The Walk to
Posted Jan 20, 2004
I don't encourage anyone to take a hike on railroad property, especially in this post 9-11 world. But back in the 70's, when my friends came up with the notion of hiking down the tracks from Carbondale to Makanda, all our parents thought it sounded like a great idea.
We had no idea how long it would take us, so we resolved to get up in the grey dawn, which seemed a lot more romantic when contemplated before bedtime (at one in the morning) than it did when confronted with the necessity of rising in the dark. But after several persistant reminders from downstairs, I'd dressed and dragged myself down to breakfast, and I was waiting for my other friends to rendevous when the phone rang.
Thinking it was one of my party, I answered it. A low voice rasped "I'm going to kill you" and hung up.
I stared at the reciever for a moment. Then I laughed. We'd all gotten envelopes in the mail the week before, numbered envelopes that each contained a crudely drawn ju-ju fly. After putting our heads together over lunch at the high school, we decided our friend Alan had sent them. We'd been dissapointed he was't joining us. Now it was clear he'd stayed home from the expedition so he could play another prank!
I think we had Nancy along, and Tim and the Kid and Patrick. We jammed ourselves into my parent's car and Daddy drove us to our chosen crossing. As we decamped, I looked toward the horizon over a green pasture. An enormous orange sun was coming up like a red rubber ball, just like in the song.
The tracks look like smooth going from the paved highway, but the fill was more nearly chunks of limestone than the comfortable gravel we'd expected. We clambered along, our feet getting a rough massage as we grew accustomed to the footing. We thought of the tracks as moving through decorative woodland and fields and pastures, but we found the right-of-way given over to a peculiar wildness of impenetrable brambles and dense brush, so that we seemed to be trudging not through our familiar farmland, but from here to there in some "after the disaster" science fiction film.
Then a train came along to shatter that eeriness. We scrambled off the tracks and turned to watch it rumble past, waving at the man in the caboose, who waved back.
When we stopped and ate our packed lunches I laughingly told my friends "what Alan has done now." We all thought it was a fine joke. I couldn't understand why Patrick grew morose, until he told me a few days later that the call had come from his girlfriend, who resented the raport he'd found with me and hadn't wanted him to make the hike.
We hesitated when we came to a spot in the path where the tracks were constricted for a short while. I can't remember if they were going under a trestle, or if boulders or undergrowth or a ditch were our concern, but we'd have a few minutes when we couldn't get out of a train's way.
Tim, remembering The Lone Ranger and his boyscouts training, threw himself down between the tracks and put his ear to the ground. He cheerfully reported that he heard nothing - and then looked up to see a train in the offing. He scrambled ruefully to safety. We let the train through and hurried after it, figuring one train wouldn't be eating another's dust.
We reached Makanda in good time, and arrived at the spot in Giant City State Park where we'd agreed to meet Tim's mom. I was content to find a spot with just enough sun and shade, and rest there contemplating my feet, trying to decide if the sensation of their having been poked and proded by rocks for several unaccustomed miles was one of pain or of satisfaction with their accomplishment.
Writing these remininscenses has shown me the flaws of my memory, or its pettiness. While I remember lying "lentus in umbra," Patrick has a different recollection of the end of the hike. A sophmore in college and the oldest one there, he was not so easily amused as I was. The cliff that provided a backdrop to the picnic area was favored for rapelling. Patrick attacked it from the base. He scaled it with his hands and feet, inch by arduous inch, always finding another hand- or foot- hold until he was almost to the top, when his luck failed him and he found himself hugging the bluff like a wingless fly, too far above our heads to call for help even if the bluff itself didn't swallow his voice, groping unsucessfully for a way up and unable to see below him to make the long descent.
His luck returned before the crisis became a tragedy. Someone arrived above him with the intention of rapelling down the cliff, and helped him up those last crucial feet.
Later that afternoon we piled into the Schwartzdale Limosine (I've no idea why we called Tim's folks' car that, as their name wasn't Schwartzdale), glad we didn't have to walk back to Carbondale and wondering what was for dinner. The S. L. was a big old Buick, but nonetheless we were a tight fit. I wound up on Patrick's lap, and he inadvertantly discovered I was ticklish and must have followed up on the discovery, because he mentioned last year that I hated to be tickled. I wondered how he knew, but even after he told me about the coda to the Walk to Makanda, I don't remember it hapening. It's probably just as well, because I'm a petty person and might still resent it.
It would be a shame to carry a thing like that around for over 30 years, when instead I have the glow of comradship and adventure.
By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you like the background, you're welcome to copy and use it.