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Yay for Moms

The search and rescue mission started out with noble intentions. There were gong-ho attitudes all around of completing the mission successfully until we arrived at our destination and, under a moonless sky, discovered that we had forgotten flashlights.

A thick Maglight would have been preferable in case it became necessary to pummel a rapist-murderer, but at that point any light would have done. Moments before I thought to abandon the mission I recalled a tiny pink plastic flashlight my mother forced me to carry in my car years ago after an engine oil incident.

As I swept the tiny beam from my flashlight back and forth before my feet, I wondered if the mission was worth it.

Though the tiny light was better than facing the pitch blackness of the unknown forest alone, I felt like an unsuspecting blonde girl in a horror movie: the buxom blonde is always the second to get killed after the minority girl, but at least the minority gets to keep her top on. And I had no minority to buffer me from certain death.

We went a quarter mile into the woods, my trusty plastic flashlight and I, until I heard the river. A few more turns and a few more steps before I found what I had been searching. I knew the likelihood of it still being where I had last seen it was slim, but there it was standing a solitary watch over the Tanana River. I collected it with a quick swoop of my arm and turned back toward the car, kicking myself for not leaving the headlights on.

If asked, I would say that I am not afraid of the dark. At least, not usually. But there's something about being miles away from civilization, miles away from the nearest porch light, in an unknown section of the great Alaskan wilderness that instills a fear of the dark.

The light was so faint that I could not see more than three feet ahead of me, and I imagined the battery flickering the bulb out once I was a quarter mile from the car. I would shake the flashlight, I would curse at it, and then I would hear a scraping noise from an indiscernible point within the woods around me. And then I would wake up tied in some guy's cellar.

And so, on my return trip to the car, staring at the small circle of light around me feet instead of the large expanse of black beyond the lit circle, I sang Sunday School songs. My God is so big / So strong and so mighty / No boogey man will kidnap me.

I arrived at the car in one piece with the flashlight's battery still operational and my trusty tripod safe in my mittened hand. We had conquered the darkness, my plastic flashlight and me.

The moral of the story: Do not roll your eyes when your mother insists on putting a dinky plastic flashlight in your glove box, for it will surely protect you from rapist-murderers and bears and lead you to your forgotten tripod by the river.