The Bottle Was Half Empty: It Was Time to Move Forward
PublishedJuly 19, 2004
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
Woody towed Magnolia uphill through the fog bank toward Chunky Gal Mountain. I’d read Cold Mountain. Now I was living it.
Up, up, up we went and suddenly we broke free like a plane through low clouds. Out to our left rolled the Smoky Mountains and I knew our journey was drawing to a close.
Woody leads Magnolia clear of the fog.
High in the thin blue sky hung the moon. I thought back on four months and four days ago when Woody and I struck out alone.
Looking back on it all, it seemed like those were days spent in Narnia. The driving snow, then hands that wouldn’t warm. And now here we were alone on a hill with nothing more for company than the moon.
Early, snowy days.
We arrived at the state line and I tied Woody and Maggie to the sign that welcomed us to Tennessee.
Woody and Maggie on the NC/TN state line, after walking 4 months and over 500 miles from Oriental, NC.
Then I reached into my saddle bag and pulled out a tiny bottle of water. It was a bottle of harbor water I’d collected in Oriental the day before we started our trip.
I looked at Woody and Maggie, my newest, dearest friends. I thought of how Woody had gotten wrapped in his picket rope the first day of our journey and narrowly escaped getting hurt. I looked at Maggie and remembered how she’d tried so hard in those early days with Woody and me to keep up. She was so small but had such a giant heart.
And then I twisted the cap off the bottle of harbor water I’d carried so many hundreds of miles, from Oriental on the coast to this Welcome to Tennessee sign way high up in the mountains.
And I started pouring. As the thin stream of water fell through the air and splattered on the road shoulder, I thought of how much I loved this life on the road. At first it had been scary with peaks of fear, troughs of not knowing but gradually, the highs and lows had leveled out, like a great wave that turns into a swell the farther it travels.
The bottle was half empty now and suddenly I was overcome with sadness. I didn’t want my trip to end.
My wrist tipped the bottle up so that it would stop pouring. The stream stopped and my heart rose.
No, it wasn’t time to go home. It was time to move forward.
I didn’t know where I would go but I was sure it lay to the West.
So I screwed the cap on the half-empty bottle, tucked it back into the saddle bag and gave Woody and Maggie a big hug. Then I climbed back into my McClellan saddle, a smile spread across my face and I rode into Tennessee.
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