James Taylor, October Nights and Thrill Hill

It's that kind of a night.

The kind of October night that brings back bonfires, a borrowed jacket redolent of post-practice sweat and teen boy pheromones, and a long walk through the woods to our party spot, high up on the hill. 

Thrill Hill. That's what we all called it. Spoken of mostly in legendary terms now, it was our teen hangout and best place to be in the brisk fall darkness.  

Those were the days...when we left the house on a Friday evening and headed to the football game, back slapping and yelling ourselves hoarse before zipping up our coats and hiking far into the forest to drink out of clear plastic cups while either hanging onto our best friends or our best hook up.

Music. There were always tunes though, oddly, I never much thought about from where they came. Was it a car stereo? A boombox? There was no electricity at Thrill Hill so someone was willingly, for our collective entertainment, eating a whole lotta battery, whether automobile or D cell. 

Boston begged us not to look back. JT reminded us to shower the people. CSNY asked us to carry on. The Grateful Dead said being friends with the devil just might be acceptable. 

The beer might have been cheap. Who knew? Who cared? For a dollar you got all you wanted (and then some).

Lighters got passed around all night. Don't bring the one with the Navajo silver and turquoise cover that you "borrowed" from your brother's girlfriend 'cause you'll never see it again. There were cigarettes (menthol for the girls, so only bum one if you can handle their icy harshness), the occasional cigar (for which we were thankful as they really did keep the bugs away) and, always, the ropey diesel of marijuana. One sniff of pot transports me to that time like almost nothing else, except maybe the powdery notes of my old perfume or the sulfur stench of coppery downed leaves. 

I've heard marijuana called a 'gateway drug' but for us, back then, it seemed to provide only a gateway to mellow authenticity. For the socially shy, it made covert thoughts sharable. For the anxious and worried, it brought the feeling that every little thing's gonna be all right. For the brash and bold, it offered a more harmonious style of communicating. For the carefree and genial, it turned the regular world into a kaleidoscope of colors.

For me, it took away the chatter in my head that said I wasn't attractive enough and that my family was woefully unsettled. It offered me the chance to sit quietly next to a friend on a log, staring skyward at the navy greatness of this chasm, in which I was nothing more than a tiny quark. It gave me some peace. It prompted me to join the song circle, torsos intertwined, with no discernment as to where one arm started and another ended; belting out lyrics about rain and flying machines and "I always thought I'd see you baby, one more time, again". It offered me the lifelong gift of recognizing myself in everyone else. It made me sink into the shoulder of a friend I could trust while he walked me more than a mile to the safety of my front porch, light on, door unlocked.

The solidarity that my high school friends and I created in those moments, that brand of unity, is either formed in situations which are memorable and perfectly lovely or in situations while helping each other survive something perfectly awful. So, in our time, in the woods, warmed by the firelight, bathed in the smoky haze of our collective harmony, we took what was perfectly lovely and perfectly awful about our lives, our bodies, our grades, our homes, our adolescent mindsets and our oft-broken hearts and forged those emotions into torrid links of cadmium and tangelo; into chains of oriole-breasted red-orange fire that will never break.

Truly, never. 

So tonight as we walk and traipse by others' outdoor backyard burns and smell the grass that's now legal, the pungent combination takes me back to how we existed like a spirit family. A fraternity. All conjoined.

And I sigh so very gratefully for having been a part of it all. 

It's that kind of night, Glens Falls. 

Ain't it good to know? 

Ain't it good to know? 

Yeah, yeah. 

You've got a friend. 

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