Odd Coincidences
Do you ever find yourself 970 miles from home and running into friends from church? If so, you might be experiencing symptoms of living in a very small world!
Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wQ2yLUiB79XjeTuS6
October 8th, 2023 - Acadia Day 2
When I was a child, my family once took a trip to a North Carolina beach. As we were walking the streets of a tourist town, we were delighted to encounter a couple from our Ohio home church. They were also on vacation in North Carolina- what a coincidence! That moment always stuck with me. What were the odds that our family would be in the same place at the same time as a couple we saw every week at church? It seemed too crazy to be true… until it happened again!
As Tyler and I had been settling down the night before, my phone had vibrated with a text. I picked it up to read a surprising message. It was a man named Mike, who had just noticed the Maine photos I had posted on Facebook. What a coincidence- they were visiting Maine too! In fact, they were only a few towns over! I immediately recalled the North Carolina instance. Here we were again, running into people from church! I guess Brethren like to travel!
When we awoke the next morning for a foggy sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, I couldn’t help but keep thinking about Mike and Cindy. They were experiencing the same thick fog that we were. They were seeing the same colorful trees, hearing the same ocean waves. Ohio is a small state, and our hometown is even smaller. Yet here we were, four people in a large country, exploring the same national park. It was truly remarkable!
Tyler had picked an exciting hiking trail for us that morning. I hadn’t done much research on the trail, so I picked my way through rocks to examine the park signs near the trailhead. A neon yellow sign declared, “This trail follows a nearly vertical route with exposed cliffs that requires climbing on iron rungs. Falls on this mountain have resulted in serious injury and death.” Gulping, I looked at the other sign, which featured an image of a woman clinging tightly to thin metal bars sunk into the side of a rocky cliff. This sign said, “Think twice before climbing the Precipice Trail- one of Acadia’s steepest and most challenging trails.” I spun around to face my husband, who gave me one of his charming, confident grins. Following the sign’s advice, I was thinking twice, and my thoughts weren’t exactly positive.
“Uhhhh Tyler? I’m not so sure about this.”
My husband, who knows me better than I know myself, just grinned again. “You’re going to be fine! I’ve done a lot of reading on this trail and I think you’re really going to like it. Let’s just go try it!”
I squinted my eyes at him, looked at the scary signs again, then up at the mountain we were about to climb. Well, at least it wasn’t raining. Shoving back my worries, I followed my husband up the trail.
The first portion of the trail serves as a filter for those who wear the wrong shoes. Two people in front of us quickly turned around as their strappy sandals quickly failed them. There was hardly any dirt to be seen on the gradual slope, just rocks. So many rocks. For the first time, I understood why the first American colonists struggled to farm the ground in New England. There are so many rocks! If you aren’t tripping on them, you’re scrambling over them. If you’re not climbing over them, you’re scooting under them, backpack snagging on their wet surfaces. After letting loose some sarcastic, anxious commentary, I actually found myself enjoying the adventure of the trail. Each rock was a new challenge, glistening with the slick remains of Philippe’s nighttime showers. I clung to the metal handholds, which were, thankfully, firmly anchored in the rocks. The stability of the handholds gave my nervousness a place to settle. Tyler was right, darn him! I was having fun!
It turns out that the vertical climb- the part of the trail I dreaded, was actually the part that I enjoyed the most. Friendly sunshine dried the rain from the handholds, making it easy for our shoes to grip tightly. A light breeze brushed away any anxious beads of sweat. A beautiful blue ocean melded with the sky, bordered by lush green and autumnal forests. Up here, we could truly soak in the October colors of Maine. Not many of the trees had yet turned golden, which accented the few that had. They burst from the green with vibrant enthusiasm, pops of yellow, crimson, and orange. It was an ample reward after braving the cliffs of Precipice Trail.
I snapped some photos and sent one to Mike. “Feeling ambitious?” I texted him. “We found an excellent cliffside trail with phenomenal views!”
His wife texted back, “This is Cindy. I don’t do cliffs.”
I looked down over the edge of the cliff we had just climbed. My head swam a little. Suddenly, I didn’t blame Cindy one bit!
With a rare bit of signal up on top of the mountain, we rested for a moment and texted with our church friends. We decided that, since we were in the same area, we might as well meet up for dinner. After all, when you stumble across hometown friends in Maine, you might as well make a meal of it! With a restaurant dinner to look forward to, Tyler and I hit the trail. The scary signs at the trailhead recommended that hikers not descend the Precipice Trail, so we had quite a long hike ahead of us. The trail took us over many, many rocks, descending gradually into the forest we had admired from above. We found ourselves eventually at the edge of the frothing sea, where blue waves rolled into brown rocks and threatened our shoes. The angular edges of pine trees sliced into the sky, an organic contrast to the wave-shaped round rocks. Our hiking sticks prodded through a soft sandy beach, then back into the pine needles and dirt of the forest. We made it back to our car just as the sunlight was beginning to soften. We had been on the trail all day. It would have been nice to freshen up, but the golden sunrays beckoned us to the summit of Cadillac Mountain instead. There, trailworn and tired, we watched a brilliant Maine sunset together.
Community is a beautiful part of being human. Tyler and I are blessed to have a relationship where we never tire of each other. In fact, we are at our happiest when we are together! But there is something unique about being able to spend time with other people too. Our dinner with Mike and Cindy was a great example of this. We practically closed down the restaurant that night! We sat at the table long after the ice cubes in our blueberry lemonades had melted. We told stories, laughed, and enjoyed each other. When we parted ways, I recalled wishing that our time could go on forever. It was such a blessing to be able to spend time with them. People are meant for people, I’ve concluded. In an age where we all retreat to the privacy of our phones, I think we might be depriving ourselves of true joy. A Twitter post just isn’t the same as a belly-laugh with a friend, is it? In our constant search for fulfillment and happiness, it’s easy to forget that the simplest things are the best. You’re not going to find what you’re craving on the Internet. Let’s try community instead.
You never know, you might just run into a friend 900 miles away from home.
Hiking trails:
Precipice Trail to Thunder Hole
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