Latest news with #AprilFool's
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
It's a complete miracle": Siblings find long-lost big sister 70 years after their mom was forced to give her up
After 73 years apart, Trish Caller, 61, and June Thompson, 63, finally met their long-lost older half-sister, Geraldine 'Geri' Ratcliffe, 77 — a reunion made possible by a chance DNA match and a daughter's curiosity. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now As first reported by SWNS and the Somerset County Gazette, the heartwarming discovery unfolded in April 2025, tracing its roots back to a painful chapter in Irish history and a mother's lifelong longing to reconnect. Back in 1952, their mother, Mary Willis, was forced to give up her eldest daughter while living at the notorious in Ireland — an institution later condemned for its cruel treatment of young, unmarried mothers. Geraldine was just four years old when she was placed for adoption. For decades, the secret weighed heavily on Willis, who died in 2011 at the age of 84, never knowing that her daughters would one day find each other. Caller, who works as a columnist for the Somerset County Gazette, said their mother never lied — she simply couldn't speak about the trauma. 'Mum never told us any lies, she just never told us the truth as she was made to feel that she'd committed the worst sin against God,' she told SWNS. The turning point came in 2023, when Caller's daughter, Laura Polley, submitted her DNA to The results led to a stunning match in April 2025. Thinking it was an April Fool's joke, both Caller and Ratcliffe were skeptical—until an email from Caller made the incredible truth undeniable. 'I thought Laura was playing April Fool's on me,' Caller recalled. 'Turns out Geri thought the same thing too.' A Zoom call was quickly followed by a deeply emotional in-person meeting later that month. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now 'It was instant love,' Caller said of finally embracing her long-lost sister. Despite having lived separate lives, the three siblings discovered they had striking similarities — from facial features to the same infectious laugh. Together, they pieced together more of their mother's story. Mary Willis had been just 21 when she gave birth to Geraldine in 1948. She later left Ireland, married Peter Willis, and went on to have three more children — Trish, June, and their brother Stephen. The Bessborough Home, where Mary was once confined, operated under the control of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. An Irish government investigation in 2021 revealed that nearly 900 children died there between 1922 and 1988, with many adoptions forced under immense pressure and shame. Though their mother never got the chance to reunite with the daughter she lost, her children honored her memory together — visiting her grave in a deeply moving tribute. 'We do feel like Mum is with us now, and she's been with us every step of the way,' Caller told the Somerset County Gazette. 'This is what Mum would have wanted.' The sisters now plan to travel to Ireland together, to walk through the places their mother once knew — and perhaps find a deeper sense of closure. 'It's a complete miracle,' said Caller. 'Having Geri in my life is something I've always wanted.'
1News
14-05-2025
- 1News
Swiss speed camera snaps flying duck - believed to be repeat offender
A speed camera has captured a duck speeding in central Switzerland not once, but perhaps twice, several years apart. Police were going through radar images snapped on April 13 when they came across the culprit, caught flying at almost double the limit in the town of Köniz, near Bern, the AFP reported. According to a Facebook post, the bird was clocked going 52km/h in a 30km/h zone. But police were further surprised when a suspiciously similar looking duck was captured speeding in the same spot, with the same speed, on the exact same date seven years earlier. The Gemeinde Köniz Facebook post where the picture was posted questioned whether this was a belated "April Fool's" joke or a fake picture, however, it asserted it was impossible that somebody had manipulated the radar images. "The computers are yearly inspected and checked by METAS, and the photos are sealed," the post said. The initial incident in 2018 made international headlines, but the duck has yet to be charged.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Siblings Find Long-Lost Big Sister Over 70 Years After Their Mom Was Forced to Give Her Up
Sisters Trish Caller and June Thompson grew up hearing about their older half-sister Geraldine Ratcliffe, but never met her until a DNA test changed everything The test helped the siblings track down the child their mother was forced to give up in 1952 Caller admitted that she "couldn't believe" they finally found each other, and just wished the happy moment could have taken place while their mom was still aliveTwo English sisters finally met their oldest sibling — and it's all thanks to a DNA test. Trish Caller, 61, and June Thompson, 63, spent decades trying to find their long-lost half-sister Geraldine Ratcliffe, 77, the siblings told SWNS. Their mother, Mary Willis, was also dedicated to trying to find Ratcliffe, who was just four years old when Willis was forced to put her up for adoption in 1952, according to the Somerset County Gazette, where Caller works as a columnist. "Having Geri in my life is something I've always wanted," Caller told SWNS. Although their mom, who died in 2011, didn't live to see the happy day, the reunion was set into motion in 2023, when Caller's daughter, Laura Polley, submitted a DNA sample to When a match turned up in April 2025, Caller sent an email to Ratcliffe — and assured her that despite the timing of the message (literally April 1 ) she wasn't pulling a prank. In fact, Ratcliffe wasn't the only one who needed a little convincing. "I thought Laura was playing April Fool's on me," Caller told SWNS, "turns out Geri thought the same thing too." Caller and Thompson chatted with Ratcliffe over Zoom before meeting in person for the first time later that month. Caller told SWNS she felt "instant love" for her biological half-sister. "Meeting for the first time was emotional," Caller said, noting that the three siblings share "similar" features and all have "the same laugh." Together, the sisters learned that their late mom was a survivor of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Ireland, according to SWNS and the Somerset County Gazette. Wills, who died at the age of 84, was just 21 when she gave birth to Ratcliffe in 1948. A 2021 investigation by the Irish government found that the home, which was run by a religious order of Catholic nuns called the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, forced adoptions on the "vulnerable women" — and treated them with cruelty. Between 1922 and 1988, around 900 babies died at the home, which is no longer in operation, according to the Gazette. "Mum never told us any lies, she just never told us the truth as she was made to feel that she'd committed the worst sin against God," Caller told the outlet. After Wills had to give up Ratcliffe, she left Ireland and later met and married Peter Wills, with whom she welcomed Caller, Thompson and their brother Stephen, according to SWNS. Since finding each other, Caller said that all the sisters took an "emotional" visit to pay their respects at their mother's grave. They have a happier trip planned too. "We're planning to take a trip to Ireland to see where mum spent her earlier years," said Caller. Although it was "a shame" they couldn't reunite with their sister while their mother was still around, Caller told the Somerset County Gazette that discovering Ratcliffe was "a complete miracle." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "We do feel like Mum is with us now, and she's been with us every step of the way," she said. "This is what mum would have wanted." Read the original article on People
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lazarus Lake, the ‘Leonardo da Vinci of pain' behind the world's cruelest race
For over a century, Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary was the end of the line. Built in the shape of a Greek cross, the pale limestone structure had housed the worst of the worst – murderers, madmen, monsters – its bulk hunched beneath a crown of scarred mountains the guards called the fifth wall. Now it sits empty – cracking and molding and dying. But each spring around April Fool's, on a cold, crisp day like today, a retired accountant appears at its gate. He carries a book with an ominous title and plants it against the back wall. Then sometime between midnight and noon the next day, he lights a cigarette, and the world's most grueling footrace begins. Advertisement He came at dawn, in a large U-Haul coughing diesel smoke into the Tennessee frost. After crawling out, he leaned on a cattle prod and lit a cigarette in front of the prison gate. He wore faded flannel, red-and-black checked, and a bright sock hat that said Geezer. The rest of him was almost deceptive: a tangly grey beard, perfectly manicured nails, and eyes like two-way mirrors – they observed everything and revealed nothing. Related: The Barkley Marathons: the hellish 100-mile race with 15 finishers in 36 years To some he is Lazarus Lake. To others 'the Leonardo da Vinci of Pain.' His Social Security comes to Gary Cantrell. Most just call him Laz. A rumor has it he'd been shot in a marathon. Another that he'd pulled his own teeth. Many are convinced he's diabolical, a man who breaks people for the fun of it. Others see a 'bearded saint' who pushes limit-seekers in a way that borders on genius. Advertisement In an already eccentric sport, his ultramarathon creations defy convention: tour buses, ferry rides, conch shells, a chair of honor called a 'thrown,' races with no finish lines, and races where older runners beat the pants off competitors half their age – Lazarus Lake filled a gap few realized needed filling. But it's here, at his Barkley Marathons, that he tests the limits of human endurance – physical, mental, and otherwise. Prospective runners send an application to 'Idiot,' include $1.60, and write an essay on why they should be allowed in. What they endure if accepted is legend. Shredded legs. Separated clavicles. Exposed kneecaps. One runner hopped 20 miles on a broken ankle just to get to a place where he could quit. Over the past five years, no one had even finished the Barkley. In its 36-year history, only 15 ever had. Laz looked on while a grey truck pulled up to the gate and sat gurgling. When I mentioned the polarizing attitudes toward his races, he just shrugged. 'Most people think fair is what's best for them. If you don't fail,' he said on a long sigh of cigarette smoke, 'how will you know how far you can go?' A young man climbed out, gave a nod, and worked the lock with a hoop of keys. They rattled against the metal gate until the whole thing, all two stories of it, screeched and unfolded like a zipper. Advertisement Laz slipped back into his truck without a word and headed toward the prison. I followed. Outside my frosty car window, the mountains loomed up to a series of tall ridges, dull like the color of deer in winter. They were strewn with jeep roads and blown-down timber. You had to think – 40 of the world's toughest trail runners against mountains the Cherokee deemed too inhospitable to mess with. The U-Haul circled a parking lot the size of a football field before lumbering to a halt in a puff of exhaust. Laz leaned against the front fender and began to piss. It steamed and splattered till it formed a dark patch on the concrete. 'I do two things well,' he said. 'I sleep well, and I piss well.' I looked away and thought about how I'd convinced The New York Times to let me profile him, then traveled here on my own dime. Nothing came easy with Laz. For three years, I'd tried to get him on his least favorite subject, himself. Instead, he teased me with small openings, false starts, and strange little trials – one of them, a math problem, nearly broke me: Advertisement ABCDE x A = EEEEEE The equation glared at me from my inbox, haunted a notepad on my desk, and ran on a loop in my head. After a few days of overclocking my brain, I panicked and passed it off to my wife. She solved it in fifteen minutes, and I was saved. Almost … Laz's reply was almost too quick, written in his all-lowercase style. 'did you give it to somebody?' Full of dread, I told him the truth. His response was predictably blunt. 'you always let someone else do your homework?' That could have been the end of it. Yet here I was in 2023, possibly on to the next test – trailing him toward the back of the prison, where he limped past a towering wall of sandstone and stopped at a conjunction of metal pipes. He produced the book, Last Will and Testament, and with little fanfare duct-taped it to the center. Advertisement To prove you'd run his Barkley course, he had you bring back a page from each book, 13 this year. The order of the books formed one loop – five loops total – 60 hours to finish. 'Sixty hours of Hell,' wrote one magazine. He added sections every year, mostly off-trail, yet the official distance somehow remained 100 miles. Those in the know say it's nothing short of 125. Not knowing, Laz maintains, is part of the fun. After lighting another cigarette, he moved to a break in the earth where a swollen stream barreled into a tunnel beneath the prison. Naturally, he sent the runners through it. At night, they reported hearing radios, television sets, even voices calling their names. They swore they were being watched, though no one ever mentioned by whom. 'They'll come up through here,' Laz said with some glee and pointed to a shaft lined with slick, glistening stones. Getting up or down would require a chimney climb, wedging feet and arms against opposing walls. 'Then, they'll head up that,' he said and gestured with his cattle prod to a sheer wall of Tennessee jungle. The slope didn't rise, it lunged at the sky – 60 degrees of winter-stripped trees so densely pushed together they seemed to fight each other for air. There was a flare in Laz's eyes as he studied it. 'We call that The Bad Thing.' Advertisement Once, a deer tumbled off the cliffs and into the prison yard. The inmates kept it and named it 'Geronimo.' It became one of the boys, a guide told me, and claimed he could still hear its footsteps. 'The whole place is haunted,' he said, his voice dropping. He described the six-by-six dungeon, the hooks where they'd hang inmates by their thumbs, and the mines in the mountains where hundreds were buried alive. When they collapsed, the guards would just leave them. 'No, no,' he said, shaking his ball-cap-covered head. 'This is not a good place. And I don't do night tours.' 'Jesus, you'd need a rope,' I whispered, craning my neck up at The Bad Thing. Related: 'I don't smoke on the uphills': Lazarus Lake walks across America (again) A thick, congested laugh burrowed up from Laz's chest. 'Aw hell,' he said. 'That's just the first pitch.' Advertisement Most big trail races have a monster, that one signature, gut-sucking climb. At the Barkley, there are a dozen, each loop, and The Bad Thing isn't even one of the worst. The total elevation gain soars over 68,000ft, roughly two Everests and a Kilimanjaro – from sea level. Many of the climbs are littered with long thatches of briars – the kind country people used to call 'wait-a-minutes' because it wasn't until you got a step past them that you realized you'd been snagged. 'God, one wrong move and you'd come down it alright, like a bowling ball,' I thought but actually said out loud. 'Oh, you'd smack into a tree long before you hit the bottom,' said Laz, without a hitch. 'It'd mess you up a bit. But you'd live.' He laughed till he groaned, then stilled for a moment before fixing his eyes on me. 'Failure has to hurt.' I let that roll over in my head for a moment. 'Doesn't it usually?' Advertisement He didn't respond to that but scanned the hillside with his large, green eyes. 'What makes people quit?' he said, blowing a long column of smoke back toward the prison. 'Everybody is born a quitter. It's the default setting. Hell, even fish quit! You can put 'em in an artificial stream with a fake scene, and they'll swim upstream as long as it looks like they're moving. But make it stationary, and they'll quit and go with the water.' He turned to head back to the parking lot but paused. 'Life can be a damn good metaphor for sports,' he said. 'Adapt or die.' *** The U-Haul was moving again, this time along a tight patch of pavement deep inside Frozen Head State Park. The road curved and rolled into a tunnel of trees toward the trailhead. There, the next phase of the Barkley would begin, checking in those Laz had called at various times penitents, fools, and sickos. Advertisement The farther we went, the more the forest seemed to want its space back – dark patches of moss slowly overtook the road and boulders crowded the edges. Laz liked to talk about the park's mercurial microclimate, how the air compressed through the gaps like a thumb held over a garden hose. Temperatures could swing from 80 to 15 degrees in a single loop. 'First-timers think it's hyperbole,' he said, 'but you only have to get caught by it once.' Soon, the bars on my phone dwindled to an 'x,' and the road began to climb. Finally, a smudge of yellow appeared ahead and became a gate. Set between two stone pillars, this flaking pole was where the ordeal would begin and end. Here, Taps would play on a squeaky bugle for the fallen. Like most things in Frozen Head, one got the sense it was sentient. A cracked sign adorned its middle: 'Do Not Block Gate.' By early afternoon, the ritual check-in was underway. A line of 40 trail runners twisted up to a large, white tarp, a virtual who's who of ultrarunning. The veterans carried items for Laz that he was in need of: cigarettes, socks, shirts. The virgins (first-timers) produced license plates from their home states and countries. Hundreds of these plates hung from yellow ropes strung between the trees – a dangling gallery of far-flung places like Liberia, South Africa, Australia, Antarctica. There were also unfamiliar faces in line, wide-eyed and wrapped in weather-faded gear. They stood quietly, taking it all in. Every so often, one would lean forward for a glimpse of Laz. You got the sense they weren't here for the mountains. Not even the pain. They were here for him – for Laz and his gate and his cigarette, daring them to come undone. Advertisement His gravelly laugh echoed through the trees from behind a picnic table, where he greeted the entrants. 'We look forward to seeing you suffer,' he said to one, before 'You might as well go ahead and hit your head on a rock' to another. The runners and crews got green and blue wristbands. The media got pink. 'Any advice?' a runner asked. 'Go home,' Laz laughed and handed him his complimentary shirt. On it was an illustration of a runner, terror etched across his face as he dashed up a tree. A monstrous black bear charged him from behind, while above, a cougar crouched on a limb, ready to pounce. At the bottom was this year's theme – The worst-case scenario is just the starting point! After the last runner checked in, they studied the master map. Laz made one of the course each year, and once it was set out, the runners and crews did their best to copy it by hand. They were also given a creatively useless set of instructions. Even the veterans got lost. One runner was heard to say, 'I'm not sure where I was, but it was hard as hell to get to.' Advertisement No one knew the start time, only Laz, and at some point in the next 12 hours, he'd blow a conch shell. If you heard it, you had one hour to get to the gate, where he'd start the ordeal by lighting a cigarette. Secrecy in all things; no one outside the camp – save close family members – even knew we were here. A clammy breeze stirred the air and made me glance back toward my SUV. A laminated sign caught my eye –one I could've sworn wasn't there before. It was taped to a pole with words written in black magic marker. MEDICAL, it read, for instances of DEATH, near-dying, and other assorted life-threatening injuries. Below was a phone number. Why do they do it? I thought, as I revved the engine of my rental and held my numbed hands over the vents. Why does he do it? I remembered something ultra-phenom Courtney Dauwalter had told me. One of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, she'd managed only one loop here but insisted Laz didn't want to torture people. 'He makes these crazy-hard events,' she said, 'because he thinks we all have more than we think is possible.' I was just beginning to feel my fingers again, when the weather shifted. The clouds darkened, and a blistering wind came barreling off the mountains. It whipped and tossed the trees. It was like an unseen hand had pulled a lever. The temperature plummeted, then sleet began to thud off the tarps, tents, and scrambling runners. Advertisement I spotted Laz by the license plates, gazing up at the sky and sipping a chilled can of Dr. Pepper, a Tennessee license plate swinging in the wind beside him. Its bolded letters read, SURVIVE.
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lazarus Lake, the ‘Leonardo da Vinci of pain' behind the world's cruelest race
For over a century, Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary was the end of the line. Built in the shape of a Greek cross, the pale limestone structure had housed the worst of the worst – murderers, madmen, monsters – its bulk hunched beneath a crown of scarred mountains the guards called the fifth wall. Now it sits empty – cracking and molding and dying. But each spring around April Fool's, on a cold, crisp day like today, a retired accountant appears at its gate. He carries a book with an ominous title and plants it against the back wall. Then sometime between midnight and noon the next day, he lights a cigarette, and the world's most grueling footrace begins. He came at dawn, in a large U-Haul coughing diesel smoke into the Tennessee frost. After crawling out, he leaned on a cattle prod and lit a cigarette in front of the prison gate. He wore faded flannel, red-and-black checked, and a bright sock hat that said Geezer. The rest of him was almost deceptive: a tangly grey beard, perfectly manicured nails, and eyes like two-way mirrors – they observed everything and revealed nothing. To some he is Lazarus Lake. To others 'the Leonardo da Vinci of Pain.' His Social Security comes to Gary Cantrell. Most just call him Laz. A rumor has it he'd been shot in a marathon. Another that he'd pulled his own teeth. Many are convinced he's diabolical, a man who breaks people for the fun of it. Others see a 'bearded saint' who pushes limit-seekers in a way that borders on genius. In an already eccentric sport, his ultramarathon creations defy convention: tour buses, ferry rides, conch shells, a chair of honor called a 'thrown,' races with no finish lines, and races where older runners beat the pants off competitors half their age – Lazarus Lake filled a gap few realized needed filling. But it's here, at his Barkley Marathons, that he tests the limits of human endurance – physical, mental, and otherwise. Prospective runners send an application to 'Idiot,' include $1.60, and write an essay on why they should be allowed in. What they endure if accepted is legend. Shredded legs. Separated clavicles. Exposed kneecaps. One runner hopped 20 miles on a broken ankle just to get to a place where he could quit. Over the past five years, no one had even finished the Barkley. In its 36-year history, only 15 ever had. Laz looked on while a grey truck pulled up to the gate and sat gurgling. When I mentioned the polarizing attitudes toward his races, he just shrugged. 'Most people think fair is what's best for them. If you don't fail,' he said on a long sigh of cigarette smoke, 'how will you know how far you can go?' A young man climbed out, gave a nod, and worked the lock with a hoop of keys. They rattled against the metal gate until the whole thing, all two stories of it, screeched and unfolded like a zipper. Laz slipped back into his truck without a word and headed toward the prison. I followed. Outside my frosty car window, the mountains loomed up to a series of tall ridges, dull like the color of deer in winter. They were strewn with jeep roads and blown-down timber. You had to think – 40 of the world's toughest trail runners against mountains the Cherokee deemed too inhospitable to mess with. The U-Haul circled a parking lot the size of a football field before lumbering to a halt in a puff of exhaust. Laz leaned against the front fender and began to piss. It steamed and splattered till it formed a dark patch on the concrete. 'I do two things well,' he said. 'I sleep well, and I piss well.' I looked away and thought about how I'd convinced The New York Times to let me profile him, then traveled here on my own dime. Nothing came easy with Laz. For three years, I'd tried to get him on his least favorite subject, himself. Instead, he teased me with small openings, false starts, and strange little trials – one of them, a math problem, nearly broke me: ABCDE x A = EEEEEE The equation glared at me from my inbox, haunted a notepad on my desk, and ran on a loop in my head. After a few days of overclocking my brain, I panicked and passed it off to my wife. She solved it in fifteen minutes, and I was saved. Almost … Laz's reply was almost too quick, written in his all-lowercase style. 'did you give it to somebody?' Full of dread, I told him the truth. His response was predictably blunt. 'you always let someone else do your homework?' That could have been the end of it. Yet here I was in 2023, possibly on to the next test – trailing him toward the back of the prison, where he limped past a towering wall of sandstone and stopped at a conjunction of metal pipes. He produced the book, Last Will and Testament, and with little fanfare duct-taped it to the center. To prove you'd run his Barkley course, he had you bring back a page from each book, 13 this year. The order of the books formed one loop – five loops total – 60 hours to finish. 'Sixty hours of Hell,' wrote one magazine. He added sections every year, mostly off-trail, yet the official distance somehow remained 100 miles. Those in the know say it's nothing short of 125. Not knowing, Laz maintains, is part of the fun. After lighting another cigarette, he moved to a break in the earth where a swollen stream barreled into a tunnel beneath the prison. Naturally, he sent the runners through it. At night, they reported hearing radios, television sets, even voices calling their names. They swore they were being watched, though no one ever mentioned by whom. 'They'll come up through here,' Laz said with some glee and pointed to a shaft lined with slick, glistening stones. Getting up or down would require a chimney climb, wedging feet and arms against opposing walls. 'Then, they'll head up that,' he said and gestured with his cattle prod to a sheer wall of Tennessee jungle. The slope didn't rise, it lunged at the sky – 60 degrees of winter-stripped trees so densely pushed together they seemed to fight each other for air. There was a flare in Laz's eyes as he studied it. 'We call that The Bad Thing.' Once, a deer tumbled off the cliffs and into the prison yard. The inmates kept it and named it 'Geronimo.' It became one of the boys, a guide told me, and claimed he could still hear its footsteps. 'The whole place is haunted,' he said, his voice dropping. He described the six-by-six dungeon, the hooks where they'd hang inmates by their thumbs, and the mines in the mountains where hundreds were buried alive. When they collapsed, the guards would just leave them. 'No, no,' he said, shaking his ball-cap-covered head. 'This is not a good place. And I don't do night tours.' 'Jesus, you'd need a rope,' I whispered, craning my neck up at The Bad Thing. A thick, congested laugh burrowed up from Laz's chest. 'Aw hell,' he said. 'That's just the first pitch.' Most big trail races have a monster, that one signature, gut-sucking climb. At the Barkley, there are a dozen, each loop, and The Bad Thing isn't even one of the worst. The total elevation gain soars over 68,000ft, roughly two Everests and a Kilimanjaro – from sea level. Many of the climbs are littered with long thatches of briars – the kind country people used to call 'wait-a-minutes' because it wasn't until you got a step past them that you realized you'd been snagged. 'God, one wrong move and you'd come down it alright, like a bowling ball,' I thought but actually said out loud. 'Oh, you'd smack into a tree long before you hit the bottom,' said Laz, without a hitch. 'It'd mess you up a bit. But you'd live.' He laughed till he groaned, then stilled for a moment before fixing his eyes on me. 'Failure has to hurt.' I let that roll over in my head for a moment. 'Doesn't it usually?' He didn't respond to that but scanned the hillside with his large, green eyes. 'What makes people quit?' he said, blowing a long column of smoke back toward the prison. 'Everybody is born a quitter. It's the default setting. Hell, even fish quit! You can put 'em in an artificial stream with a fake scene, and they'll swim upstream as long as it looks like they're moving. But make it stationary, and they'll quit and go with the water.' He turned to head back to the parking lot but paused. 'Life can be a damn good metaphor for sports,' he said. 'Adapt or die.' The U-Haul was moving again, this time along a tight patch of pavement deep inside Frozen Head State Park. The road curved and rolled into a tunnel of trees toward the trailhead. There, the next phase of the Barkley would begin, checking in those Laz had called at various times penitents, fools, and sickos. The farther we went, the more the forest seemed to want its space back – dark patches of moss slowly overtook the road and boulders crowded the edges. Laz liked to talk about the park's mercurial microclimate, how the air compressed through the gaps like a thumb held over a garden hose. Temperatures could swing from 80 to 15 degrees in a single loop. 'First-timers think it's hyperbole,' he said, 'but you only have to get caught by it once.' Soon, the bars on my phone dwindled to an 'x,' and the road began to climb. Finally, a smudge of yellow appeared ahead and became a gate. Set between two stone pillars, this flaking pole was where the ordeal would begin and end. Here, Taps would play on a squeaky bugle for the fallen. Like most things in Frozen Head, one got the sense it was sentient. A cracked sign adorned its middle: 'Do Not Block Gate.' By early afternoon, the ritual check-in was underway. A line of 40 trail runners twisted up to a large, white tarp, a virtual who's who of ultrarunning. The veterans carried items for Laz that he was in need of: cigarettes, socks, shirts. The virgins (first-timers) produced license plates from their home states and countries. Hundreds of these plates hung from yellow ropes strung between the trees – a dangling gallery of far-flung places like Liberia, South Africa, Australia, Antarctica. There were also unfamiliar faces in line, wide-eyed and wrapped in weather-faded gear. They stood quietly, taking it all in. Every so often, one would lean forward for a glimpse of Laz. You got the sense they weren't here for the mountains. Not even the pain. They were here for him – for Laz and his gate and his cigarette, daring them to come undone. His gravelly laugh echoed through the trees from behind a picnic table, where he greeted the entrants. 'We look forward to seeing you suffer,' he said to one, before 'You might as well go ahead and hit your head on a rock' to another. The runners and crews got green and blue wristbands. The media got pink. 'Any advice?' a runner asked. 'Go home,' Laz laughed and handed him his complimentary shirt. On it was an illustration of a runner, terror etched across his face as he dashed up a tree. A monstrous black bear charged him from behind, while above, a cougar crouched on a limb, ready to pounce. At the bottom was this year's theme – The worst-case scenario is just the starting point! After the last runner checked in, they studied the master map. Laz made one of the course each year, and once it was set out, the runners and crews did their best to copy it by hand. They were also given a creatively useless set of instructions. Even the veterans got lost. One runner was heard to say, 'I'm not sure where I was, but it was hard as hell to get to.' No one knew the start time, only Laz, and at some point in the next 12 hours, he'd blow a conch shell. If you heard it, you had one hour to get to the gate, where he'd start the ordeal by lighting a cigarette. Secrecy in all things; no one outside the camp – save close family members – even knew we were here. A clammy breeze stirred the air and made me glance back toward my SUV. A laminated sign caught my eye –one I could've sworn wasn't there before. It was taped to a pole with words written in black magic marker. MEDICAL, it read, for instances of DEATH, near-dying, and other assorted life-threatening injuries. Below was a phone number. Why do they do it? I thought, as I revved the engine of my rental and held my numbed hands over the vents. Why does he do it? I remembered something ultra-phenom Courtney Dauwalter had told me. One of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, she'd managed only one loop here but insisted Laz didn't want to torture people. 'He makes these crazy-hard events,' she said, 'because he thinks we all have more than we think is possible.' I was just beginning to feel my fingers again, when the weather shifted. The clouds darkened, and a blistering wind came barreling off the mountains. It whipped and tossed the trees. It was like an unseen hand had pulled a lever. The temperature plummeted, then sleet began to thud off the tarps, tents, and scrambling runners. I spotted Laz by the license plates, gazing up at the sky and sipping a chilled can of Dr. Pepper, a Tennessee license plate swinging in the wind beside him. Its bolded letters read, SURVIVE. The Endurance Artist by Jared Beasley will be out September 16th and is currently available for preorder at Simon & Schuster.
