Last night I was at a friend’s house, about 200 miles away from home, and I needed to drive back to be home in time for work in the morning. We were using his car for driving around in town, and stopped for gas on the way back to his place, perhaps 10 at night. I knew I needed to stop for gas when I left, and was happy to see that the pumps at this station were on 24 hours, even though the place itself was closed. However, while my friend was getting gas, the pump’s fuel line froze, and no gas would come out. Usually, they explained, they had to pour dry gas up the line to get it running, but this time the attendant didn’t do that- they pushed some reset button instead, I don’t really know.
Three or four hours later, I was ready to leave myself. I've only left my friend's house twice before, and only during the daylight hours, so I'm afraid to say I got turned around. It was one of those situations where you *think* you're going the wrong way, but you always want to go just a little further in the hopes that you'd see something you recognize.
So, with the needle hovering just above 'E' and the temperature hovering just about '0', and no other cars on the road, I found myself at a gas station. Getting out of the car, and a quick look around revealed that it wasn't the right one. Some messing with the pumps revealed that *these* ones weren't open 24 hours, and I couldn't get any gas here. Well, I figured that at least now I knew definitively that I had gone the wrong way, and I could turn around and go back.
Stupid, inattentive me. The station was at a three-way junction of roads, and by the time I had gotten done driving and walking around the station to check it out, I had completely lost track which of the three I had come from. Didnt have a map, either- had left it in my friend's car. So a little nervous, with almost no gas, and body numb just from the little while I was outside the vehicle, I made my best guess and went.
Well, the story is only interesting if I went the wrong way, and of course I did. Or, I think I did. Impossible to say now. In any event, I went far enough that I was sure at the time it was the wrong way, and turned to go back and pick a different route, gas gauge flat out on empty now. At that point, I was quite nervous, and if you knew the area, as cold and remote as it can be, and saw how I was dressed, you'd understand why. Not where you want to run out of gas at 1 AM. I suppose it was then that I began to pray, just sort of in a 'prayerful attitude' at that point, not really with any words on my lips.
Anyway, I went down all three of the routes, and all three of them had
1.) Hidden drive signs several hundred yards from the station, one of the landmarks I remembered.
2.) Seemed to procede in a general uphill trend away from the station, when going downhill was what I was looking for, and seemed unreasonable to my increasingly panicky brain.
Soo, after travelling all three routes, and being at first happy, frustrated, and then afraid at the point in each one where I had convinced myself that it was the wrong one and had to turn back, I found myself at the station again, with an unknowably small amount of gas, and no idea which road to pick. Each time I picked incorrectly, I wasted more fuel, but each time I picked, I had to go past the point that I turned around at before to be sure, since I had been wrong about them all. THe more worried I got, the harder it got to remember which of the three roads I had been down last, and which subtle differences between the trees and hills I had assigned to each one. Not to mention it was late and I was tired, anyway.
So, finally, I decided I would go down the road that I had gone the shortest distance along before deciding it was wrong the last time- there was a ‘Stop Ahead’ painted on the pavement that seemed familiar, and combined with the knowledge that I really didn’t explore this route fully, and that I really only had one more chance, I headed down with a sort of fatalistic confidence- I had no idea if I was right, but I must be right, because there simply wasn’t any more room for error without catastrophe.
I was also praying the Jesus Prayer aloud the entire drive, quite afraid by now, and starting to run through scenarios about what to do if I was out of gas and needed to walk somewhere. I hadn’t seen any businesses that were open, and very few homes. Of course, I was asking God for some kind of intervention, as well. I started to see stumps and signs that seemed happily familiar, and felt quite good about my last pick, starting to relax. At that point, I came down over a rise, and the road I was on reached an intersection that I knew I had never seen before, and just a little ways further down the road, the way straight ahead was marked Dead End.
So there it was. I had no idea where this new intersection lead, though I knew neither of them were the road I was looking for. I might not even have enough gas to make it back to the station, obviously going on straight wouldn’t help me, and if I did make it back to the station, I had no idea which of the other two roads was the right one to take. Which ever one I picked, I’d have to drive down it for miles before I got past the point I decided to turn around the last time I checked it. Despite there being no resolution, obviously the worst thing to do was to sit still and let the car burn fuel not going anywhere at all, so I turned around and started heading back to the station, cranking the heat on full blast so I’d have something to last me a little while before the walk that I was sure was coming. By that point, my prayers were steady, chant like. When I turned around, though, I saw that that this new intersection was posted as leading to the Interstate- which is what I was planning on going to after I got gas. So I had a way out of guessing- I could drive to the interstate, head north to the next exit, which should be the exit that the 24-hour gas station was at, and I could fill my tank and get the hell out of there. So, without any idea how long I’d have to drive on the interstate (which didn’t have any traffick either), I started praying and driving.
I made it to the exit, and the gas station, without further drama, and much relief. Anytime is a good time to praise God, then especially so, so I went with it, praying and thanking. I got out of the car, swiped my card and started filling the tank. The tank was about halfway full when I realized that the gas pump had had 5 hours to re-freeze since I had been there last, and it had only gotten colder since. When I finished pumping gas, I prostrated myself there in the parking lot next to the car, said three more Jesus Prayers as well as singing the Doxology (wildly inappropriate, I’m sure, but it’s the holiest song I know all the words too), and asked God if there was something I was supposed to learn from all this, or do because of it. Right away, it came to mind that there was a friend that I ought to tell this story too. I don’t really know why, but I’ll do that. I figured I’d pass it along here too.
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