Nothing can get the heart pounding and the blood racing through one’s veins like a sudden submersion into a pool of melted mountain runoff. It is also, incidentally, the best known hangover cure for those with stout hearts. There are reasons societies like the Polar Bear Club exist.
Every year they had a strict tradition of piling into the car and heading out west at the end of September to celebrate Gary’s birthday. This tradition also included a dramatic over imbibing of Guinness and Jameson the night before. Needless to say, the much less desired, but also traditional, headache and hangover were part of the package deal. The morning after the night before would begin in the mid to late afternoon, as soon as the first one of the crew had reemerged from their alcohol induced comas and started the rabble rousing.
Foggy movements commenced sluggishly after the first set of sleep crusted eyes had cracked open, cursed the light, and promptly slammed shut again. A deliberate attempt to block the passage of time and deny the existence of morning lacking a successful conclusion prompted the eyes’ possessor to sigh in resignation and assess the self inflicted damage while rolling herself over onto her side in preparation for the big move – sitting up. The initiation of such a move must be undertaken with severe caution as the incorrect pacing and progression could inevitably set her head crashing with an intensity to rival an industrial construction site. Once having achieved a lateral prone position it was possible to determine if verticality would be on the present menu.
Wary of the repercussions, she sat up cautiously and looked around the dark living room, taking a moment to gather her thoughts are recollect exactly why the surroundings were so completely unfamiliar. Memory slowly emerged, as a picture tuning in on an unstable channel and she swallowed twice to determine just how dehydrated she was. Owen’s house, out west. It was the September holiday and all six of them had traveled out to the small town in which Owen’s family had a cottage in order to celebrate. The paucity of beds had led to a heated World Series of rock-paper-scissors to determine who slept in comfort and who kipped on the floor. Rock-paper-scissors had never been her sport.
Feeling the approach of a cough, Evelyn tensed with trepidation. No, no, no. Please no. *COUGH* A paroxysm of pain shot through her shattered skull like bolts of lightening radiating from the center in every direction. “Fuck,” she quietly cursed, squeezing her eyes shut and fighting the urge to lie back down and surrender to the eruption; a greasy breakfast and a cup, or ten, of tea she knew were the only solution to her present predicament.
Evelyn stood slowly, first making her way to her knees, then to the back of the couch to find support on her way to a fully upright position. Pausing briefly before moving on, she made her way into the cottage’s tiny kitchen and stood in the doorway inspecting the battleground and formulating a strategy. Tea was her priority but a mug would have to be washed before that would be a possibility. There were pans, she assumed, but where was another dilemma entirely and the thought of rummaging through the cabinets and providing a metallic clanging to accompany the persistent throb in her head was not an appealing option. Her eyes landed on the kettle sitting atop the counter and she made her way there. Baby steps.
Kettle filled and switched on, Evelyn carefully washed the mug she found sitting in the sink and located both a box of Barry’s and the fresh carton of milk she had purchased the day before. Sitting on the fridge shelf next to the milk was the also newly acquired carton of eggs and packet of sausage. Predictably, the fry pan was under the cabinet. Unpredictably it was easily accessible and required no grand adventure to locate and set on the range. “Phase two complete.”
Within minutes the smell of frying sausage and rashers permeated the small kitchen creating a sense of comfort deep within Evelyn, as did the warm milky tea sliding down her throat. Fortification.
The sounds and smells emanating from the kitchen drew the attention and groggy praise of the other inhabitants of the cottage as they stumbled about moving through their own painful morning-after rituals. At first only grunts were exchanged, but by the time breakfast was half consumed conversation had begun to flow and the plans for the afternoon were being deliberated in broad brushstrokes. The washing up would be left until they had returned. “Priorities, people.”
“The real question is, how many cars do we take.” Jane got directly to the point, probably because one of the cars in question was hers.
“Two would be far more comfortable than one,” Gary opined.
“Truth,” Evelyn and Owen chimed.
“Yeah, but there’s no way my car will make it. Paved roads only. That’s all it can candle.”
“I hear ya, but do you really want to be smashed in the back of mine with three other people? I mean, I don’t care. I’ll be in the driver seat. Plenty of space for me.”
Always the conciliator, Owen proposed, “What about two in the front seat?” When his suggestion was greeted with audible silence, undeterred, he persevered. “Sarah and Jane are small, no? Why don’t you lot sit up front and Evelyn, Danny, and me can fit in back.” Crickets. “It makes the most sense…” Owen trailed off and concentrated on using the last bit of his sausage to mop up the egg yolk that remained on his plate.
Piled into the back of the car, windows wide open for the curative fresh air, they left the village and headed out onto dirt track country roads. Stone walls zipped past the car – only one – windows on both sides, unbroken as far as the eye could see but rimmed on the top by a seemingly endless expanse of green rolling hills. The road, barely wide enough for one car, let alone two, was actually a two lane local “highway” and as a result Gary would have to pull to the side, nearly scraping the left flank of the car on the low wall to make room for the passing vehicle coming from the opposite direction, Sarah and Jane, tucked snugly into the shotgun seat, visibly shying away from the approaching impenetrable barrier. Owen gazed thoughtfully out the window as Evelyn dozed, her head resting on his shoulder, and Danny and Gary sang full throatedly along to the Stone Roses blaring on the car stereo.
As the hour wore on the landscape rose and the road became bumpier eliciting profanity from the six sufferers in packed into the small car. Making one last turn off the road, the car slowed to a stop in front of a gated path. Danny jumped out of the car to investigate the status of the lock. After fiddling with the latch for a moment or two, he shrugged and returned to the open rear window and the expectant face of Evelyn.
“No go. We’ll have to hop it.”
“Excellent. Then let’s go!” Evelyn cracked in a brave, if slightly fabricated, tone as she crawled clumsily out of the back of the car and made her way to the rear, thumping her fist on the trunk hood which obligingly popped open. Sarah, Jane, and Owen came around the back of the car to help her drag out the supplies. Owen, overseeing the cooler “… for safe keeping”, snapped back the lid and extricated six cans from the reserve, taking one for himself and passing out the other five to the group. In unison the six friends popped the tops of their hair-of-the-dog and lifted the cans into the air, “Slanté!” A cacophony of gulps, sighs, buuuurps, and aaaahhhhhhs! followed.
Squinting into the dull light of the grey Irish afternoon, Evelyn surveyed the landscape, the craggy hills and damp grasses dotted with slate colored slabs and boulders. She felt a chill run down her spine and a thrill pass up it. While Owen grabbed six more cans from the seemingly bottomless stash in the car’s trunk, everyone else climbed the low stone wall and started the hike up to the ultimate destination, carrying the necessities of the afternoon: bags of crisps, towels, and a blanket for the ground should they find a spot dry enough to deploy it. Upward they hiked, the cool air making Evelyn’s ears tingle and sting before settling into a dull numbness. The wind stung her eyes and she squinted against the assault wondering, not for the first time, what degree of insanity was required for this venture. Hugging her towel close to her chest, Evelyn bent forward into the wind and looked down at her boots as they made their way up to the destination – the rock pool.
Destination acquired, even Gary and Danny, the most stout hearted of the crew, hesitated, looking down into the black depths of the water. The pool was unfathomably deep, the water black in a whole no more than ten feet across and fed by the mountain runoff. Over one side of the rock pool stood a large, flat rock protrusion which could, would, and had, function as a diving board into the abyss. Busying themselves with a variety of tasks, not strictly necessary but solid delaying tactics, each member of the crew turned inward to prepare him or herself for the moments to come – testing the wind; setting the towels away from the possible splash radius and debating the accuracy of the estimated measurements; warily eyeing the rock structure from which they would jump; assessing and commenting on whether the sun, “that smarmy bastard”, would make an appearance; rigging a rope line from which to suspend the beers that still wanted cooling into the water.
Stripping down to one’s skivvies in the late fall mountain air is a test of will power, but nothing like the steel nerves it takes to fling oneself off of rocks, easily five meters in the air, into the icy cold and watery abyss waiting below.
Clad only in her bra and panties, clothing stashed with her towel safely away to provide a modicum of warmth after the ritual was complete, Evelyn looked down into the pool where Owen still paddled and around the perimeter where Jane, Danny, and Gary, slightly blue in appearance to her eyes, laughed dripping with water. Sarah had opted out – she always did – and lay on the grass on the outstretched blanket dozing. “Come on, Evie,” Owen beckoned from the pool. He was laughing at her hesitation. She knew it. The degree to which she cared was, however, up for debate. “It isn’t going to get warmer if you wait longer, ya know,” Owen taunted. Evelyn stuck her tongue out at him.
It was impossible to back out now. There she stood, on the precipice of the moment and it had to be taken. Each year she wondered to herself why she opted to continue with this ritual, why she allowed her better judgement to be swept aside by the insanity of the moment. Was it just so that she could say she had done it? Was it a cult-like ritual guaranteeing her in her superstitious mind another year of solid friendships with some of the best people she had met in her short lifetime? She stood, looking down while knowing she should not, closed her eyes, and whispered a near silent “fuck it” before tossing caution to the wind and leaping off the slab into the frigid water.
As she plummeted below the surface she experienced – or perhaps only thought she experienced, she couldn’t be sure – the queer sensation of her heart stopping momentarily in her chest. Eyes open she looked up at the circle of dim light that illuminated the grey afternoon in the world above. Silence. Peaceful silence and beauty. This was why she did it. Under water for no more than the span of a few seconds, eternity extended outward from this moment in time. Endless. She no longer felt the chill of the water as it enveloped her entirely. She no longer felt the after effects of the night before. She no longer suffer doubts. Her thoughts were as clear as Waterford crystal and she floated back to the pool.
Resurfacing, she was reborn.
hocscripsit 