Coincidence… I think?

Bar Harbor, ME

It is 8:20 am on a Tuesday, and I lead my group of 12 eager kayakers down the steps to the dock where our boats are ready for launch into the waters of Frenchman’s Bay.  The line for the whale watching boat lies directly across our path, as it does every morning.  I ask the two closest ladies in line if they wouldn’t mind stepping forward a bit so that I could get my group through to our gangway. 

I look up at the tall man now revealed in their wake, his face is familiar. Patrick? I ask. 
He stares back, David?   

Two college teammates reunite after 15 years in a fond embrace only to realize neither has time to actually catch up.  I’ve got a tour and he’s got a tour and only in these few seconds do our lives cross.   I point to the shop and he promises to swing by.

Patrick lives in Paris and London, he and his partner spend part of the week in each location.  He runs a foundation that supports a small village in Kenya and his partner works for an art dealer – a job which includes accompanying his boss on vacation.  This time Patrick comes along to help, what he calls “geriatric summer camp.” 

Later, we catch up for a few minutes and share the paths that led us to, literally, bumping into each other.  He ignores his partner’s texts for as long as he can, but ultimately we both have to go.  We promise to keep in touch and go our separate ways.  We do and end up in Kenya a couple of years later to volunteer for 3.5 months in Sirembe.  

Crescent City, CA

Asia James? I say to the young woman dismounting her bicycle in front of the natural food market.  

Shari and Hutch? Oh, my God!  She exclaims!  

Asia (Heller) is a former student who accompanied us both on a Wales trip in 2006.  She lives in Asheville, NC.   This might not be a big deal if we were in Asheville, and not, as we are, in Crescent City, California.  Did I mention that we don’t live here either?

What makes this moment even weirder is that we were delayed in walking out the door by the teller who pushed cash instead of credit when we checked out and had to get the manager key to fix her mistake.  It slowed us down by about 3 minutes, time enough to cross the parking lot, walk back to our laundromat and completely miss them riding up from the side entrance.  

We catch up for a little while; they come over to our camper to check it out and have a snack.  But they’ve got miles to go on their Oregon, Northern California, cycling adventure, and we’ve got laundry to fold. 

We were both lifted up by our brief encounter.  We got to meet her charming husband and gain some insight into their current lives; and she got to see our home on the road. 

Kanab, UT

Shari, what’s your college roommate Chris’ last name?
Uh, Hansen, why?
Because she’s standing over there by the cold cuts. 

We both peer around the tortilla rack and stare at the woman reading the pack of Hormel turkey pastrami. 

That’s not her. What would she be doing here?  She’s in Costa Rica right now.
Oh, it’s her alright.

Nuh uh.

That… is… Christine... Hansen.

Shari decides to walk by all nonchalant-like and says, Hey Chris! 
She turns and does the double take… what are you doing here? 

Here happened to be Kanab, Utah.  Chris lives in Marin County, California, but was in town on a job interview. 

We just rolled into town looking for a grocery store on our way to Zion National Park.  We’d seen a billboard for this particular market that claimed the best vegetables in town.  Now, never in my life have I been persuaded to choose one grocery store over another because of an ad on the side of the road.  Typically, this is a decision of need and proximity --hey, we need food, let’s find a grocery.  We drive to the part of town that usually has groceries, we park, go in, purchase groceries.   On this one time only we bypassed a perfectly acceptable grocery for this particular store, where we happened to run into an old college roommate.

Chris, as it turns out was in the store because the Mexican restaurant she’d chosen for dinner was closed, but only for one hour.  So she walks over to get her lunch for the next day from the same market.   Why it was closed for just one hour on Tuesday night at 5 o’clock is even more bizarre.  They were out of tortillas, and a Mexican restaurant can’t be open without tortillas.  

So, one package of tortillas being delivered instead of a case, one billboard on the side of the road claiming the quality of veggies, one woman who says, “I’ll just go kill some time” instead of going somewhere else to eat, and the three of us being in the same town in which none of us lives at the exact same moment, all leads to our little reunion near the lunchmeat – an aisle these vegetarians never visit.  

We went back to the restaurant, joined her at her hotel for the night, and joined her for the free breakfast buffet at her hotel. 

Big Cypress, FL

Over the night, Drew and his friends parked in the site next to ours, set up their tents, drank a few beers and turned in.  We slept right through it all.

They came to Big Cypress National Forest because of the python round up.  There were prizes for catching the most pythons as well as the biggest.  Despite their enormous size, pythons are not easy to catch, because they don’t move very often and are nearly perfectly camouflaged in their adopted home of the Florida Everglades.  Also Drew and his friends know nothing about catching pythons.  They just figured it would be a good thing for a couple of buddies to try to do over the weekend.

But he takes a good long look at our camper in the morning as he walks by thinking, these cats are set up – this ain’t no weekend rig.  So he looks over at the dude sitting in front drinking some coffee.  Recognizing me by my hair, he saunters up and as easy as you please says, hey, what’s up Hutch? 

I am a bit more surprised than that, and jump up to give him a big hug.   Shari hears the exchange and thinks, I know three Drews, which one is this gonna be?   Drew is another former student who went to Wales, who also lives in Asheville, and we haven’t seen in a number of years.    

We talk over cups of coffee until they go off in search of pythons. 

These coincidences cease to surprise me because they happen so regularly; instead they are just awesome, in the true sense of the word.  Take away any small detail in the sequence of events leading up to our reunions and they don’t happen, we just pass each other by completely unaware.  So what is the power that makes them coalesce?   What is the little nudge of details that gets our lives to collide with each others?  If there are forces working to make sure that we meet up with these important people in our lives, could the opposite force be true?  Are there forces putting obstacles in our way, pulling us apart instead of getting us together?