.... and that was when the mini blew up
Tuesday was my eighth wedding anniversary. Twelve years of blissful cohabitation, eight of them with the sanction of church and society. Pretty good years, no matter what has happened along the way.

Jeff's back, always bad, has been getting worse again lately, and he finally chose to go to the doctor on Tuesday. I had to leave work to go pick him up because the doctor wanted to give him some medicine that would make him unfit to drive. No problem, we'd done our big presentation to the feds the previous day  (it went well) and was a quiet day at the office. I got him home and tucked in, and then had the rest of a beautiful autumn afternoon to kill.

I decided to go hiking (since we clearly weren't going out that night) and went to Amicalola Falls, a lovely state park that is the southern end of the Appalachian Trail (actually the approach trail, but since it's the only way to the official "head" of the AT on Springer Mountain I just consider it part of the package). It was beautiful: I had the top down with short sleeves and was pleasantly cool. Fall, like the fog, had crept in on little cat feet a couple of days earlier and the trees were a riot of color.

I drove to the top of the mountain and went to look a the falls, then went into the forest via a gravelled road to some of the camping areas. I wasn't in the mood for strenuous hiking (some of which I'd done on the approach trail only a couple of days before), but mainly wanted to wander and look at the pretty pretty trees.

When I came back out of the woods an hour or so later, the top of the mountain was covered with emergency vehicles: fire, Dept. of Natural Resources ranger trucks, police cars. Plumes of black smoke were billowing from something just beyond the fire trucks.

I walked back down to the falls and asked someone what was happening, what had happened. I was told that a minivan had caught fire and had caught the vehicles on either side of it on fire as well.. Property, but no people, had been damaged.  My first thought was "Oh, those poor people. How awful."

Then I moved off, changed my angle, and realized that one of the smoking hulks was my Mini.

I ran up the hill to the ranger and told him that it was my car. From there things have a weird combination of clarity and blur: the couple who owned the minivan that started it all were not burned, but the old man appeared to have had a heart attack watching. They had been taken away for medical treatment. The other couple were a young pair of Russian immigrants who had come up from Florida to buy property. They had had the $25,000 cash down payment in their car. The gas tanks of all three had become involved. They had all blown up.

I thought that they meant that metaphorically, somehow, but no, they meant "blew up" . The flames apparently went 30 feet in the air. Fortunately we were parked on an interior edge of the parking lot. If we'd been parked on the outer edge, by the forest itself, the whole mountain could have burned - and quickly, since the drought has returned with a vengeance these last few months.

Today I go to get a copy of the police report, and photos of my poor destroyed Mini. My work laptop was in the car, as well as my purse with my wallet. I'll go into the fun of the laptop later. Right now my hand is falling asleep and I hear coffee calling my name.

I leave you with the thought that has been in my head constantly the past three days: This type of shit does JUST NOT HAPPEN to real people in the real world! I'll get more philosophical as this winds on, I'm sure, but right now that's still where I am.