July 5, 2013:
Last night I went to bed and read the last section of Janna
Zonder’s book Magenta Rose. This
morning I sat next to her at breakfast and told her how much I enjoyed the
book. (It is available from Amazon. She walked back to the Guest House with me
and autographed my copy of her book. We had a lovely conversation. This is all
so interesting.
I am writing this at 9:30 a.m., and now plan to work until
noon on Chapters 15 and 16.
* * *
It’s about 10 p.m. now, and we had an exciting day. Yes I did
make progress on my book. I am up to Chapter 17 now. As usual in the mornings, I was working at a
side-table near the picture window in the living room of the guest house.
Claude was at his usual place at the dining-room table. His wife, Susan, was
working in their room, but she came out and conferred with Claude from time to
time. Will was in his room.
Daryl usually works at the table with Claude, but he spent
most of the morning taking a nap on a sofa in the living room. After lunch, I
came back and saw Daryl taking another nap. I thought that was strange. After
lunch the sun came out for the first time all week. I went out to my Mazda
Miata, which was parked next to Daryl’s nearly identical Miata. He and I had
talked a lot about how much we loved our Miatas, despite the fact that the week
of rain had gotten the carpets of both our cars wet. The roofs leak in
prolonged rain. IN an attempt to dry out the soggy interior, I put the top down
in my Miata, cranked up the heater, and drove up the Parkway a couple of miles
to Little Switzerland, where I got a chai tea and checked the Internet. I
uploaded the previous day’s blog entry. When I got back to Wildacres, I went
for a short hike. I just looped around the Mountaintop Trail, which curves
around the western side of the Wildacres property. It only takes about 20
minutes to walk that trail from the Guest House to the dining hall. Then I
completed the loop back to the Guest House by the paved path through the middle
of the complex.
When I got back—about 5 p.m.—two Wildacres staff members
asked if I was staying there and did I know where Daryl’s room was. They said
Daryl was lost in the woods and had called his wife, who called Wildacres. The
office called 911, and a team of EMT’s and other rescue folks went looking for
him. Apparently several people from the retreat were also searching the woods.
The staff members wanted to look through his room to see if there were any
medications. They said his wife had given permission for them to do that.
All through dinner people worried about Daryl and wondered
what to do. After dinner I saw Mike, the director of the retreat center. He
said they had not found Daryl yet. Several of us asked if we should go look,
but Mike said they didn’t want to send any more people off into the woods at
this point, and that the professional search and rescue folks knew best how to
do it.
About an hour later—about 7 p.m.—Mike asked me to go into
Daryl’s room again and get a complete change of dry clothes. He said the rescue
team had located Daryl and were bringing him back. They said he needed dry
clothes. Marci was there and came with me. We got the clothes to Mike very
quickly, and Mike rushed off to meet Daryl.
We had assumed the evening reading would be canceled, but
since Daryl was located, we went ahead. The readings were wonderful as usual.
About 8:30, the conference director, Judi, came in and said she had just been
talking to Daryl, and he was fine. In fact, she said, he wanted to read some
poems. She also reminded us all of the rule that nobody should ever hike these
trails alone. A few minutes later Daryl walked into the room to thunderous
applause. We were all so glad to see him.
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| Daryl and out two (almost) identical cars |
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