Clouds began to gather so innocently that I didn’t notice, but by the time an hour had passed and I was beginning to think it was time to go back, the sky was filling up and the innocent fluffy clouds I hadn’t at first noticed were turning a bit gray. After another rambling speech into my walkie that resulted in nothing but silence from wherever the other one was (probably now deceased in a junk yard), I hurried back on the path and made pretty good time. I congratulated myself on recognizing an unusual bush I’d taken note of when I passed it before, but, weirdly enough, spied another one just like it at the bend of my track. I retraced my steps and noticed another unusual bush that apparently wasn’t quite as unusual as I had originally believed.
It was then that I felt a few pangs of doubt, then a few drops of rain, then a sudden downpour. Looking left and right, I ran into the torrent and noticed a fuzzy shadow ahead. As I approached it, I was grateful to make out a cave of sorts; not a huge one by any means; rather, a sort of respectable indentation into rock. Breathing heavily, I reached it and slumped onto its floor, my back to the wall. If daylight held, maybe I could find my way back after the rain lifted.
It was beginning to grow a bit chilly and I thought of how the weather in these parts can drop fairly quickly this time of year. Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge seemed to me now to be not the 43,000 acres of fresh air and sunshine I had entered, but 43,000 acres of not so great possibilities. Pheasants, then fox, then bears traipsed through my thoughts. I closed my eyes in an effort to rest and regroup, and when I opened them, there were two strangers standing in front of me. I hadn’t heard a thing.
I believe it was at this point I was concluding it was time to panic, not that I had to think it through. Some things in life come as naturally as – well let’s just say prayer in a foxhole and leave it at that.
“I told you I heard something!” the woman said, giving the follow beside her a friendly nudge.
He looked at her with delight and disbelief, and they started muttering things I couldn’t understand. I caught odd-sounding words and phrases like torsion field along with algebraic-sounding back and forth chatter that I didn’t care to dissect.
Soon the man looked at me and asked about my half of a two-way radio I was holding. I told him it was a birthday gift and how, with good intentions, my friend had remembered the “radio” part of a comment I’d once made about wanting to go to Radio City Music Hall. The two friends apparently thought it extremely funny and I was relieved enough at their demeanor that I chuckled along with them.
“Would you?” he asked.
“Would I what?”
“Like to go to a concert?”
I shrugged my shoulders. He couldn’t be serious. We were in the middle of nowhere and the temperature was dropping. “I guess.”
“It is her birthday, after all,” the woman remarked.
“Hm. Seems like a fair exchange,” the man said.
The woman raised her eyebrows, but he ignored her and held out his hand.
“Mind if I look at it?”
“This?” I held out my walkie.
I can’t really tell you how it happened: Just that one minute I was sitting in a cave and the next minute I was taking in an Il Volo concert at Radio City Music Hall. Granted, I was still rather damp and underdressed (to say the least), but it was a concert I’ll never forget. The minute it ended, I found myself standing at the edge of the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge with enough daylight left to walk back to town.
Some people use their money to travel the world. Some travel only in their imagination. Me? All I know is that one autumn evening I seem to have traded my half of a two-way radio for a concert at Radio City Music Hall, and I’m more than satisfied with the trade.
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