The Moth Radio Hour: Past Tense, Future Perfect

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From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Meg Bowles, and in this hour, we bring you four stories that deal with the aftermath of wrong turns and the process of figuring out a way through.

Sometimes a hastily made choice can lead down a perilous road, which was quite literally the case case for our first storyteller, Julie Pryor, who shared this story at an evening we produced in partnership with the Anchorage Concert Association.

From the Outwood Concert Hall in Anchorage, Alaska, here's Julie Pryor live at the mall.

So I was three years old when the moving truck pulled into the driveway of my new home in New Jersey.

And my dad lifted me up and he put me in the cab of the truck and he pointed to the rope hanging from the ceiling and he said, pull that.

So I did what I was told.

I stood up and I pulled that rope with all of my might and I was terrified by the sound it made.

Ah!

It was an air horn.

I was terrified, but dad was smiling.

He looked at me and he said, good.

Now the neighbors know we're here.

We have arrived.

Dad ran the Mayflower Moving Company out of Orange, New Jersey, and he loved trucks.

Big trucks, little trucks, refrigerated trucks, all the trucks.

And he had a deep respect for truck drivers.

So I was thinking about my dad a couple decades later when I was standing in a truckyard in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I was producing a documentary for the History Channel about the notorious Hall Road, which connects the city of Fairbanks to the oil fields on the North Slope.

And it was my job as the producer to help convey the stories of the truckers, the men and the women who were bold or crazy enough to drive this road year-round hauling supplies to the North Slope.

I thought I knew what I was doing.

I did my research.

I googled Alaska Hall Road.

I read what it said.

It was the loneliest road on the planet.

Avalanches could kill you.

Or my personal favorite was the road where hell froze over.

But see, I figured these were just written by people who had never actually been there.

But when I found myself in that truckyard in Fairbanks and I was looking at these truckers, they had most definitely been there.

I could tell by their worn Carhartt jackets and their trapper hats and their amazing beards.

And it's at this moment that I realize just how clean and ridiculous and purple my North Face jacket looks in comparison.

But there was no time to be embarrassed because the foreman of the crew came over to our very urban looking film crew and he starts barking at us like that drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

And he says, which one of you knuckleheads is going to drive the chase truck?

So the chase truck is the final truck in the convoy and it's the one carrying all of the film crews gear to the North Slope.

Now none of the boys that I was working with volunteered to drive but this foreman didn't wait for a response.

He just tossed the keys up into the air and that's when I saw my hand

reach up and snatch the keys.

So I got the keys now, and the boys that I'm working with, they disperse into their separate trucks with their cameras and whatnot.

And I just walk over to my cab, to the cab of the truck, truck, hop up, jump in, slam the door shut, and that's when I panicked.

Like, really panicked.

Like, what the hell do I think I'm doing?

Who do I think I am?

Oh my God, I can't do this.

I can't do this.

Which reminded me of when I was 14, and my dad tossed me the keys to his pickup truck because he was too drunk to drive.

And I started listing all the reasons why I really shouldn't drive.

I said, Dad,

I'm 14.

I don't know how to drive.

It's illegal.

Dad didn't care.

He just walked around the other side of the truck, hopped into the passenger seat, sat down, reclined the seat fully, and closed his eyes.

Okay?

So I climb into my dad's truck.

I put the key in the ignition and I turn the truck on and boom, there's Willie Nelson.

Dad loved Willie, and he had Willie's greatest hits on a tape jammed into the cassette player.

So every time you got into the truck, there would be Willie singing.

You had no idea what song it was, but it was going to be Willie.

This time it was on the road again.

Appropriate.

So finally, Dad turns and he looks at me and he says, you ready?

No.

Good.

Get to know the four corners of the truck.

Adjust your seat, the mirrors, and when you're ready, put your damn foot on the gas and drive us home.

So back in Fairbanks, I adjust the seat, the mirrors.

I try to get to know the four corners of this truck, put my foot on the gas, and I drove out onto the great Alaska Hall Road.

So, I didn't kill myself in the first mile, and my confidence started to build.

I'm like, this is actually, this is pretty cool, right?

So, I start listening to the music.

I think about coming up with a trucker handle, like Leadfoot Lizzie.

But then, my trucking fantasy came to a screeching halt when I saw the sign.

This massive sign that said, 250 miles to the next service station.

So I do the mental calculus and I'm like, okay, 250 miles.

So that's like driving from Boston to New York City without stopping once to pee or to get gas.

There's no restaurants.

There's no ATMs.

There's no human beings.

And I'm realizing as I pull my flip phone out of my purple jacket, there are no bars.

There's no service I am entirely alone

every member of my crew is in a different truck I am alone in this Ford F-350 and I was terrified

so the next 250 lonely miles to Coldfoot which is this first service station on the Hall Road

Google didn't exactly tell me everything that was going to happen.

So I knew it was 28 feet wide, but 28 feet wide feels really different when there's a double wide coming at you about 65 miles an hour.

I learned about the roller coaster.

This is not what I found on Google, only by the truckers and how terrifying that stretch was.

Somehow, I made it in one piece to Coldfoot.

And so we stopped to get some gas and get a bite to eat.

And I head into the cafe.

And I'm immediately blown away by the smell of the place.

It's like this potent combination of bacon and kerosene and cigarettes.

And these old-timers are hunched over the bar and they're sharing war stories about the road.

And there's pictures of wrecks like stapled to the walls.

And these truckers are talking about the conditions on the pass.

The ice, the fog, the snow, it sounds horrible.

And the pass they're talking about is Attigan Pass, some 5,000-foot elevation in the Brooks Range, and it's the only thing standing between me and my destination.

It's also the only road that is maintained by the Department of Transportation year-round so that these truckers can deliver their supplies to the North Slope day in and day out.

Truckers with experience, truckers with beards.

Not me.

So

Tony, the big rig driver that I was following on this journey, could probably smell my fear at this point.

And he turned and he looked at me.

He said, Julie, look at, I'm going to give you one piece of advice.

Just stay close enough to my truck to see the license plate.

Because as soon as you lose the license plate, you're probably going in the ditch, and only God can help you then.

Great.

I'm headed into certain death, and I have zero relationship with God.

So I walk back to my Ford F-350 and I get in, and I'm thinking about my dad.

My dad passed not long before this trip to Alaska.

We had a very complicated relationship, but I'd like to think that in our final days, we found peace with one another.

And one of the last things we did before he passed was we listened to his favorite song.

It's a Willie song, Willie Nelson song, and it's called Poncho and Lefty.

And it goes something like this.

Don't worry, I'm not going to sing.

Living on the road, my friend, is going to keep you free and clean.

Now you wear your skin like iron.

Your breath is as hard as kerosene.

So back on the road, I'm in this truck and we are headed north towards Brooks Range whether I want to or not.

And from a distance, it's gorgeous.

It's just these majestic purple and blue mountains rising up out of the snow.

But the closer I got to this pass, the more it resembled a giant menacing ice wall.

And I could see this this line running across it.

It looked like a scar and as I traced it with my finger it led back to the convoy and to my truck.

That scar was the hall road and I was about to drive it.

So I gripped the steering wheel and I kept my eyes trained on Tony's truck.

as I slowly, about 15 miles an hour, followed him up and into the clouds.

So

in Attigan Pass, there are stretches that have a 12% grade.

Now, I didn't know what 12% grade meant, but I learned very quickly that when you have chains on your tires and the gravel turns to ice and these tires are having difficulty maintaining control,

that's what a 12% grade in Attigan Pass feels like.

And this ditch to my right is getting more and more steep and the fog is getting more and more dense

and then the snow starts to fly.

And that's when I lost the horizon.

There was no left, there was no right, there was no up, there was no down, and there definitely was not a license plate in front of me.

I figured I could put my foot on the gas and try to catch up to Tony, or I could just drive right off the edge of this damn cliff and go 3,000 feet to my death.

The alternative was worse.

I could stop, but there's all sorts of trucks coming up behind me.

So the options are bleak.

And it's at that very moment that I heard Willie.

His voice came through the speakers in my truck, and he was singing Poncho and Lefty.

And I laughed.

I laughed because his voice reminds me so much of someone that brought me comfort.

And I laughed because if my dad were

sitting next to me, he would be fully reclined with his eyes closed, cool as a cucumber.

So I jammed my my foot on the gas and I hope for the best.

And like a miracle, out of the white, the most beautiful yellow and blue license plate

materialized.

And I crank Willie and I start singing along, now you wear your skin like iron.

And I follow Tony's truck up and over the pass and out of the clouds.

And off in the distance, I know Prudhoe Bay is out there.

And on this journey, I developed such a deep and profound respect for the men and the women that drive this crazy ass road day in and day out.

I knew today

I was going to make it because I had Willie and my dad with me.

And as I pulled my truck into Prudhoe Bay under those yellow industrial lights more than 5,000 miles from my childhood home in New Jersey, I honked my horn.

I have arrived.

That was Julie Pryor's one and only time behind the wheel of a truck.

She says, it was a stupid thing that I did really, assuming I could drive the hall road with zero experience, but I grabbed the keys to that truck because of my dad.

I didn't know it then, but I realize it now.

I just wanted to make him proud.

Living on the road, my friend,

was gonna keep you free and clean.

You can find a link to the History Channel documentary that Julie worked on called Alaska Dangerous Territory, along with a few photos from Julie's adventure on our website, themoth.org.

Your mama's only boy, but her favorite one at sea.

She began to cry when you said

our next story comes from Madeline Berenson.

She told her story at a moth grand slam we produced in Denver, Colorado in partnership with local public radio station KUNC.

Here's Madeline Berenson, Live of the Months.

In 1978, when I was 19 years old, I waited tables at a quaint little bistro in Austin, Texas.

It was very of an era, the kind of place where pretty young women in slinky leotards and wrapped skirts worked lunches, and fastidious older men who knew about food and wine worked dinner shifts.

The owner of the Bistro was a 60-something Mercedes-Convertible driving man named Bob, and he had hired me that summer when I was a carefree freshman at the University of Texas.

But by December, I had gotten pregnant, My boyfriend and I had broken up, and I was the opposite of carefree.

In fact, I had no idea what what I was going to do.

So as a first step, I told Bob my situation and asked how it would affect my employment.

And he said, as long as you keep doing the job you're doing, it's fine.

But then, a few weeks later, when I'd started having to loosen that slinky wrap skirt, Bob took me aside one day and asked when I intended to quit.

And I said, I thought at my sixth month, and he freaked out and said, absolutely not, that he thought it was understood I would leave as soon as I started showing because, he said, and I quote, I cannot have any unattractive people working for me here.

And he gave me one month to find another job.

So I went home, called UT, and dropped my classes because college was just impossible now.

And then I cried a lot.

The next week, my history professor called to find out why I had dropped his class.

And when I told him what had happened, he told me two very interesting things.

One, that firing someone for being pregnant is illegal.

And two,

that his ex-wife was an attorney who would be thrilled to represent me.

And thus began Bob's five-month-long nightmare.

Because

after key information was exchanged, Bob learned that not only could he not fire me, but now, since he had threatened to, he couldn't touch me with a 10-foot pole.

Have you ever seen a pregnant woman strut?

It's kind of funny looking, actually, unless you're Bob, and then it's just revolting.

But Bob's revulsion became an important source of strength for me because it forced me to face what I feared most about becoming a young single mother, that I was unfit,

incapable,

shameful.

And so every day I worked really hard to prove otherwise.

I learned to fillet Dover's Soul table side and to skillfully remove plates.

But most importantly, I learned that I was really good at taking care of people.

even when it was hard, even when I didn't like them.

I found a kind of corrective grace in creating happiness and comfort for others, and it centered me.

And by the way, my customers loved that I was pregnant.

They left me big tips and they brought baby gifts and

in many ways that I have never forgotten, they told me that they wished me well.

On my last shift, when I was eight and a half months pregnant,

Bob sat in my section, ordered chicken crepes and a bottle of Gewürzjemeiner, and watched me until my last customer left.

And then he asked me to sit down,

and with shaking hands, he told me that of all the people who had ever worked for him-a group that included philanderers, drug addicts, and thieves-he was happiest happiest to see me go.

And I said,

what a mean thing to say.

And I got up and left because I would not let him see me cry.

I didn't see Bob again for 13 years.

And then one night when I was waiting tables in what was then the best restaurant in town, I had a private party scheduled in my section, a wine club.

And when they walked in, there was Bob among them, and my heart skipped a beat.

He looked much older, frail, even, and he didn't recognize me.

And I confess, there was a part of me that wanted to fix that right away by marching up to him and telling him who I was and telling him that my wonderful son was 13 now and that we were well and happy.

No thanks to him.

But then, a better part of me came to the rescue.

And from the moment I opened their first bottle of exquisite wine, I transformed into the most elegant, professional version of myself I have ever been.

Like breath, like air, I was there before need was felt, every gesture executed with invisible precision, no detail overlooked.

And I felt Bob's admiration for me growing throughout the evening, and it fueled me further.

And then, at the end of the night, as he was leaving, Bob took my hands in his, looked me in the eye, and said, I don't know who you are or where you came from, but you are absolutely the finest waiter I have ever had the honor of being served by in my entire life.

And I said,

What a kind thing to say,

and I smiled.

Madeleine Berenson is a writer and part-time ski instructor.

She told me she's married to a man who, after over 22 years, still makes her heart skip a beat when she sees him from across the room.

She's the mother of two sons, stepmother of two more, and now proudly enjoys the title of grandmother.

Coming up, A Man Risks His Life for a Bag of Pretzels when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Meg Bowles.

The stories in this hour all hinge on a misstep that took the storyteller off course.

Our next storyteller, Michael Fisher, shared his story live on stage at the Mesa Art Center in Arizona.

Here's Michael Fisher.

JR looks at me and he says,

Do you realize that I could kill you right now,

stash your body under your bunk,

and just take the pretzels?

And nobody would even know.

JR and I are at the end of a hallway and around a corner.

We're in a blind spot, and we both know it.

As far from the guards as we can get.

Both doors off of this floor are locked.

It's 2013,

and we're in a medium security security prison in upstate New York.

I hate being watched by the guards, but it's other inmates like JR that I really worry about.

Every time I get a letter from home, the first thing I do is I tear the return address into little pieces because if I don't, somebody might fish the envelope out of the trash.

and write to my family and my friends.

They could demand money from them and make it really clear what will happen if they don't listen.

It's happened to other guys in here.

It could happen to me.

Earlier today, when I returned from the package room with some other inmates from my floor, I made the long walk down the hall to where I bunk.

And there were guys peeking their head out of every room along the way, just watching those of us who just come back, because they were clocking what was in the net bags slung over our shoulders.

And JR was one of those men.

He saw something he wants, and that something is my pretzels.

And JR's question is not rhetorical.

He could kill me right now.

He's bigger than me, stronger than me.

I'm no match for him, especially these days.

I've been losing weight ever since I arrived in prison a few months ago.

The food is partly to blame, but I think it's mostly depression that has me down to less than 160 pounds.

I remember this guy during one of my first days locked up showing me his prison ID and saying, I came in here with no one but the ugly old man on this ID, and I'm going to go home the same way.

Message was pretty clear.

You come in alone, you bid alone, you leave alone.

Whatever happens in this moment, is between me and JR,

because just like everyone else in here, I'm on my own.

Right now you might be thinking,

this is

really weird.

A couple of inmates fighting over pretzels.

So before I keep going, I just want to be clear.

These are not just any pretzels.

These are Snyder's honey, mustard, and onion pretzel pieces.

If anyone's ever had them, you'll appreciate the difference.

And it's the big bag.

It's not the single serving.

It's not like the little ones that you can get in a vending vending machine.

So, you know, my life for these pretzels is a pretty even trade.

In fact, the pretzels are worth more than me.

I'm a file clerk over on A Tower.

It would take me days at that job to afford this bag.

Bag probably costs $3.

I make 24 cents an hour.

I'm worth nothing.

I'm a net negative, actually, because depending on which expert you ask, each inmate costs the the state upwards of $50,000 a year in food, housing, medical care.

So the math says it makes sense for me to die defending these pretzels.

But if I do die for them, the math isn't going to be my reason.

Standing with JR, I can picture my mom making a lunch for me to take to school when I was a kid.

packing up food she thinks I'll like, things she bought especially for me because she wants me to be healthy and hopes I'll have a good day.

When I was in grade school, my mom used to pack me a lunch pretty much every morning, and every once in a while she would slip a note into the paper bag, you know, something small, just to let me know that she loved me.

Finding a note from her was the best part of my day because

my mom was my favorite person in the world back then.

And she probably did that with the notes when I was in middle school too, but I wouldn't know.

By then, I was throwing the bags away, unopened as soon as I got to school.

There was this food truck that would pull onto the blacktop every day at recess, and

I would buy something there instead.

That's what the cool kids did.

I can still picture those lunches my mom made rotting in a trash can.

Apples going brown.

meat going rancid, bread getting moldy as I run around the schoolyard thinking I don't need her.

You know, to be honest, the things that haunt me about my past aren't the choices that brought me to prison.

It's the small, quiet things, like what I did with those lunches, that cut the deepest.

I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I've caused much more harm doing plenty of other things, legal and illegal.

But there's no perfect correlation between the gravity of my actions and how bad I feel about them.

If I've learned anything in prison, it's that guilt is an imperfect science.

I've never told my mom what I used to do with those lunches.

I'm too ashamed that I abused her love and her care like that.

She's never stopped supporting me, even now.

And that only makes it harder to think about what I did.

But now I'm with J.R.,

thousands of miles away from her, and I finally have my chance to make the smallest of amends.

Why am I standing in a prison hallway a few weeks past my 24th birthday, guarding a bag of pretzels with my life?

Because my mom sent them to me.

She sent them because she remembers how much I liked them as a kid.

And she's trying to brighten my day.

It's having the opposite effect, obviously, but

she's trying.

My mom sends me cards, even though I call her on the phone every few days, because she thinks it's good for the officers to see me getting mail.

She thinks they'll be nicer to me if they're reminded that, in addition to being an inmate, I'm also a human being who has a family.

She wants them to know, just as she wants me to know, how much I'm loved.

So the only person who's going to eat these pretzels while I'm still alive is me.

I can tell J.R.

wants to fight about this.

He's got his head tilted to one side.

His arms are crossed in front of him.

He's just waiting for me to say the wrong thing.

But my hands are in my pockets.

I'm in disbelief, to be honest, that this is the type of stupid situation I find myself in these days.

And I'm scared.

But I try to keep my voice steady.

If that's really where you're at, that you're going to kill somebody over pretzels,

then I don't know what to tell you, man.

They're not for sale.

JR stares me down, weighing his options.

I'm not arguing how easily he could kill me, and something about that seems to rob JR of the rage he needs to actually do it.

Instead, he stomps off down the hallway, empty-handed.

He's smart and it's midday, so he's leaving it alone for now.

He'll probably stab me in my sleep tonight for disrespecting him like that, for being so casual about his threat.

And part of me hopes that does happen.

Because call me crazy, but I don't think there's anything better waiting for me up ahead.

Prison teaches each person inside that the only way to right a wrong, the only way to repay a debt, is to suffer.

In the Department of Corrections, only pain can answer for pain.

I can never do enough, be sorry enough, rehabilitate enough.

But if I suffer enough, if I pay for my mistakes, big and small, my tears, my time, my life,

then maybe, someday, I'll be forgiven, if only by myself.

So, maybe that suffering takes the form of JR, poking a few holes in me tonight.

It would take my family forever to get my body back.

I've heard the paperwork to pry a corpse from the state is a nightmare.

They just won't let you go, even after you're dead.

But that can't be the way this ends, because if there's one thing I owe my mom at this point, it's sparing her from having to bury me,

I have to outlive her.

It's

quite literally the least I can do.

So I stay up all night, reading beneath my little commissary lamp, listening for JR's footsteps.

It doesn't feel safe to sleep, and the odds of violence seem lower in the daylight.

The sun feels like a witness who can protect me, even though I know this isn't true.

But JR doesn't pay me another visit.

He keeps a cold distance instead.

And a couple weeks later, he assaults somebody in the stairwell and gets sent to solitary confinement at some other prison.

I wish that meant I could breathe easy, but pretty soon some random new guy will be sleeping on JR's old bunk.

And here, the devil I know is better than the devil I don't.

I can't change much about the life I live now.

God knows I can't change anything about my past, including how I treated my mom.

I've been stuck.

Too ashamed to apologize to her, but too tormented to move on.

And as strange as it sounds, something about hanging on to that bag of pretzels, come what may,

makes me feel just a little bit better.

Not because I like the pretzels all that much anymore.

They're actually too salty for me these days.

Not because there won't be some other guy threatening me over food someday soon, because I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

My mom will never even know the standoff with JR happened, just like she doesn't know I threw away your lunch bags in the the first place.

But at least it's a moment, you know,

one small moment where I've done the right thing.

It's something I can build on.

It's a time that I protected the love that she's always shown me

instead of just throwing it away.

Thank you.

Michael Fisher was released from prison in 2015 and completed his parole the following year.

He was 26 years old with only a high school diploma.

Four years later, he had a bachelor's and two master's degrees.

He now works as a writing mentor teaching in a college credit humanities program for adults who have limited access to higher education.

Michael's relationship with his mom improved a lot while he was in prison, and he's done his best to carry that forward and to remember it's always the right time to be grateful for her love.

You can see a picture of Michael and his mother on our website, themoth.org.

Coming up, one of the bravest people I've ever met when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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Today's show is sponsored by Alma.

I know I'm not the only one who turns to the internet when I'm struggling.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Meg Bowles, and our last story comes from Carol Sepalu.

Carol is a native Alaskan and has spent most of her life in the small city of Nome.

I wanted to mention that Carol has had a permanent tracheostomy since 1999, the reason for which she'll share in her story.

She has to cover the trach to be able to speak clearly and not run out of breath so quickly.

She also wears a retainer of sorts that acts as a palette so she can speak.

As a result, she's quite soft-spoken, and I was worried at first that it might be hard for listeners to hear her, even with the microphone.

But when Carol took the stage, it felt like the entire audience drew closer.

From the Atwood Concert Hall in Anchorage, Alaska, here's Carol Sepalu live at the moth.

I was on an ambulance stretcher when all of the screams from the people trying to save my life faded away.

Everything went completely dark.

I couldn't hear and I couldn't see.

The darkness terrified me.

Even the pain and the horrific cries felt like heaven compared to this void of nothingness.

That's when I begged earnestly for God

to save me.

I was 16 years old, depressed and intoxicated.

I shot myself point blank in the face, and now I was fighting for my life.

I don't remember the sound of the gun.

but I do remember it slipping right before I pulled the trigger.

Everything went completely dark and that's when I didn't want to die anymore.

I was mad about

on a small airplane from Noam to Anchorage.

The doctors told my mother that my chances were 50-50

and if I survived, I would be legally blind and they weren't sure if I would would be able to talk again.

In the hospital, as I was struggling to breathe, I fell into a vision.

I walked into a fog when an old village appeared.

My late great-grandfathers were there,

sitting on the ground as they beckoned for me.

They looked young and perfect, wearing bird feather parkas

and smiles so big their eyes closed.

They told me that everything was going to be okay

and that I had to come back

because I was going to do great things.

They also told me other things

that I can't remember.

but somehow I now feel.

It was so peaceful there, and I felt no pain.

I begged to stay, but I listened to them,

and I came back with a powerful sense of purpose.

The gunshot left a severe wound on my face

and a permanent tracheostomy,

a narrow tube that I breathed through.

Yet somehow, just being alive felt like a blessing.

I went through several years of painful surgeries before I finally decided to stop them.

I wear a mask over my face

because with it on,

People seem to be nicer and they ask

questions.

As the years passed by,

the depression sank deeper.

Everyone was supportive of me,

but I felt guilty.

And then one day in 2014,

I woke up at noon.

It was a beautiful summer day, and I didn't want to get out of bed.

I was 233 pounds, unhappy and unhealthy.

I knew I had to do something.

A friend of mine was a marathon runner,

and her posts on Facebook were always so inspiring.

So that day, I decided I would go for a two-mile run.

I could only run to the end of the road, which was only a couple of blocks, before running out of breath.

But I made the decision to walk the rest of the way, and I did this every day.

Pretty soon,

Those two blocks, they turned into one mile,

and one mile turned into a few

and just like that I sort of turned into for a scum

I just felt like running and I couldn't stop

that next year

I ran a local eight mile race

and a local half marathon

I just wanted to keep running.

I entered a trail race in Louisiana with a friend where

she ran a 62-mile race.

I decided to do a 20-mile

race.

It rained hard.

I was miserably wet and cold the entire time.

But as I sat around waiting for my friend to finish, I noticed the runners around me.

I knew they were exhausted.

I ran only 20 miles and I was done.

These people were running 62 and 100 mile races and they were smiling.

Their endurance, willpower, and determination inspired me greatly.

If they could get joy out of doing something something so difficult, I wanted that too.

So I decided to train for an ultra marathon.

It was hard at first,

but as I ran more,

I wanted to see how much farther I could go.

I ran up in the mountains with my dog where I loved to be.

I thought about my ancestors a lot.

They were the true ultra runners.

For fun they would do endurance races where they ran in a circle and the last one running would win

and they ran for a very long time.

I felt healthier.

I lost 80 pounds.

I was happier.

The depression was easier to manage.

I felt stronger.

I signed up for a 50-mile race in Alaska, up in the mountains, out in the middle of nowhere,

and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

It had rained heavily the night before, but it stopped shortly before sunrise.

when we all gathered together.

The race director said a few words and sent us off.

It was an immediate ascent,

and soon I was left alone.

There were tree stumps lurking along the trail,

and from afar they looked like bears peeking out at you.

The first one almost scared me to death.

I wore a mask over my face

and it started to fall off.

But instead of stopping to put another one on,

I decided to keep going without it.

On the trail, there's a point where you turn around and follow part of the course back.

Runners were

heading up, and as they passed me, each gave me a word of encouragement.

There were no negative words or looks.

I felt comfortable without the mask amongst them.

I felt strengthened.

Later on, I saw a group of hikers with their dogs.

A husky blocked the trail.

with his body as if to say stop.

Those people,

they were yelling, hey there, no bear.

They told me that they had seen a bear across the valley and that maybe I should stick with them until the runner behind me caught up.

But I wasn't sure if she was still back there.

So I decided to proceed alone with caution.

I just wanted to finish.

Not too far down the trail, I saw him.

In the trees, a large black bear, most likely male.

We looked at each other.

I thought about the two

that were mauled earlier that summer.

I was so scared.

Instinctively, I walked forward while yelling.

I must have looked like a mad woman.

When I didn't see him anymore,

I started running.

It started raining.

I kept looking back and kept moving forward.

Up ahead, I saw another black bear run across the trail into the overgrowth.

grown plants.

Bears everywhere, bear poop everywhere.

Behind me, I heard the loudest scream.

It was the one being attacked.

It screamed again.

It was a hawk.

I prayed with all of my might and imagined the angels surrounding me.

And I hoped that the hawk had scared the bear away.

At mile 36, I remember thinking, you're almost there, you're badass, keep going.

Mile 40,

48,

I couldn't believe it.

Then I thought, shouldn't have I finished by now?

Did I miss a turn?

Soon I heard voices, then I saw cars.

I heard a man's voice say, there's Carol.

I saw my sister jumping up and down.

I had never cried so hard, yet so quietly before,

but I finished.

I have since completed several ultramarathons, and my next goal is to finish a hundred-mile race.

That 16-year-old girl sitting in the ambulance had no sense of what life really meant.

But after experiencing that darkness, I realized how precious and fragile life is.

And I'm very grateful to be here still and to be able to see and to be able to talk and to tell my story.

The depression hasn't gone away.

It's still there.

There are days where I'm exhausted from everything that I've been through and go through.

But I've learned how to keep going day by day and mile by mile.

Carol Sepalu received a standing ovation from the audience in Anchorage that night.

1,200 people literally jumped to their feet.

I've said it a thousand times, but moth audiences are hands down the best.

Carol works at a nursing home in Nome as a cultural activity specialist.

She says her favorite part of the job is preparing native foods such as seal and reindeer because seeing the elders enjoy the foods they grew up eating makes her happy.

Carol runs about 40 miles a week and she told me there's a hundred mile race that goes from Hope, Alaska to Cooper Landing and back again to Hope.

And that is her goal race.

You can find out more about Carol and her racing adventures on our website, themoth.org.

That's it for this episode.

We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Your host this hour was Meg Bowles.

Meg also directed the stories in the show along with Michelle Jolowski.

The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janes, and Jennifer Hickson.

Production support from Emily Couch.

Moth Stories Are True as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift.

Other music in this hour from Willie Nelson, Daryl Anger and Bruce Molsky, the Peggy Lee Band, and Moondog.

You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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