Fifteen years. All it took to get me here was fifteen years. Plus an hour and a half plane ride, a two-hour car trip, and a five-mile bike trek. Turns out it was so easy that I wondered why it took so long. Walking down that sandy path towards the Atlantic Ocean the only thing that kept going through my head was a scene from the last episode of "The Office". It's Pam's last interview, and she's telling the camera how she sat a few feet away from Jim, and it took her years to get to him. Inexplicably, that's the scene my brain kept playing for me. Even as it registered cacti growing up out of the sand (didn't expect to see that here in Delaware), crab tracks making their way down the sandy path, and the sound of the waves calling for me to come closer. Even as everything around me registered in a surreal sense, I kept hearing Pam's voice saying how it would make her heart soar if someone learned from watching her.
And, I thought, 'guess your heart isn't soaring cause it took me 15 years.'
Then, my toes met the ocean and there was no more thinking. There was only feeling. What; I don't know. The brain switched from scenes of a t.v. show to simply absorbing. Absorbing the sound the waves make when they meet the boundary of land, the silent stretch of beach, a lone bald eagle soaring above, and the sight of dolphins breaking the water's surface before diving out of sight again. It didn't seem real. And yet, here I was seeing it all with my own eyes.
A couple of weeks later, driving down the road, a song by Mumford and Sons called 'The Cave' would come on the radio, and only then would it hit me that's what I was feeling that day on Cape Henlopen Beach. Feeling like I just walked out of a cave, walking upside down on my hands. And, the world outside of that cave responded with,
'she's here! Cue the waves, cue the eagle, cue the dolphins, she's here!'
It was like we had all been waiting a long time for this moment. Longer than fifteen years, maybe.
That morning, I wasn't thinking of a song. I couldn't name the feeling. All I know was it took a long time to get where the Atlantic Ocean meets the sand at Cape Henlopen, at the terminus of the American Discovery Trail. Knew that something more than just a leg of the ADT was beginning.
We stood there that morning, my friend Kim and I. Stood at the beginning of something unknown. Kim is the friend that is just adventurous, crazy, and loyal enough to say yes to this quest I've dreamt up. Would we make it through the whole leg? Would we cross the state of Delaware? Or, crap out after the first day? I couldn't wait to find out.
Cape Henlopen, Delaware
Terminus of the American Discovery Trail
