Terrible things happened to a friend of mine on July 27th for three years
running. It was many years ago when we were both teens. But I still
think of her every year on that day. No matter where we are. She’s
always in my thoughts on that day.

This year she is in the south of France, one of her favorite places
to be. You can bet that she’s taking it easy. After the third incident
all those years ago, she vowed never to even move on July 27th;
I’m sure she doesn’t take it that far any more. But I’ll bet she
doesn’t fly on airplanes  or do anything risky. I just have a feeling.
The day has that kind of power over her. And me, too.

The first incident occurred on a hosteling trip in Camden, Maine.
The group was hiking when the group-leader fell off a mountain to his
death. That’s all I know. The teenagers had to find their way out of
the park to get help. I remember she told me about it a few weeks after
it happened and I was stunned that something so dramatic, so real could
have happened to her. And it seemed unspeakably sad.

The second incident came a year later. She was also on a hosteling trip. A
friend of hers fell into a glacier lake in Rocky Mountain National
Park. He couldn’t get out for more than an hour and nearly died.
Fortunately, he was saved and lived to tell the tale.

The third incident occurred in a national park in Washington State.
Again she was on a hosteling trip. This time the group was poncho
sliding down an icy pass. My friend went flying into a tree and broke
both of her legs. She had to be helicoptered out of the park (strapped
to the outside of the helicopter) to a hospital in Port
Angeles where she was wrapped in body cast; she couldn’t leave the
hospital for three months. Eventually, she was able to fly back to New
York having missed three months of eleventh grade.

The year after that, we were together on July 27th, which felt sort
of exciting and scary, too.  We didn’t do anything on that day and
joked that we were just going to sit very still. Afterall,
the day was cursed. We were in a summer arts program in North Carolina
feeling far away from home and family and spent the day in a local park
having a picnic, swimming, taking it very easy.

When I was a teenager, I really looked up to this friend (and still
do) for her sense of adventure, her fearlessness, her drive. Some
people might say that going on hosteling trips three years in a row was
pushing it a bit. Strange to say, I think I actually envied her these
disasters:  they seemed so dramatic  even if they were tragic. Isn’t
that what teenagers live for: drama, the real stuff.

I imagined losing someone I’d only known for a few weeks but had
grown quite attached to and even called by a cute nickname. I pictured
her trying to save her friend who nearly died in that icy Colorado
lake. And her stories about the park ranger who visited her at the Port
Angeles hospital…It was all so…grown up and, dare I say it,
exciting. My life paled in comparison.

Ah, the strange logic of a teenage girl. But that’s how I thought
about things then. And I still take it easy on July 27th, try to
anyway. I wouldn’t want my life to take a dramatic turn. Not now
anyway.