My 13-year-old autistic son and I had an unexpected adventure that led to bonding, leadership lessons, and an unexpected treasure.
We went to see my Auntie to pick up a huge quantity of home-made Indian food for my dad’s birthday celebration. Anyone with an Indian relative understands that “picking up food” means first talking and spending quality time and eating and more eating, with my Auntie as usual proclaiming “you look so thin, you need to eat more” and refilling your plate until you want to pop. After a few hours of quality family time (including discussing my writing because Auntie is a retired psychologist who loves my simple applicable insights and ability to derive lessons from the quotidian) we hit the road. Because of being at her house forty minutes from mine, we took a different route than normal down to the family cabin in the mountains, and as with most adventures it was when we went off path that created the most intense moments and the great rewards were discovered.
I had 50% more gas than the trip would require so we felt ok not filling up the van until off the highway, we had drinks and the food plus some snacks and everything required for a long weekend at the cabin. As I had planned to see my Auntie I was wearing nice but not formal shorts and shirt and sneakers (no shoes in her house, you leave them and your problems at the door) so we were good to go.
Other than the hurricane.
The remnants of a hurricane were coming through the region. The next day I looked at some vids of the flooding in town and the roads turned to rivers and all the downed power lines and trees and carnage, but we figured we were good to go because we had made this trip a few hundred times, we had reserves, we weren’t in a rush, and family was waiting on the other side.
Google decided to take us not on our normal, primarily highway route. That’s ok, even though going through the mountains on county roads for 60 miles with little or no cell is normally not a big deal. The first road that was temporarily a stream wasn’t a problem, nor the fifth. But then it got interesting.
Downed trees blocking a road that had no escape routes for fifteen miles meant turning around to go find another way with no viable map or GPS (no signal so no communication so couldn’t phone a friend). Luckily five miles after turning around we ran into the local volunteer Fire Chief who was headed up to take care of that blockage: a tree roughly three feet in diameter. So we pulled off the road into a safe place and played a card game and talked as the deluge continued. Unexpected quality time! Forty minutes later we saw the Chief coming back and he signaled all was good. So we pulled out and headed back up over this mountain.
There were some driveways and small dirt side roads that washed out into the main road. Rocks the size of my fist everywhere, the water red from the clay. Small branches down everywhere. Had to drive at a quarter speed to avoid the big debris like the rock the size of my head that had been swept down or the limbs halfway across the road as the rain continued to pour down and my son’s anxiety level increased to a palpable level. General Mathis has a saying “calm is contagious”, and through this stage of the journey I focused on being the calming influence to keep my boy from starting to freak out. And it worked for a while.
We got through those fifteen miles and made the turn onto the next road, only 15 miles to the cabin and a relative straight shot. But I was starting to run low on gas, having enough to make the rest of the trip and probably an extra 30 miles depending on conditions up and down the hills. Plus it was about forty minutes from sundown in the mountains. And anyone that has had an antsy ADHD/Autistic kid in a vehicle for four plus hours with no outlet for their energy and no more coffee can appreciate the emotions and energy in the vehicle. But it was four miles to a gas station, another ten and then one turn and we’d be inside laughing with family.
And then the road was closed. At least this was at an intersection, and the volunteer firefighter said just go up this way for about ten miles over the mountain on the seasonal highway and you’ll come out at the fire station. Easy peasy.
Except that the seasonal highway was unpaved a good chunk of the way up the mountain. Basically one lane road, so the couple of people coming back down and I were barely able to pass, especially with the raging culverts. Oh, and there were downed trees here too and washed-out sections and mini-lakes on the occasional flat parts. No cell service, did I mention that? And the sun going down.
At one point there was a six-inch tree down across the road. Twenty plus feet long. On an unpaved incline with deep rivulets being carved into the road by the rushing water. At least the lightning had stopped at this point and the rain lessened from typhoon to annoyingly hard and cold drizzle.
I got out of the vehicle and spent a half hour getting the branches broken off enough to muscle the tree to the side of the road so I could have space to get the van through. I told my son to stay in the van because if a vehicle came down the hill, I needed him safe. Soaking wet feet, nice shirt not so nice anymore and the khaki shorts destined for the garbage as they were torn and stained beyond saving. Covered in mud to my knees and elbows and a mess everywhere else. But we had a way through.
As the road was annihilated on both sides and reduced to barely wider than the van, I cautiously inched backwards to get a running gunning start up the incline, through the exposed rocks and trenches carved by the water. Did I mention it was also a curve? So added level of difficulty.
I backed up about thirty feet and started up as hard as I could, slipping and sliding and fishtailing to get the speed to make it up that hill, hearing scraping and all sorts of dangerous sounds from the vehicle as we pushed through the river coming down the road and up the “highway” through the carnage. All the time I’m saying out loud “we got this, c’mon we can do this. God has us.” To calm my now borderline freaking out kid and to try and calm my rising panic because being stuck on a mountain dirt road with no service at night would be suboptimal and I was beyond concerned. But not showing it, maintaining the confident image that I certainly did not feel.
We made it through those obstacles.
There was another few miles of winding “road” (more like active stream bed filled with flotsam and jetsam and huge rocks) up to the top with numerous close calls with tree branches and puddles that could have held Leviathan that had to be forded.
Then we crested the mountain, my heart racing harder than at the end of a twenty-mile run. My son had become very quiet with fear, so I upped the banter to try and prevent the fear from paralyzing him (or I) as I we were into emergency status on gas and still no sign of civilization nor signal on the cell.
Then suddenly we were on pavement again. I pointed this out to my son and fist bumped him to celebrate this little bit of positive feedback and to keep morale high as we inched onward. He now had muddy knuckle marks from my still mud caked hands but it was worth it.
Then there were houses. With triple digit numbers on the mailboxes.
Then double-digit ones.
And then up ahead was a stop sign!
We had reached the road with the firehouse.
A right-hand turn and we were on the road we needed to be on. A few prayers and the fumes in the tank and we pulled into the gas station five miles up the road.
Ten minutes later we were pulling into the cabin driveway, to see family and celebrate.
I’m not going to go into all the lessons of this epic adventure, you are smart enough to derive them.
But on the trip back a few days later my son and I had an after action debrief and we talked about what had happened and lessons learned. Most importantly we talked about what he had experienced and felt, and I was honest about the emotional turmoil I went through during this trial but how the important thing was to make sure I did what I needed to do to get us through and to make sure he was ok.
His response? “Thanks. You’re a good dad.”
And that was the treasure I found in this adventure.