Date: 2010-02-13
From: Mull's Motel (Hiawasee, GA)

To: Mull's Motel (Hiawasee, GA)
Miles today: 0.0

I woke up and caught the motel on fire. My alcohol stove liaks, you see, so when I placed it right outside the door of my second-story room it soaked the green carpet with alcohol. When I lit it, it exploded in a flame. I tried to blow it out to no avail. I knocked it over and flaming alcohol spilled out over more carpet. Flames were at least a foot high. I beat at it and finally got it under control, but the damage was done. The carpet was black and smoking. ¢Shit.¢ I said calmly. I quickly packed up my gear and got the hell out of there ASAP, tip-toeing over the office, down the steps, and one building down to a caf©.As I sipped my coffee and wrote, I kept waiting for the motel owner to come looking for me. Afterall, in a small town one can¢t run far. The caf© door would squeak open and I¢d brace for confrontation, over and over again. ¢The cops are here for you¢, I suddenly heard the barista tell a regular. I tensed. Maybe cops were turning into the motel parking lot, which the caf© shared, to hunt the fleeing vandal. And sure enough, three cops entered and stood by the door looking at me. ¢Can I help you officers?¢, said the barista, and the officers sat down for a doughnut. I breathed out.Looking over my shoulder, I crossed the street to the grocery store. I spent $33 for almost a week¢s worth of food. Then I got a ride to the Blueberry Patch Hostel where the owner, Gary Potteat, turned me down at the driveway. ¢We¢re just not finished yet. Maybe tomorrow.¢ He said kinda sorely. He¢s a good Christian man who¢s taken in thousands of hikers for no gain but ministry, so if he was sore I think it was because he had to turn down a hiker in need.I had only 60 some dollars left, so another night at the motel was out of the question, even if I hadn¢t fled the burned carpet that morning. I had no where to go.The kind folks who gave me a ride (out of their way) to Blueberry Patch Hostel dropped me off at a church at the junction where they returned to their route to Atlanta to see their sick mother. I¢ve always wanted to test out the church as a place of unconditional refuge, so I walked up to the office and knocked on the door. No answer. Just before walking back out to the road to thumb to another church, I noticed a small house on the corner of the church property. A pick-up was out front. I walked up and knocked, and to my surprise a younger man opened the door. He was hip-looking, sharp, kinda like a Young Life leader. ¢Let me see what I can do. Come on in.¢ I knelt down to pet the lab. ¢You know, I¢m a thru-hiker back in 1996¢. I couldn¢t believe it. But the magic didn¢t stop there. He said, ¢Follow me¢ and we walked over to the church. He flicked on the light in a room, ¢Wait in there and I¢m gonna try to pull some strings,¢ he said, then disappeared. I read a bible for about five minutes, when a gleaming middle-aged woman walked in. ¢I¢m Lynn¢, she said. ¢I¢m Gary¢s wife, at the Blueberry Patch. We¢re gonna get you a room in town.¢ I couldn¢t believe it. Lynn, the gleaming secretary at the church, at which I fortuitously knocked, was the wife of the woner of the hostel where I¢d just stopped, wife of a man who¢s Christian kindness spread his name all the way to Richmond. And this connection was dropped in my lap by a sympathetic thru-hiking pastor. ¢We¢re going to get you a room at Mull¢s Motel¢, she said. My stomach dropped. The burned carpet. That¢s where I left the burned carpet. ¢Let me drive you to Mull¢s¢ said the young pastor. We pulled in and I prepared for impact upon entering the cramped motel office. Fortunately, the 86 year old lady was still there in her nightgown, just like I¢d seen her the evening before. And, (thanks to her age, perhaps) she didn¢t remember me. I couldn¢t believe it. I was redeemed. ¢I really don¢t know how to thank you, man,¢ I said. ¢It just works out, doesn¢t it¢, he said. I think from time to time God has fun and wires things. Redemption of unbelievable cause-and-effect complexity. Even miracles. No, it¢s not in his nature. It¢s not all like that. Jesus spent but a sliver of his hours dropping jaws with these unbelievable occurances. Most of his days were spent walking around in the dust, telling people that, yeah..reality can be really boring but it¢s okay. The miracles almost never happen around town but it doesn¢t matter because the real miracle is deep within. The real wonder is the heart and soul of man. So, I won¢t walk to Maine looking for him to wink at me again. I¢ll keep looking within. Snow fell that night in Hiawasee, about 2 inches. I ate my trail mix and wrote oa letter to the Potteats from the warmth of my motel room. After two nights of comfort, I was ready to hit the trail again.