Dan Glacier

It sounds bad to say I don’t remember what I was thinking when I first saw him stumble out onto the road, waving at me with reeking desperation in his eyes. It’s bad to say that, but it’s also untrue. It’s not as though I don’t remember, it's that I didn’t think anything at all when I saw him. After getting lost in the 900,000 miles of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, falling down a ravine, having his hand pinned under a rock, suffering dehydration and hypothermia for three days, cutting off his hand to free himself, hiking five miles back to a main road toward safety, I was the first car that came around the bend on Route 219, the first human Dan Glacier had seen in a week. I was the best chance he had at survival from the rampant blood loss from his left arm…and I didn’t think anything when I saw him. So I drove on.

The second time I saw Dan Glacier, he was on the primetime nightly news describing his harrowing tale of loss and survival in the wilderness. He looked nothing like the haggard creature that jumped out onto the road at me four months prior. His hair and face were shaved revealing a crooked smirk and he was wearing a light blue button-down and khaki pants. And notably, he had a prosthetic hand connected to his left arm. The interviewer listened to him with wide, sympathetic eyes as he described those precious hours between cutting his hand off with a switchblade to free himself, running toward the sound of a passing car, and knowing he had made it out alive.

“When I got out on the road, I immediately waved down the first car I saw. I was like, 'This is it. My salvation. I’m gonna be OK.' But, uh, I guess I must’ve looked like a monster or something because she actually kept on driving. About 20 minutes later I waved down the next car, and that was Mark and Jill who ultimately saved my life,” Dan Glacier explained.

I burst into tears immediately, almost before the words even came out of his mouth on the T.V. I tried to think of what I was thinking when he ran up around the bend. We saw each other. We locked eyes, even with me going 55 miles an hour. I was paralyzed, that’s all. That’s what I imagine myself telling the reporter in my own imaginary sit-down interview.

“Why didn’t you stop?” He would ask me, in his baritone voice.

“I was paralyzed. Honestly. It was a simple mistake. I wasn’t thinking; I was concentrating on the road.”

“How do you feel, knowing that you could have saved Dan Glacier and you didn’t?”

“Terrible, of course. I don’t know. I’m just thankful Mark and Jill were there,” I'd reply and he would then adjust his spectacles in a concerned fashion.

“Have you reached out to Dan Glacier?”

“No,” I would say.

In the news episode—the real one, not my imaginary one—the screen then turned away from the interview toward a clip of the Mark and Jill Hamish sitting down and chatting with Dan Glacier. They were a sweet young couple wearing matching, complimenting outfits for the cameras.

The reporter’s voice came over the scene. “Dan says he feels like Mark and Jill are family now. They meet up regularly to catch up on life.”

I was still crying. Choking on my own self-hatred.

“Jill announced she was pregnant in May, and the two have asked Dan to be their child’s godfather. He said yes.”

I wanted to scream at Dan Glacier that I was sorry. Sorry for being such a weak little runt that was too scared to react, too scared to think clearly when he needed me most. I wanted to beg his forgiveness for not letting him in my car, rushing him to the hospital and saving his life, striking up a lifelong friendship and later asking him to be the godfather of my own future child.

In a less-sympathetic article published on a hiking think-piece site that I combed the internet for, I learned Dan was hiking in pursuit of finding a sort of mythical pear tree teased to exist deep in the forest. Local legend stated that the pear tree had been planted by the original Roanoke colony before they mysteriously disappeared hundreds of years ago. Some hikers claimed to have visited it and eaten from the tree, but then online trolls accused them of lying. Others claimed to have been to the spot where the tree should have been and said it was nowhere in sight, but other commentators then accused those hikers of trying to dispel the myth because it was too dangerous for legend-seekers to attempt to climb to. Dan admitted in nearly every interview that he was, indeed, trying to find the pear tree when he got lost.

So I set off for the pear tree.

I was not a hiker, nor a survivalist, nor a person that usually “set off” for anything. But I was also no longer a paralyzed bystander, speeding away from the unknown.

Virtually spelunking deep in the recesses of the internet, one comment buried at the bottom of a message board suggested going from the southern most part of the forest straight north. It was the less flashy way, the less physically challenging route to the tree that held little appeal to thrill-seekers.

A mildly concerned friend dropped me off at the base of the trail on a Sunday morning.

“Can’t you just buy a pear and pretend you got it from the tree?” He asked.

“I already screwed Dan over once. I can’t let him down again.” I replied. He gave me a quizzical look as I hopped out of the car, strapping my backpack clip around my chest.

I waved goodbye to him as his truck pulled away around the bend, and I was suddenly filled with a wave of dread. How lonely Dan must’ve felt when he watched me drive away.

I took off up the trail, not knowing really where I was going or what I was doing. My view grew darker quickly, with thick rows of trees growing bigger the more I went. Did the settlers of the Roanoke colony feel this lonely too? Or this guilty for taking the land that would, in turn, eat them up? Was the pear tree planted to give back to the earth, in their own attempt of being forgiven?

Nightfall came down hard and fast, enveloping me in darkness within a few hours of hitting the trail. A brisk cold came soon after, seizing onto my hands and feet and forcing me to stop for the night.

Night turned into day, which bounced back into night, until day found its way back to earth. Somehow I survived three days on my own, sticking to a overgrown trail whose foliage wicked at my arms and wrapped around my legs, begging me to stay. The pre-packaged taste of granola and trail mix grew bitter in my mouth and my water supply was all but gone. On the morning of that last day, I started imagining every tree around me was a pear tree.

The third time I saw Dan Glacier, he first appeared at as a mirage at the crest of the trail up ahead of me, surrounded by men and women in black with camera equipment. As I hiked closer, the mirage never disappeared. They all became more sharply focused. He was there--really there--on the trail.

"You can just start from the beginning. Describe when and how you fell." One crew member said to a nervous Dan Glacier. He cleared his throat and nodded to the camera guy.

"Whenever you're ready."

Dan Glacier sucked in to speak, then his eyes caught mine as I gingerly approached the group from behind. I have no idea what he was thinking when he saw me, chapped lips desperate for water, eyes in sheer wonder of the sight of him.

"I know you," he said. The entire crew whipped their heads around at me. My eyes remained on him. He broke his pose and moved past the camera guy toward me.

"I know you," He repeated. I nodded.

"I'm sorry, this is a private shoot..." One man interjected, but I cut him off.

"I didn't save you. On the road. I don't know why." My eyes broke contact with his to gaze down at his prosthetic hand.

He nodded. "You don't owe me anything."

My voice caught in my throat.

He continued with a smirk, "The pear tree wasn't there either, and I don't blame it for that."

"Does it exist?" I managed to get out.

"No."

A crew member with a clipboard inched closer. "Uh, Dan?" He said, "We've got a tight shoot before we need to start heading back down..."

"I gotta get back to this documentary thing. But I could use your help now."

"Anything." I said, too sincerely.

"Watch the monitor and let me know if I look weird? I never know what to do with my hands."

Then I watched Dan Glacier again on a screen, and yet also in real life at the same time. Describing what happened, likely for the 100th time. Moving his hands fluidly. In this latest telling, he omitted the part about the first car speeding away from him when he got to the road. As thought it never existed, like that stupid mythical pear tree.

It was the greatest grace.