What I didn’t know about myself was how to fill the hole where my heart was, or even how the hole got there. How had I’d gone eighteen years without realizing there was a giant, gaping hole in my soul. Further mysteries included why I had to be cursed with a wickedly, insanely, mind-bogglingly out-of-control sex drive, but also with a fiercely independent nature that refused to depend on anyone and refused to ask for help and refused to let me even, for a moment, let anyone in to see the soft tender center of my soul.
I didn’t have any answers to any of that.
I also didn’t want to admit I’d possibly started this wild-ass adventure in search of answers to questions I didn’t even know how to articulate.
Errol
The only thing this van didn’t have that I knew I’d miss was a shower. But being a bachelor, I didn’t mind going a while between bathing. Also, I was a photojournalist used to living in remote locations with scant access to civilized amenities like western bathrooms, and often went long periods of time smelling like yak sac. I mean, the only person I had to impress with smelling good was myself, right?
I’d stopped in the next major town closest to where I’d bought the van and spent several angry, frustrating hours negotiating a maze of impenetrable bureaucracy getting basic insurance so I could register the vehicle and not get pulled over by local law enforcement. I found a grocery and stocked up on basic food items, meat and cheese and bread and beer, mostly.
Then, I’d hit the road. Headed toward the caves my mate Dillon had mentioned, by way of two-lane roads winding through the countryside. Good old Google told me it should take me about twelve hours driving time to get to the caves from where I was outside Utica, but the slow winding back roads route I took added several hours to that. Plus, I stopped to snap photos of whatever caught my interest. For the first time since I’d started working for Nat Geo, I wasn’t hyper-focused on one thing. And there was no adrenaline. It was nice, actually. See a nice old barn? Stop for a photo. Stretch the old legs, bask in the sun and enjoy the peace and quiet and solitude.
I was in no hurry to get anywhere, so if I saw a likely looking detour, I took it. If I saw a side road or turnoff that burbled my curiosity, I followed it. Sometimes it took me to a dead end or a big circle out of my way through rural nowhere dirt roads, but I always got some good shots out of the detour, so it was never wasted time.
I already knew what my favorite shot was so far. I’d taken exactly one such detour—a two-track dirt road off the already remote county highway I was on, which took me through cornfields and then through a stand of trees, on the other side of which was a fenced-in pasture containing a few dozen head of cattle.
It was a quaint, pleasantly pastoral scene, so I parked the caravan, tossed my trusty Nikon over my shoulder, and my backup Canon over the other, and hopped the fence. The pasture was several hectares of open grassland, rolling hills here and there with a few tall old spreading oaks. The cows were clumped hither and yon lowing softly, shaking great shaggy heads. These were no Holsteins or the familiar breeds I knew, but rather great furry, longhaired ones with curving horns and broad flat foreheads. A few of them ambled over to me, sniffing warily, accepting forehead scratches, which told me they were used to human interaction. I snapped a few photos of them as they clustered around me, curious and gentle.
Then a massive old bull with huge horns and small beady eyes trotted over, reddish-gold hair, curly and shaggy. He, the bull I mean, did not appreciate my presence in the least. A point he made very clear by angling toward me, shaking his colossal head with those wicked curving horns, making angry noises at me. I backed away from him toward the fence, but that wasn’t good enough for the touchy old fucker. Oh no, he wanted me gone, so the closer toward the fence I got, the more earnestly he chased me, bellowing what I was certain were the cow versions of curses. I didn’t dare turn my back on him, so I did my best to run backward and, of course, I snapped shots of him from the hip as I went.
And then my heel caught on a huge pile of shit, and down I went, ass over teakettle, cradling my cameras out of instinct. By the time I hit the ground, Mr. Bull was on top of me, staring down at me, head shaking and nodding. I lifted my camera, clicking the shutter as fast as I could as he bore down. I was, clearly, a photographer first and a human with a normal sense of self-preservation second.
A normal person would leave the cameras and run, but not me, oh no. Huge angry bull weighing thousands of pounds coming at you all hooves and horns and flaring nostrils? Take a dozen snaps first, then run—shooting as you run, hoping a few of the backward shots were usable.
I hopped the fence, and the moment I had the fence between him and me, I spun around and got face to face with him, and got the money shot—his head lowered, nostrils wide and dark, beady dark eyes angry under a curtain of reddish-gold hair, horns curving toward the center of the shot like spears.
I pulled up the last shot, and what a beauty. Captured the great old bloke in all his angry glory, mere inches away, and even on the screen he just exuded protective threat.
He bellowed at me all the way to my van—that’s right, bitch, you better run! That’s how I heard it, at least.
I continued on that way, making slow progress to Kentucky. I took a six-hour detour to get a single shot of a rock face, risking life and limb as I hiked off the highway and through scrub forest and dense brush until I was at the base of a mammoth rock face some fifty feet high, a sheer outcropping of gray weathered granite. Not content with a shot looking up, though. Hell no, not me. I climbed the damn thing, despite the multiple signs warning of danger and advertising legal action if caught. I just had to not die and not get caught, that’s all. I mean, I’d once donned a “borrowed” HAZMAT suit and hiked into Chernobyl and filled an entire memory card with highly illegal and medically hazardous photographs. So hiking a tiny little outcropping of rock? Child’s play. I was an experienced mountaineer, rock climber, and rappeler, so this was very literally a walk in the park. But still, worth it for the straight-down view from the top of the rock face, which Google image searches told me was a pretty well-known tourist attraction in the area.
Forty-eight hours after leaving Utica, New York, I finally reached Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and arranged a private tour before the caves were open to the public—a perk of being a Nat Geo photographer.
God, the shots I got. The guide assigned to me was, fortunately, a young woman newly hired just weeks before, and if I knew anything besides photography, it was how to flex my admittedly ridiculous good looks to my advantage. Flirt, banter, tell tame but thrilling stories of embedding with a unit of SAS on assignment in Afghanistan, making stepping a bit beyond the designated safe areas seem just plain silly. The best shots were ones my guide protested the most, where I had to climb off the path and clamber across slick rock surfaces and cling like a spider in precarious positions with the camera clutched to my face clicking off shots so fast it was almost machine-gunning. Worth it, though. Even when my foot slipped and I almost slid into a crevasse, only catching myself on a stalagmite at the last moment, to the mortified, horrified, frozen-helpless terror of my so-called guide.
Once back on the path, I pretended my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest, offering her a winsome, breezy grin. “Piece of piss, yeah?”