Sunday, October 27, 2024

Not Even Not Zen 373: Biomythography - Note 111: Running from the Law III

Third Run

I don’t remember who I intended to visit. It had to be someone in Montgomery Village. That was the only reason to try Brink Road. 

At the time, Brink was a narrow, winding lane. A student at Seneca Valley showed me how to drive it. She compared it to my home street, a similarly constricted path, bounded on either side by steep berms of dirt. Twists in the road ended in cliffs, sometimes with gaurd rails, sometimes not. In a few places, the edge of the road fell off into a grove of trees. Brink left no margin for driver error but, to me, cruising on it felt like home. 

I was so comfortable, I picked up speed and started having fun. I raced into tight turns, going from fifteen to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty. As I blasted through a straightaway and headed into another hard corner, I passed a police car coming the other way. 

The police hit the siren even before we passed. 

We were driving in the early days of speed radar. Police kept their units turned on all the time, it seemed. I figured, on a winding road like this, I could run. After all, there wasn't even a place for cop cars to turn around. I hit the gas.

As I spun into another switchback, I heard a squeal of tires behind and to my right. The police were risking it. They were turning around in the middle of the road. After a few seconds, I realized, oh no, I'm in a Volkswagon Rabbit.

Before, when I had managed to escape tickets, I'd had a car that had speed on a straightaway. This vehicle had nothing. Good gas mileage, that's what it had. With a second or two to think, I glanced up and saw a housing development sign on my left. This was my chance was to lose them. I turned into the freshly-paved development. This would be the kind of place where I would soon be lost to any pursuer in other traffic, other people, and maybe a few other cars like mine. 

Instead, I realized I was alone. A hundred yards after I pulled in, I could see this wasn't a development at all. It was just roads. It was the promise of a development. 

Someone was planning to put houses here. They had built some of the infrastructure, roads and streetlamps, plus a few green transformer boxes in the grass. And then construction had stopped. Lots of the grass was young and pushing through a layer of straw. The neighborhood-to-be was currently just rolling, green hills and weaving, weird avenues with cross-streets that looped into other cross-streets. After the first street sign, the roads weren't even marked.

This place was a fractal mandelbrot of suburban promise. To avoid a dead end, I turned left. A tenth of a mile later, I tried to turn back but there was no good way to do it. Behind me, I noticed flashing lights. The police car was pulling into the development. 

I drove while gazing backwards. The police, in their hurry, sped into the dead end I'd avoided. Good. I had a few more seconds. I took a turn that promised to hide me behind a hill for a moment.  

My hope had been that the cops wouldn't figure out I was hiding at all. Obviously, they knew. If I had seen them, they had been able to see me. I was driving the only other car in this lonely maze. They knew I was in a Volkswagon Rabbit, almost certainly, and that I was hoping to evade a speeding ticket. 

Over the span of a few minutes, I got myself even more lost. Without landmarks and with no road signs, it was hard to judge how much the loops of the roads were turning me away from the exit. If I hadn't been a frantic teenager, panicked about possibly losing my driver's license, I would have seen the comedy routine in what I was doing. Even at the time, I had a dim awareness of it. If this were a Benny Hill skit in fast-motion, both cars bumbling around and popping up in stupid places, it would be funny.

As it was, the police and I caught glimpses of each other when we both rose to the tops of hills at the same time. I remember being puzzled as to how they hadn't caught me yet and then seeing them bolt down an obvious cul-de-sac. As many wrong turns as I was making, they were making even more.  

At one point, I rose high enough on a hill that I could see the police car on a different rise far away in the development. We both slowed to glance at each other. In the pause, I became  aware of how, only a few minutes before, we had stared at each other from exactly the opposite positions. In my frantic turns in the asphalt loops hoping to escape the police pursuit, I had switched to the set of lanes from which the police had come. I had never left the development switchbacks. And yet, somehow, I'd gotten here. I felt sure the police had to be realizing the same thing. 

The sight of us in opposite positions made me realize I had to be close to getting out. I turned south. It only took one extra turn. Suddenly, there was Brink Road again at the intersection in front of me. I had reached a different exit to the development than the road I'd used to enter. But I didn't care. This was freedom. I came to a full stop, realizing I had time. Gently, I turned left out of the development. 

#

If I went on to visit someone, I don't remember. My time with a friend must pale in my memory when compared to the chase, I suppose. What I do realize in retrospect is that I had already told myself I wouldn't get into this situation again. But I did. Obviously, I had some sort of adrenaline reflex I needed to beat. 

And somehow, I did. For my next encounter, I pulled over, waited, apologized, gave my information, and took my ticket. I never tried to avoid the encounters again.

#

Years ago, I told one or two of these stories to my wife, trying out the idea they might be told in a funny way. Well, I made her laugh. But in trying to be more serious and accurate about them now, I found myself confronted by an odd idea, which is that the repeated narrow escapes eventually taught me to not have narrow escapes. 

All I had to do, after all, was be slightly less reckless. It took years for me to manage it, but I as I inspect life patterns in retrospect, I think this was the way it happened. Eventually, I did learn.

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Not Even Not Zen 372: Biomythography - Note 110: Running from the Law II

Second Run

The second time I got caught speeding, I was so close to my house, I didn't have time to think much. My mind had already leaped ahead to the rest of the day. I woke up to the trouble when I saw lights flash behind me in Darnestown. I had passed through the speed trap area fine, I'd thought. I'd relaxed. And I'd hit the gas while the speed limit exiting town was still thirty. Everyone did it. The long straightaway out of town had a higher speed limit going in, so the same strip of road allowed forty-five in one direction and thirty in the other, which everyone knew didn't make sense. 

Of course, my parents had warned me the police were ticketing people doing exactly what I had just done. But still, I had acquired the habit of hitting the gas after the main intersection. I did it again.

As I climbed the hill where the speed limit was about to change, I reached fifty in the thirty zone. A police car crested the hill from the other side. The driver noticed my speed. He slowed and flicked on his light bar. I watched the bright blue flash in my rear view mirror. Then I topped the hill and dropped out of the officer's view.

If I got a ticket, that was probably the end of my driving. Or so I thought. (In retrospect, I question every bit of semi-thinking I did. I had no points on my license.) 

This was when radar was new. Police had started using it everywhere. They flipped it on and the readout light brightened their faces. They measured trucks. They measured cars. They measured birds. This particular police car was probably returning from giving a ticket to someone like me, someone who had done precisely what I had. As I'd been warned.

In my mind, the likely ticket meant no more driving, so that raised the stakes. Living in the forest where I did, I couldn't go anywhere at all if I couldn't drive. 

Part of my reaction was physical, too. In every difficult or dangerous situation, I tended to speed up. I wanted to get through the bad part as fast as possible, even if that meant acting before anyone was ready or slamming into everyone else at full speed. I leapt into fights to get hit, to be reassured I wouldn't have to wait. I got extra brash when trying to ask a girl out because I needed that. Taking my time was not an option. It was too painful.

Why not speed up a little and see if the cop car couldn't turn around? Maybe I would get out of sight before he could get on my trail. 

I crested the next hill. No car in sight behind me. Good. In the next valley, which was a few hundred feet of flat road, I sped up. 

On the next hill, I glanced back. Unfortunately, I could see a police car.

The car didn't have its siren on. Or at least, I couldn't hear it. The lights didn't whirl red, white, and blue. The light bar on top remained a steady bluish color. Or so I thought. I had to return my gaze to the front and watch out for traffic. Now that I was speeding in the fifty miles per hour zone, I felt leery about the  next intersection, the one between Darnestown Road and Germantown Road.

This was where Germantown Road ended and a housing development, Spring Meadows, rose on the left. I saw no cars on either side, no reason to slow down. As I passed through the crossway, a pale yellow car pulled in from the right. It slowed to the stop sign on Germantown Road, which was good because I couldn't have reacted if it ran through the sign. Then I was gone down the other side of the hill.

I thought that maybe I could continue to speed just a little, enough to get to my turn-off ahead of the cop but also not much more than normal. I wanted to aim for the middle ground of having an advantage but leaving room to pretend I hadn't noticed an attempt to stop me.

At the top of the next hill, I could see the police car gaining. There was only one hill to go.

It was really, really important to turn onto my road, the entrance to which was partly hidden, before a policeman could see me do it. I needed to get out of sight.

On the down side of the hill, the road ahead lay empty. A tunnel of trees and vegetation cane up on my right. This was my turn-off. Behind me, the cop car was out of sight but closing fast. I had to slow down for the turn. It would be worse than speeding if I drifted into the oncoming lane. The country road I lived on was narrow. We had dirt birms and trees on either side with branches that poked into open car windows. There was no extra room. Vehicles had to pass each other with less than a foot of space or else drive hard into tree branches. 

When I turned, I encountered no car coming the other way. And I thought I'd made it before the cop car could see. To the police, it might seem like I had disappeared or maybe sped up an awful lot. 

Hyperventilating and shaking, I drove the quarter mile to my driveway. If the police had made the turn with me, I would have no way to know. Every bend in the little road hid cars from each other in every direction. 

When I pulled into the driveway, I wanted to hop out while the station wagon was still rolling. I settled for slamming the car into park as soon as I could. No one was home. I sprinted inside. 

Alone, I watched out the picture window. A few seconds went by. Half a minute. No police car pulled up. I glanced at my parents green station wagon. It looked hot. And it was. Anyone who touched the hood would know I had just driven it. 

I wanted to hide the car. But going out to do it risked attention from the cops. 

Another half minute passed. Suppose the police had passed by my turn off but realized I must have taken it? How long would it take them to turn around and find me? 

Probably about this long. But maybe there was still time to hide my parents car. There couldn’t be that many big green station wagons. The side of our house was empty. It was wide enough to drive the car through. And to hide it behind the house.

That would leave ruts in the yard, though. It had rained. The ground was soft. Hard to explain. My parents would want to know why. For that matter, any cop who noticed me doing it would sarcastically want an explanation too. That would be a difficult conversation.

But it had to be done. Now.

I had ditched my car keys in the kitchen as if preparing to deny everything. Now I reclaimed them and headed back to the living room. As I started out, I froze. Through the picture window, I saw the cop. He sped along the road. Past my house. Past my driveway.  He kept going. 

Then the police disappeared down the hill.  Gone. 

I stood by the window, hyperventilating for a while. After I decided I didn’t want to be around if the car swung back up the road. I marched down in my room, instead. For a while, I listened to my racing heart. 

#

I'm pretty sure that, after the second run, I swore I would never do anything like it again. I would stop being stupid. For weeks, the memory of my guilt returned. It combined with my feeling of undeserved luck from the first time. I knew it wasn't worth feeling so guilty. And also, wasn't worth knowing that it wasn't just a feeling. 

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Not Even Not Zen 371: Biomythography - Note 109: Running from the Law I

Running from the Cops I

A Series of Short-Short Stories
Plus Getting Caught Once, A Slightly Longer Story

The First Run

I was driving my family’s forest green Ranch Wagon on the Washington DC beltway. The weather was perfect for Maryland, not too humid. The sky was clear. The roads were full but only to the extent of a Saturday morning in the spring of 1980. The speed limit was 55 all across the nation but there were not enough cars around me to keep me from enjoying myself.

I pressed the pedal down. The speedometer read 70, 80, 90, 95. I turned up the radio and dodged between gaps in the traffic patterns. I sang to myself and laughed. I passed other station wagons. I passed sports cars. I passed every car.

In the process, I crossed the county line between PG and Montgomery. I checked for signs of speed traps and saw none.

Suddenly, I heard a roar. A blue Camaro pulled up beside me. The driver, a blonde haired man, waggled his steering wheel. He laughed at me and hit the gas. His car shot forward into a gap. He steered through a couple more cars and pulled away.

I smashed the accelerator down to reach the passing gear of my Ranch Wagon. It leaped after the Camaro.

Thirty seconds later, I passed the other driver. He raised his fist and shouted as I went by. Soon, his car caught mine again. He looked determined but not angry. He gave a puzzled smile as he tried to pass. I wouldn’t let him. The rest of the traffic wouldn’t let him, either.

I dodged the Ranch Wagon in and out of traffic patterns, often followed by the Camaro. The maneuvers went on for about a minute. Then the other driver spotted a gap in the far right lane. He slipped into it and put on the burst of speed. He pulled in front of me even while I was passing someone in the fast-but-not-fast-enough lane.

We spent a couple minutes tearing around the beltway. He slowed once to give me a nod and show he wasn’t mad. Then his body language changed and he started pulling over, lane after lane, to exit to the right. He didn’t make it. Or rather, he realized that he couldn’t hit the exit ramp at 100 miles an hour and survive.

So he pulled back onto the road. When I turned north onto route 270, he turned with me to continue the race. We sped up the six lane highway, picking up bursts of speed, passing each other and laughing. After a long while, the competition seemed to fade. I slowed down and took my exit onto route 28. To my surprise, the blue car swerved to follow me. At the first stoplight, the driver pulled up beside me and revved his engine. Clearly, he didn’t care about his destination anymore. He had left it far behind. Now, he was all in for the drag race. And he had a Camaro.

He peeled out from the starting line to show he had the better car. But in a very limited way, he didn’t. At the next light, I slammed into passing gear just before the light changed. The Ranch Wagon easily beat the blue car off the line.

Not long after, as we passed through the residential areas, I slowed to the speed limit. But the blue car didn’t care. Every time I slowed, it passed me. Once, the driver anticipated I would make a turn but I didn’t. So he spun his car in a gas station parking lot, hit the pedal, and caught up again. Now we were on a two lane road. He couldn’t pass. Except he did. He turned into oncoming traffic and drove it off the road.

And at the next light, I laughed, slammed the pedal, and passed the blue car again.

Finally, we hit a speed trap stretch of road where the limit was thirty. I slowed down to forty. The Camaro driver had already forced another car off to the side as he passed, but I knew this area was terrible with blind turns and tried to signal him. He didn't seem to notice. We rounded a corner as he was speeding by me on the left. Suddenly, straight ahead of him, there was a cop car. The Camaro didn’t flinch. To avoid the accident, the police officer pulled off to the side. As he did, he activated his sirens and lights.

The blue car sped onwards. But now we were in trouble with the law.

I slowed the Ranch Wagon. For an instant, it seemed possible that the cop might not have understood I was drag racing. But then I realized, no, I wasn’t going to get away with it. The other driver was as good as caught. He would tell the police.

I glimpsed the blue car, still racing, as it blasted up Route 28 ahead of me. It caught a little air on the top of the hill. My gaze narrowed. That was my route home. But it was also the route the Poolesville police force liked to take every day. I made my decision. My breath eased. My limbs went calm.

In the center of Darnestown, I took a left at the gas station. I planned to avoid the route home for twenty minutes. As an alternative, I mapped a quiet, country drive in my head. I let my car roll at the speed limit until I hit River Road. There, I turned south toward the developments and the estates of the super rich. After ten minutes, I pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store. It didn’t take long for my nervousness to return. When I thought about how I had fled from police pursuit, I knew I could be in more trouble than I'd dreamed. But did they even know they were chasing me? I started to calculate my chances. And I hyperventilated.

I pulled the car into driving gear. I had to keep moving because my body couldn't let me rest. I found my way back onto River Road. This time, I turned the Ranch Wagon north towards home. I took a wandering path, careful to stay at reasonable speeds. When I returned to Route 28, I felt a spike of anxiety. I needed to make another decision. From here, I was two hills from my house. This was the riskiest road but it was the fastest. If I choose the longer way, Route 118, I would have to drive another fifteen minutes.

I decided I was safe enough. I turned left onto Route 28.

As I crested the last hill, the one just before I turned towards my parents house, I looked down and hit the brakes. Then I took my foot off the brake pedal and coasted. My brain clamped down on my body's nervousness.

In the trough between the two great hills sat the blue Camaro. Three Montgomery County police cars surrounded it. I had to drive down the road watching the police as they conferenced next to the Camaro driver. And I watched the crowd of them. And watched. I kept waiting for the Camaro driver to glance up and recognize my car. He didn't. The police didn't. No one in the crowd looked up. I took a right turn onto my parents road and exhaled. I ambled amongst the trees on the winding gravel paving. In a tenth of a mile, I pulled into the driveway. No one had seen me. No one was home.

I walked inside and, for a while, I paced through every room of the house. I kept waiting for the police to drive along my road looking for a green Ranch Wagon and a driver of my description. No one ever came.

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Not Even Not Zen 370: Biomythography - Note 108: Werewolves of Bethesda

Wikimedia Commons (Mech, Christensen, Asa)

Werewolves of Bethesda

On an early morning in December, 2023, I turned onto Democracy Boulevard. 

Democracy runs east-west through Bethesda, Maryland. It passes through commercial areas, strip malls, a few high-rises, wooded glades with single-family homes, and denser, apartment-style housing. The road hosts strips of forested lands along both sides but it does so in the manner of a city, with buildings breaking up the tree cover. The exceptions, where the tree cover remains continuous, are the single family homes and the parks. 

The largest employers in the area are hospitals: Naval Medical, National Institutes of Health, and Sibley Hospital. All three complexes keep their spaces relatively lush with flowers and grasses. They maintain freshwater ponds with ducks, geese, and deer. The largest parks in the area are the Cabin John Regional Park, Rollins Park, Garret Park, and Rock Creek Park. Bethesda is home to countless smaller community parks and other areas of green, living space like the Congressional Country Club. 

Despite the parks and other examples of relatively-tamed nature, though, Bethesda is functionally part of Washington, D.C. It's considered one of the more densely populated areas in the United States. That's why it was a surprise to meet a wolf on Democracy Boulevard. 

As I pulled up to a stoplight, it was on my right. I didn't notice it. In the dark, morning twilight, most of my visibility came from my headlights. Off to the side, even a large animal remained a dim silhouette. As I sat and waited for the light to turn, though, the wolf crossed from right to left.

It may have taken a full second for me to become aware of what it was. 

And maybe it was a coyote. If so, it was the biggest, healthiest-looking coyote I'd ever seen. After it trotted in front of my car, it stopped for a moment in the highway meridian, turned, and stared at me. 

The proper name, most likely, is coywolf. Many years ago, probably in Maine or Ontario according to the geneticists who track such things, a wolf interbred with a coyote. The result was a lithe, slightly delicate wolf. Or perhaps it was an unusually large, strong, and thick-haired coyote. The interbreeding has happened so many times and has been so successful that the process has spawned a term to match the canid. Now the east coast of the United States has 'coywolves.'

I had seen coyotes out west. This beast was considerably taller and more majestic. Its fur was heavy and, weirdly, too beautiful for a coyote. The street lights on the other side of the animal provided back-lighting that showed the fur as a sort of ghostly corona surrounding its wolf-like body. The fur, in fact, had the patterns and shades of grey, white, and black that are stereotypical for both wolves and coywolves. 

It couldn't have been a wolf, not in Maryland. Or so I have been told. But it seemed as tall as a wolf, perhaps a bit thinner, with long legs and narrow jaw. It might have had the bushiest tail I've seen on a wild animal. The black-furred tail reminded of how sheerly beautiful and healthy some wild animals seem. Large raptors are often like this for me, awe-inspiring and impressive up close. My mind's eye recalls, with a sense of startlement, turning to notice a peregrine falcon sitting on a picnic table as I hiked by on a secluded trail, a height which brought the bird's head level with mine. It hit me with its piercing gaze as if I had rudely interrupted something. Wild horses, too, often look groomed. They're always ready to pose for the covers of romance paperbacks. 

And this coywolf, too. Beautiful. 

As I maneuvered my car towards my seven-story office garage, which took a full U-turn on Democracy Boulevard, I inadvertently followed the path of the coywolf. In a few seconds, I caught sight of it moving. It had crossed the empty highway and hopped up to the grassy border of the Marriott building. Without any back-lighting, it presented a dark, quadruped shape as it loped between the high-rises. I recognized where it was going. There couldn't be any other destination. 

At the center of four large office complexes lay a retention pond. This was a good sized body of water, a permanent fixture in the landscape surrounded by mulberry trees, a stretch of thick bamboo, cat-o-nine-tails, and signs warning passers-by that this constrained clump of the natural world was a protected wilderness area. 

For years, the geese had driven out the ducks from the pond, outlasted the herons, and had in fact, occasionally chased hikers walking along the asphalt path that ran around the office complex and through the protected area. They pooped up a storm, of course. Geese droppings were so common a hazard on the hiking path that the day-walkers, as a habit, scraped their shoes on the grass before re-entering their workplaces. There was no way to count on avoiding all the goose poop. 

I hadn't hiked through the area much lately due to the pandemic shutdowns and slow transition into hybrid workspaces. The sight of the coywolf, who had disappeared behind a wall of my parking garage, inspired me to vow to visit it. Mentally, I started to list my meetings and the breaks between them. I looked for a chance to stroll outside, if only for a few minutes. 

In my office suite, I ran into another commuter and described to her the coywolf. She didn't react the way I'd expected, impressed with nature. She had heard warnings about coywolfs in our area, particularly around Rock Creek Park. They had eaten a few, small dogs.

"Would you have thought it was so beautiful," she asked me, "if you were out of your car?"

"Huh." That was a good question. 

Before my ten o'clock meeting, I managed to sprint down the stairs and out the back doors of my building. From there, it was a short walk to the pond. To my surprise, the pond had changed since my last hike around it. 

There was almost no goose poop. It was the first thing I noticed. My approach was a double-time march and it was trouble free. Going off the trail was harder. The bamboo had grown up nearly to the asphalt. I had to patrol around the grove to the cattail reeds, then to the rivulet that ran into the pond, which provided an open space with a view. It was also the most obvious path for the coywolf. I couldn't make out recognizable paw prints in the mud, though. 

When I got a clear look at the scene, I found all the geese in the water. There wasn't a single individual on shore. In fact, the geese gently paddled close together in a cluster near the center. Instead of there being more geese, which I would have expected with fewer people around than ever, there were only a dozen visible. The birds looked smaller than in previous years, not larger. I wondered about that, too. I wasn't sure the coywolf could be responsible. The biggest geese were probably as large as the coywolf and pretty tough, too. 

And yet this is the way it was. 

There's never one of any large animal, of course. The coywolf couldn't be alone. This recent stabilization of forces, probably including the changes in vegetation around the pond, was one that had taken years for the geese and coywolves to achieve. I was lucky to have arrived to work at the right time, noticed something (admittedly, right in front of my eyes), and taken an opportunity to follow up and see the adjusted balance of nature.