Beyond Trail’s End
by Mohan Pandey
The childhood memories stare at me whenever I find myself surrounded by deep woods, hills, and mountains. The world was young when I opened my eyes and spent the time playing around with my siblings, dogs, horses in the ever changing seasonal settings. It was more than the small town I grew up with, which was nestled in the lush green hill tracks. The gentle forest streams swerved their way merrily through the tree trunks and time-worn rocks and pebbles. These remained part of me until my adulthood which took me to an urban jungle in search of a college.
Hiking in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee last summer on a vacation presented an energizing opportunity to experience a delightful encounter with the nature. My young son, David, who was with me in his summer break from college, was always willing to join such trips.
Spread over 800 miles between North Carolina and Tennessee, the Smokies are home to over 4,000 species of trees, flora, and fauna, and sustain a number of wild animals, birds, and fish. The unspoiled scenic hiking trails along the mountain streams, high peaks, and panoramic surroundings ignited my affiliation.
Trekking the Jack Trail from the base camp along a pristine stream meandering its way through the deep woods was a sheer delight. Climbing a mountain was like drinking its silence in which endless thoughts and worries evaporated like a cool refreshing breeze. Everything turned divine in the mountain clarity. It revealed my insignificant existence, as a tiny dot among billions.
There was chill in the air as we reached an elevation of about 6000 feet along the wilderness, overgrown yellow birch trees and hardwood groves. Midway through the winding narrow track, the steep climb slowed us. We found ourselves trailing behind an elderly couple at a bend. Hardly ten yards ahead, they moved leisurely, holding long hiking sticks and carrying light backpacks. We crawled behind, expecting them to let us pass at some point.
Suddenly the man slowed down and was unsteady. In a weary low tone, his words were, “I’m exhausted.” His breathing became slow and heavy, and he leaned on a wayside rock to let his body rest. He sat down. His walking stick slipped out of his hand, falling down the rock, and his eyes closed.
“Are you okay, John?” His companion extended her hands to help him lie down gently on his back. She observed his face and waited for a moment, but got no response. In a rising nervous tone, she kept repeating, “John, are you all right? John...”
We rushed forward. She unbuttoned John’s shirt, calling his name and tapping his face as if trying to wake him up. Her forehead creased, eyebrows drew closer with worried looks. With shaking hands, she took out the cell phone from her purse. She pressed the buttons. “God... no signal,” she cried.
I looked at John. His face didn’t show signs of pain or discomfort. The body showed no movement. I held his wrist to feel the pulse which was worryingly weak. The body had sweated.
Neatly dressed in a clean half sleeve shirt, pants and sneakers, he appeared to be in his 70’s, nearly six feet, heavy build and a bulging tummy. The face showed average mature looks with soft lines on his forehead.
Fear struck me: what now? Was it mere exhaustion from the steep climb? Perhaps more than that. A weak heart suffering a massive cardiac arrest? Probably. What if we couldn’t get medical assistance on time?
The woman in her late 50’s, frail with sharp features, cropped brown hair was casually dressed for hiking. Soft looks and bare feminine charm gave her a sophisticated appearance.
“Has he any medical condition?” I asked her.
“He had a heart condition, but that was five years ago,” she replied.
“Any medicine he carries?”
Searching his pockets, she could find only his cell phone.
“John... John,” that’s how the woman, who later said her name was Gloria, continued calling him close to his face, constantly massaging his arms and wrists.
A sudden low breathing from his nostrils followed as if the body was trying to exhale with effort. And then all went quiet. His face showed no sign of distress, as if resting in peace, but his motionless body sent a disturbing signal.
Gloria fiddled with different phone options but failed to get any signal. She then removed a small hand-held walkie-talkie from John’s baggy waist pouch, a small antenna jutting out from its top. Pressing the tabs on it, she cried, “Emergency, Mayday, Mayday... I need medical help, do you hear me...?”
Not finding any contact through the phone or the walkie-talkie, she turned around with tears and said, “Don’t know what happened to him. He was in good shape when we started this morning.” She glanced at John before asking us, “Do you know CPR?”
I shook my head.
“I’m not sure if it’s on correct operational mode.” She held out the small device to me.
It was a handheld communication system, new to me. David and I pressed the tabs but failed to establish any contact. Whenever we heard a hissing sound on one of the frequency bands, we shouted, “We have an emergency here, please come online... Hello...” We heard no answer, yet we kept trying.
“John carries this with him on such long walks,” she said.
Not getting through to 911 was frustrating, and watching the listless face of John quite unnerving. In desperation, I again touched John’s wrist and neck but no movement. I shuddered to think it might be over.
“Let’s put him in a comfortable posture,” I advised. David and I gently slid the body down to let it lie flat on the ground.
Turning to David, I said, “Now race down to the base camp and get the Rangers’ paramedic team here. I’ll stay here.” David took to his heels, racing back down the bumpy track.
Waiting with Gloria by the side of unconscious John was uneasy, seconds and minutes were agonizingly long. I broke the silence in a consoling tone, “It’s very unfortunate...so sudden, in such a wild, desolate spot...”
We were strangers, but the tragedy at our hands quickly melted the divide. It ignited the sense of compassion that drives the people to act supportively, though I had still no courage to come out with my suspicion of what seemed to have happened to John. Gloria continued to cry, wiping her tears and let her gaze fall once again at the body.
Trying hard to locate any working frequency on the walkie-talkie was all I was left to do.
Looking at my watch and counting the minutes for the return of David with the rescue team, I asked Gloria.
“Did John have any other health issue?”
“No. He stayed active, turned a vegetarian after he took to the Buddhist teachings.” She replied in a halting voice.
“Are you, too, a follower of Buddhism?”
“It was John who was more into it. His wife didn’t like it and walked out on him long back. He even went to San Francisco for a special audience with Dalai Lama when he came to visit America.”
She paused for a while before adding, “I’m from England, came from Sussex. I worked for a few years as a paralegal. John was an attorney. We knew each other, but attending a Zen retreat in Santa Barbara brought us closer. Later I decided to move in with him. It has been seventeen years now.”
She looked at her phone and switched it on. It still had no signal. She cleared her nose, and said, “John had his 75th birthday yesterday, and we came to spend two days in a log cabin in Pigeon Forge.” She then stared blankly into space.
I looked at my watch, no sign of the rescue team.
“I was also introduced to Buddhism at a young age. My teacher followed the Mahayana sect of it. Anything special that attracted you to it?”
“John and I were impressed by the simplicity and the wisdom of it, its explanation of what’s permanent and what’s illusion and the theory of ‘karma’. We are not strict practitioners... It is not so much a matter of gaining enlightenment, just living in a world of love and compassion.”
Weary Gloria then sat down, tears rolling while we continued our wait. I prayed silently for any help. There was nothing more I could think of doing.
A half hour passed before we heard the human voices, one couple hurriedly appearing from up the trail. Slowing down, as they came near, the man cast enquiring looks. I explained what had happened. He was a tall mature man, another hiking couple I presumed.
“I’m an anesthetist, retired,” he told while making his way to John’s body. He bent down for a closer look. Not taking more time in his observation, touching his wrist and eye-lids, he shook his head and stood up, saying, “I’m sorry, the man is dead. He’s lifeless. My condolences, ma’am.” His words, cool and unemotional, were like any professional announcement. Hearing it from a physician, it shattered Gloria. She couldn’t control herself and shrieked, covering her face with both hands.
The man added, “We’re turning back. We found ourselves face to face with a bear and its cubs, not more than a hundred yards up the trail.”
Confronting the danger of wild animals was a frightening scenario. In the unnerving moments, Gloria and I exchanged a fleeting glance trying to think of protecting ourselves and John’s body. It triggered the pounding of my heart, my adrenalin level began shooting up. But in the face of heightened danger, there was no time to feel edgy. I needed to be cool to think and ward of the new danger.
A panicky Gloria pleaded with the couple, “Can you stay with us for a few more minutes? The presence of more people might deter the animals.”
I also tried to persuade, “The rescue team we have sent for should be here any time soon.”
The couple looked at each other and exchanged few words before deciding not to leave.
I picked up John’s walking stick, a hopelessly feeble idea to keep the beast off in case it appeared nearer.
In a dismal voice, Gloria said, “John’s not coming back, oh, God...”
I closed the dead man’s open mouth and covered his face with a small wrinkled handkerchief that Gloria took out from her purse. The notion of life as an illusion immediately hit me hard. The Buddhist concept of life as impermanent needed no further elucidation. It took me a few minutes of silence to recover.
As a consoling gesture, I asked Gloria, “Will there be someone to be with you in the hospital, or wherever the body is taken?” Not being able to come up with anything more soothing discomforted me. In her state of shock, Gloria couldn’t respond.
What next? My mind was picturing the eventualities.
As an attorney for family and divorce disputes for more than two decades in Toledo, I could envision the complexities. Did Gloria realize that not having been married to John deprived her now of any say or right from his last rites to the disposal of his estate, presuming he left no will? Building a new shelter, new life? I stopped visualizing more pains that lay in store for her.
The intense despair led me to an altered state of consciousness: what a time and place it was for a 75-year old attorney from Knoxville to collapse midway through hiking a trail on the Smoky Mountains. It left behind grieving Gloria as one among scores of other hikers who blithely passed by, assuming life as an assured fact, and death too distantly ignorable.
The melancholy awakened the Buddhist perception that the joy and suffering co-exist inseparably, following one after the other. It appeared brighter than the sun.
The peace and tranquility of the forest evoked subtlety of feelings: leaves descended from the fingerlings of branch ends and brushed my face like dry, frail-veined moths, the smell of the woods in that humid summer uplifted me. Watching the chirping birds fly by, the leaves dancing and the sun peeking through them made me a part of all that I was in the midst of the all-pervasive harmonious existence. I had dissolved into a much greater whole which was perfect and limitless, where time existed no more.
In the moments of my elevated spirit, I heard whisper from the swaying leaves that melted away my presumptuous identity. It revealed a grand play where the characters looked real on a pristine forest setting, each player performing the scripted role. What I witnessed was only one small act where one character finished his role, leaving the grieving character behind to act out the remainder. Her destiny was to be reached in a later act, at some other point of time, in some other setting.
Waiting for the relief team became less agonizing. I was no longer alone. A living forest had cleansed me of illusory perceptions.
Not long afterward, we heard voices. David was guiding a team of park medics up the trail. They swung into action, attached cables to John’s heart and ribs, and an oxygen mask to his face for a swift CPR. The body jerked a few times, but the attempts failed. It was over.
The team leader asked Gloria, “You’re the wife?”
“No.” She shook her head. “His partner.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, “We need the next of kin.”
He proceeded with his protocol straightaway, packed his equipment and opened the black body bag. Gloria burst out, crying uncontrollably. Holding her in my embrace was the only solace left for her while the zip fastener was pulled up to close the bag and the body was strapped to the stretcher. They assured us of safe transport of the body through the tough mountain terrain.
The Rangers recorded our story and our details. Their log entry began: “A male body located dead by three strangers in Jack Trail, Pigeon Forge, 12:15 p.m. June 29... ”
Copyright © 2018 by Mohan Pandey
