‘Good Omens’ and the Appalachian Trail
Author’s note: I began this essay while I was hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2019, but never published it. Since the second season of Good Omens is poised to come out in 2022 (AAAH!), it seemed like a good time to revive this piece and give it to the world.
It’s 3:18 in the afternoon. I look down at my feet. My calves and ankles and shoes are covered in black, sopping mud. Look up. Up more. The hill, which doesn’t look like much of a hill, keeps finding ways to go on. Gnats swarm around my eyelashes, diving towards my corneas. It doesn’t matter how much DEET I pour all over my limbs and rub on my face. They still find me. It’s hot. No, it’s boiling. The afternoon drips on in a mindless summer haze. Crowley probably invented this insect repellent; I’m convinced at this point that it does not actually contain any functioning DEET. I am probably spewing a fog of low-grade evil for miles, cursing the bugs and the mud and the rocks and the summer. I look at my phone. I still have eight miles to go. Better stop complaining. Buck up. Move.
I’m just over halfway through my hike of the Appalachian Trail, a 2,192-mile ribbon of glorious masochism that runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. It’s July, and I’m in Pennsylvania, and the low elevation of this section of the trail does not lend itself well to human comfort.
For all my complaining, though, I’m not unhappy. Far from it. I am traveling with a group of friends whose humor, resilience, and determination astound me. I wake up to raindrops and birds, and when I fall asleep at night, fireflies sometimes creep under the vestibule of my tent. I’ve seen bears and turtles and deer and turkeys. The last 1,200 or so miles have brought me joy and memories that I fail to express sufficiently with words, and on some level, I never want this hike to end.
But that’s the big picture. That’s the overall sentiment. The moment-to-moment, day-to-day struggle is what more frequently bubbles to the surface. I have strategies, comforts to get me through these times. I have my friends and their love. I have my family cheering me on. I have books and podcasts and imagination. And I have Good Omens.
I discovered Good Omens the book somewhat late: just a couple of years ago. I didn’t even know that a show was in the works when I gave the audiobook my first listen. I recall doing nothing but sitting in rapt attention, while walking to and from my office, or while crocheting. The world of the novel poured over me like a bubbling stream. I was thirsty for it, and I listened again immediately when I came to the end of the book the first time.
I don’t know what it was that hooked me. I still don’t. Maybe it’s the unique take on the apocalypse. Maybe it’s the shenanigans and debauchery, the way it was obviously meant to be over-the top: What else can one expect when Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett worked together? Maybe it’s the humor. Or maybe it is the gentleness, the way the world is given to us as an absolute mess, but a place that is worth saving. Worth going against prophecy and ineffability and Heaven and Hell for. Whatever it was, something about Good Omens captured me — along with everyone else who adored the book in the years before the show arrived.
And oh, friends. It arrived. It arrived like a thunderclap, like a shimmering halo in a Jesus-beam through the forest. It arrived in the middle of my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, two days after I took a nasty fall and sprained my ankle, which ballooned to the size of a grapefruit and forced me into rest in a town in Virginia. I spent many hours in the local McDonald’s, using the free wifi, downloading the show to my phone, waiting for my friend Patches — also a fan — to arrive in town so we could watch it together. Before I saw it, I hoped that it would be the best possible rendition of the book.
It was.
Look, I don’t think I can put it into words how good this show is. Other people — properly eloquent people with real computers who aren’t typing a fangirly essay on their phones in a tent in the middle of the woods — have already done so. And I agree with them on so many points. Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale made me want to simultaneously weep and grin like a moron; David Tennant’s Crowley left me cackling. I will never get enough of them. Then there’s Madame Tracy and Shadwell, lifted, I swear to God, right from my imagination. The horsepersons of the apocalypse, including the brilliant non-binary Pollution. And the music! The main theme could not be more iconically Good Omens. It’s on my AT playlist on Spotify now, and when it comes up on shuffle I am delighted.
Beyond these elements, there are wise additions, amendments, and edges to the original story. Binary thinking is exploded. God is referred to as “She” without a trace of irony or disrespect. The angels and demons are not limited by traditional portrayal of gender. Perhaps most importantly, Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship, the axis on which the show turns, is not forced into any boxes. The story is so much: a tale of love and friendship, a commentary on good and evil, and an ode to the world. These and other elements launch the show into the current moment, without deviating from the original spirit of the narrative.
At one point in the story, Aziraphale and Crowley travel to the village of Tadfield to search for the missing Antichrist. When they arrive there, the angel is staggered to find that the whole area is surrounded by a feeling of love. “Someone really loves this place,” he says by way of explanation. A great big haze of love hangs over the village.
Similarly, a cloud of affection seems to hang over this story. I’ve read people’s tweets and Tumblr posts explaining what this tale means to them. I’ve gone soft at Neil Gaiman’s and Michael Sheen’s retweeting of and responding to fans’ art, discussions, and notes of thanks. I’ve begun my sleepless journey into the world of fanfiction, and I am humbled by the dedication and skilled writing therein. I feel rolled up into a movement, a great big tide of appreciation for a production that celebrates the world, uplifts some of the most marginalized, and declares with flaming sword of joy that life is so valuable, so meaningful, that it is worth averting the apocalypse to save.
I’ve seen folks share how stories, Good Omens included, have saved their lives. Maybe they felt like the world didn’t see them, and then it did. Or maybe their anxiety prevented them from making the art they loved to make, and then the show gave them new perspective. This is the grace of storytelling.
In his acceptance speech for the Newbery medal awarded to The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman recalls memories of fans approaching him and demonstrating how his words have influenced them in one way or another. While his first instinct, he says, is to be grateful and polite, in the past he used to dismiss these comments as irrelevant. He writes not to help other people, he says; he writes because he wants to see what happens. But then he goes on to elaborate on how these views have changed since the death of his father. In the speech, Neil reflects on his realization that “it’s not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It’s the most important thing there is.”
Michael Sheen, Patron Saint of the Good Omens Fandom himself, also recently expressed a similar idea about stories in a delightful interview with David Tennant on the latter’s podcast. After discussing his journey to Good Omens, the enthusiastic actor mentioned a line from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” that reads thus: “these fragments I have shored against my ruin[s].” Life is hard, said Michael Sheen. It is a thin line between making it and going under, so you need to seek and find those fragments that keep you afloat. Whether they are stories, poems, fandoms, something you were into as a kid — it doesn’t matter. Humans need to find and hold onto the fragments that keep us going.
So, I’m hiking a trail. I’m on an adventure. It’s miraculous and I am grateful to be out here living my dreams every day. But dammit, it is hard. It’s hard to get eaten by mosquitoes to have gnats flying into your mucous membranes every five seconds. It is hard to look at a map and see how many miles lay in front of you. It is hard to stay happy and cheerful all the time (and most of the time I fail at this anyway). It is hard to keep going. I’m not complaining, because I love it out here. But it’s a microcosm of life: no matter how good things are, sometimes they are just difficult. And it is these difficult times, the rainy days and sweltering rock climbs, that make me cling to my fragments.
I cling. I put in my headphones and listen, for the third time, to Neverwhere and The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the entire Sherlock Holmes canon and Braiding Sweetgrass. I dive into my favorite podcasts and put on my upbeat playlists and dance across the rocks. At night, I unpack my bag and set up my tent and pull out my copy of Good Omens, Crowley grinning encouragingly at me from the cover. I watch the show over and over, I read the script book. I know the voices; I hear them in my head. Soon, I will have the letters written word for word in the fibers of my heart.
Come on, say the angel and the demon in my mind as I walk ever more north. Come on, we saved the world so you could live in it. Come and see.
And I look. I spread out my arms and look to the stars, ad astra, sugary-splattered across space and time. I see my favorite characters and words and poems up there, dancing. I see the Divine. See the tips of the trees swaying in the moonlight air; see the glimmering eyes of deer reflected in the gleam of my headlamp. See the snakes lazily slithering across the trail. If I squint enough, I can just begin to imagine that their eyes are yellow and smiling.
It seems too much to say that Good Omens saved my life. So many stories have made me, and this is not my first obsession. But it is not a stretch to say that Good Omens has saved — or at least drastically aided — my hike. It gives me comfort, a fragment to shore against my ruin. I am still walking north, with this tale in my bones, one of the things fueling me to Maine, comforting me, reminding me that I am writing my story onto the pages of a world that is both broken and beautiful. Half demon, half angel, all human.
I am so grateful. Thank you, Neil Gaiman; thank you, Terry Pratchett. Thank you Michael Sheen and David Tennant and all of the brilliant cast and crew that made a most miraculous rendition. You keep me walking.
To the world!
