A woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.
I've often said in the last few years that nothing Eli 18.11 does surprises me anymore.Well, almost.
This story is unfortunately going to be diminished because Eli told it, in his voice, and I can't write in his voice. I can, though, give you the gist.
On the second day of his camping trip with his friend, they decided to go to the Shipwreck Museum. Looking on Google Maps, they saw a narrow line that connected directly with the Museum, only about 15 miles away. The main road was going to take them over an hour, so this looked like a huge shortcut.
Readers of this space will already hear ominous music in the background, because I've told several stories of trying to go around traffic (on hockey trips) onto "thin line" roads and winding up on a goat track.
There had been torrential rains the night before and into the morning. At first, the road seemed fine. Then the pavement ran out. Then it became a single-track road. Then they were in mud up to the wheel locks.
Incredibly the CRV made it through all this.
The road kept getting worse and worse, and Eli said he knew they couldn't possibly make it through, but it was so narrow that they couldn't turn around, either, so they just kept going [a note: this is a perfect description of writing a novel.]
Incredibly, after 45 minutes, they were able to see a road in the distance, one that actually looked passable.
Then they saw the tree.
A tree had fallen during the night's storms, and it was completely blocking the road. No way to go around it.
They made several attempts to budge the tree together, but it wouldn't even budge. Eli said, "Then I moved the tree."
I said, "So you and your friend moved the tree?"
"No, he was actually getting in the way trying to help me. So he got out of the way and I moved the tree."
"How big was this tree?" I asked.
"Pretty big," he said, laughing.
"What did your friend say?"
"He said 'What are you?'"
I've asked this question many times.
I can only imagine how big the tree was, because he is unfathomably strong. But I guarantee it was of the size that humans don't move.
So the tree was cleared, and they continued on, and right before they hit the road, they ran into a wooden shack right in front of them that said "NO ACCESS" and "PROUD GUN OWNER."
Well, that combination has to be respected.
So they started backing up.
Fifteen minutes later (that's a long time to back up), they came to a fork in the road, took the other fork, and wound up making it to the museum twenty minutes later, in almost exactly the same length of time it would have taken on the main road. But without the adventure.
Let me add this to his list of impossibilities: moved a tree.
<< Home