I leave the new management company office with the distinct feeling that I have chosen wrong, that I have made a terrible mistake, a feeling that grows and swells like an iron furnace recently stuffed full of wood. I could have done this all differently, I could have done everything in my life up until this point differently, I could have taken control of my life, I could have been braver, I could have been bolder, I could have done something on principal, I could have stood up for myself, I could have stepped into risk, I am weighted down by an enormous down comforter of anxiety and regret, as if I had been doused in gas and lit on fire and then smothered, running in slow motion from a burning car, movie stunt, many blows to the body that are trying to suffocate the flames. I am not prepared to feel this way. For the previous three weeks I had felt strong and secure in the choice, I have loved my life up until this point, I wanted it to remain much the same, but all of a sudden remaining the same feels toxic - ironically very much like that feeling of locking yourself out of your house, the moment you realize your keys are inside and the door has already shut. Much of this feeling is made bearable when I return home to realize that my apartment has wonderfully merciful central AC, that all of my stuff is there, currently, that I feel comfortable in this home and in this zone. Then I realize that I have not made a meaningful commitment to anything, really, besides signing this lease in the last year or so. Perhaps that is the reason why.

We didn't have a drop to drink on this tour. Well that's not exactly true, I had a sip of communion wine at a wedding ceremony in a 200 year old church in rural Alabama after it was offered and held before me by reverend greg, I began to explain how I wasn't drinking but quickly changed paths and caved to the religious significance of the goblet before me, filled with the blood of christ (the same goblet reverend greg had taken communion wine out of when he was being married 35 years previous, the cup was bent and lilting slightly to the left "under the weight of the ensuing 30 years"). And then the following night I had exactly 6 sips of a beer local to Athens, Georgia, as a way to celebrate having played our last show of the run. It was delicious but I wanted no more than that, I switched to la croix. And I mention not having been drinking because at a certain point last Friday we found ourselves in our friend's lopsided SUV in the middle of the night - a friend I had met for the first time maybe 2 hours before this, keep in mind - barreling down a dirt road toward the vague idea of an abandoned train tunnel that we might be able to hike into. The dirt is so red in that part of the world, the groom-to-be tells me there's iron in it and that's why, like Mars, and he kicks up a big cloud of it behind him as he takes a hard corner. He is navigating by intuition, it would seem, divining where we are to point our caravan of cars like a dowser in a field. The conversation on the trip out to the train tunnel is about how somebody knows the son of somebody who owns the land on which the lynard skynard tour plane crashed, the spot where ronnie died, and how the guy who owns the land refuses to sell it to kid rock, even for millions of dollars (I try to make eye contact with Will during this as if to say, friend we are in the south. Later on, before recognizing it, skynard comes on the radio and I say it is the prime, platonic example of butt rock). Eventually we crest a hill and the groom excitedly pulls the car over, doling out flashlights and saying that we've just driven over the tunnel, we just need to get down to it. We begin walking towards the hill we have just come over, but there is no path, no break in the trees, so we decide to barrel straight through the thick growth off the side of the dirt road and after a few paces we're encouraged by the sight of tires ("hey man, we found a tire! I'll always remember the time we found a tire in the woods the night before your wedding"). We go deeper into the woods, descending closer to what we think must be the train tracks, but we're met with an almost sheer drop, down into the depths of a ravine we can't see the bottom of from where we're standing. At this point we've lost two of the party, they're back at the car, but someone - I forget who now - goes for it anyway and does a three pointed scramble down the muddy banks and makes it to the bottom. He says he's okay, he advances towards the tunnel, and he finds three signs that read CAUTION You May Wish to Stand Back During Bat Flight to Avoid Droppings, CAUTION Never Handle Grounded Bats, and DO NOT ENTER TUNNEL. We have found what we are looking for, and so the rest of us stumble slip and fall down the mud and into the ravine, which is wet and sticky and helpfully filed with tires that you can kinda step on, but my white shoes are helplessly stained with mud within the first few steps, I am not a graceful man. We gather at the entrance of the tunnel, which is maybe 20 feet high (or more), concrete, and incredibly imposing (In the dark in that ravine I'm reminded suddenly of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, an enormous building that casts authoritative shadows onto the surround area, the first thing you see when you get out of the train station). We watch our beams of light from our collective flashlights hit a wall of darkness within the tunnel and disappear. A few bats flutter out, a few critters rustle in the surrounding woods. And I am filled with the terrible and almost overwhelming urge to run into this tunnel, I advance towards it as the folks around me express their doubts and start to worry about how we'll get out of the ravine. The groom shouts into the darkness, we hear his voice echoing what must be a hundred yards back, at least. Where does it go, do we dare ford through the muck and the deeper-than-ankle depth water, all this dwelling at the threshold is getting to me. I snap out of it when someone mentions how it would be a shame if somebody were to be hospitalized for rabies from a bat bite on the eve of our friend's wedding, this seems to do the trick, we come to our senses, and we begin the slow and scary journey of hauling ourselves out of the mud, experiencing maybe 5 minutes of thinking we might be stuck there for the night. As I pull myself toward the road hand over hand by the length of a sapling pine tree, smearing mud all up my back and, I discover later, somehow into my pants, I think about this: we have done the dumb shit tonight, we have fucked around in the woods, we have done something wild and once-in-a-lifetime, and I was brought into it by my willingness alone, I was pushed by the momentum of the group, the prickly energy of meeting and bonding with new people. I was of my right mind when I slid into the ravine. And though I felt (and still feel) an incredible disappointment with myself for not running screaming into the tunnel I also recognize how selfish that behavior might have been, if I had had a few drinks I could have very easily snapped an ankle in the mud or worse, and in my right mind I was able to resist the tempting and delicious urge for pyrrhic glory.

All was well, we made it out of the ravine, and the ceremony the following day was very beautiful, they served spring water brought in from the bride's family's farm in Kentucky and the voices of the congregation lifted the hymn we were brought down to play reverbed toward the sun.