Out Of Nowhere
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Out of Nowhere
John Paul Derryberry
After a long drive early in the morning to southern Illinois from our old house in Iowa City, I tumbled out of a cramped car and stretched at the trailhead, as if fall had turned to full color overnight. A longtime friend, a newer friend, and my wife and I were going for a fall hike on the River to River Trail in Southern Illinois. A trail that stretches from the Mississippi River in the west to the Ohio River in the east. As the sun rose in the east, with no real expectations, we shook the stiffness out of our legs from the car ride, threw on our heavy backpacks, and took the first step on a 16-mile hike. A new trail for us, and after making sure we zipped the car keys into the right pocket four times, we put our left foot out and took off down the trail.
I started backpacking years before this trip for two reasons. The first was selfish: so my employer couldn't call me on my days off. I worked for a poor company at the time that was notorious for calling people while on vacation. My first trip was to the Badlands in South Dakota, and I made sure there was no reception. There was something freeing about knowing I could not be reached. The second reason was to experience nature at a slower pace: the sights, the sounds, and the feel, away from any noise.
The trip out of nowhere unfolded in ways we never expected. The weather, the temperature, the conversations, and fall colors all seemed so bright, so full, so in tune with what we needed. But it came out of nowhere; we had no idea that the trip would unfold that way. In life, we often think we can control outcomes, bend the long arc of life into a predictable pattern. I knew from the experiences of deaths when I was young, and a battle with serious mental health issues twice in my life, that we do not control as much as we think we do. Life is more chaotic than anyone is willing to admit. So when life doesn't unfold the way we expected, many of us react, fight, and try to make sense of the chaos in a very personal way. I know I have done that in my life.
We set up camp under the stars on a little rocky outcrop, about .25 miles from a lake with such a peaceful, colorful scene, as if we'd stumbled across a Bob Ross painting by accident. I think about this trip often, because it was thrown together last minute, just a group of people who like hiking attempting to squeeze one last trip in before winter. Out of nowhere, it became the hiking trip I often think about the most.
Most of life’s moments are out of nowhere, stuff we didn’t see coming. I was in the on-deck circle of a baseball game when my dad died. I was at work when my wife walked onto the floor with one of the kids I worked with. I had just returned from Christmas break when I sat in a room, and a guy from Japan decided to close the college I was attending. My wife and I, with some family, drove out of Gun Flint Trail into Grand Marais when the phone dinged with a message that we were chosen as adoptive parents. Those moments are out of my control; life is always changing, always chaotic, and never something we fully control.
This trip sticks with me so much because it's such a hopeful reminder that life is how we react to the out-of-nowhere moments. They will happen: the phone will ring with news, something will unfold, and people will make choices you can't control. How we react in those moments will reveal more about our lives than we realize. We may become grateful for a wonderful moment we didn’t see coming, or we may become jaded and act out for a moment that we feel should not have happened to us. Out-of-nowhere moments are potentially always right around the corner. We would do better to enjoy the great ones when they happen and respond in line with our morals and values when the bad ones land.