollars and take several days. We left dejected. We decided to drive just a little bit further down the road in the futile hope that some mechanic somewhere could do the operation today, and for much much cheaper. We pulled over at a small auto shop and went in to talk to the owner, Nick. A nice guy with a dark mustache and large hands he told us the procedure would only cost $85 but that he couldn't get us in until Friday by which point we'd be miles away. "I'm sorry guys," he genuinely sighed.

We stood by the car outside the shop, weighing our options. We must have been there for ten minutes when Nick walked briskly over to the car and asked to see the lighter. We held our breath as he cracked the dashboard open and went back into the shop. Fifteen minutes later he came back out, popped the fixed piece back in and wished us luck on our journey. We begged him to let us pay him for his work, but he flatly refused. "Just get out of here and have a great trip" he waved us on and went resolutely back to his work.

Like kids on Christmas we plugged every gadget we had back into the sacred source of energy and agreed that Nick might actually be Santa. We took Nick's business card and sent him a postcard as soon as we got to Acadia National Park.