After nibbling on some trail mix, I lay down on my back. My body ached with relief. I let my spirit float into the sky, following the white puffy clouds coming over the peaks on the west and drifted, thinking of my special place.
I couldn’t remember what year I first discovered it. It was on my birthday, long ago. Coming down from a solo hike to the pass, I saw a valley far below with a stream running through. I had only begun at that time to dare venture off the trail.
After a long scramble down the steep side of the mountain, I followed the stream toward its source, past a small waterfall dividing around purple-pink flowers, and came to a place of pure magic.
For more than an hour, I lingered there, dipping in the icy stream, sitting and watching its flow, thinking of the year past, the year ahead. Peace within and without. Clarity.
After that it became a ritual to go alone on my birthday, dip in the stream to clear the past year, and dream the next. I had only missed once, the year I had a hip replacement.
A group of people passing, talking loudly, roused me from my memories. As I opened my eyes and looked up, I saw the sun glint off something silver high in the sky above the southern peaks. It hung there, shining like a tiny star—but it was daylight. It must be a plane, I thought, frowning, trying to see more clearly. But a plane would move, and this bit of silver sun glint hovered motionless over the highest peak. For a long, still moment I stared at it. Then it was gone, just gone, like a light turned out. I rubbed my eyes and sat up.
What in the world was that? I looked again at the place where it had been. Nothing. Only the deep blue of the sky.
I rubbed my eyes again and looked at my watch. Already 10:30. I should get going, I told myself. My special place is still far above. I stood slowly, still wondering what I had seen.
The trail was steeper after I left Sapphire Lake. I slowed my pace, steadied my breath. Not far above the lake were two large rocks by the stream’s edge. I paused and time shifted. I saw myself sitting there with my daughter, Lisa, the weekend before she left for college. She’d asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
“Walk with me. A day in the mountains.”
We sat there by the stream. I don’t remember what we spoke of, only her exquisite young beauty and the aching poignancy of her imminent departure.
Further on, a huge boulder, high as a house, rose up out of a grassy meadow spangled with wildflowers. Years ago, when he was still in his teens, my son Greg walked this trail with me. I smiled, remembering how he’d run to climb that boulder, agile as a monkey. I could almost see him standing on the top as he did that day, grinning down at me.
I walked on, thinking of my children. Lisa and Greg, only a year apart, born of my first marriage when I was very young. Then Robin, child of my second marriage, born when Lisa and Greg were almost grown. All three were a blessing.
Higher up, at a turn in the trail, a view opened to a gigantic rock jutting out of the mountain high above. The trail switched back and forth across its face with plunging views of the valley and lake below. I had climbed that high only a few times. Twenty-five years ago, in the chaos of my divorce from Jon, I left home impulsively in the middle of the afternoon, drove to the trailhead, and ran up this trail, ran past where I now stood and on, up and up. Storms ricocheted amongst the peaks. I gloried in them. Thunder crashed and rain soaked me. As I dashed up the rockface on the switchbacks, I met hikers running down, ponchos flapping.
A man leaping from rock to rock shouted as he passed me, “You’re going the wrong way!”
“No, I’m not!” I shouted back. No outer storm could match my raging spirit. At the last minute, when thunder and lightning became almost simultaneous, caution prevailed. I ducked under a rocky overhang and sat sipping hot tea from my small Thermos until the worst had passed.
Now I looked longingly at the great rockface, the high zigzag trail. How I would love to go there today, to stand in the wind at the top. I doubted I ever would again.
The trail curved and climbed through another wooded area with wide open places under the trees. At a steep incline, the makers of the trail had for some reason sent it across the stream, curved it around, and sent it back across the stream. The bridges were only two logs lashed together. I came to the first. The logs were wet with spray, perhaps slippery. How many times I had danced across or stopped in the center to exult in the rushing water. But now—I took a step forward, then drew back. The bridge was too narrow, the fall of water three feet below too swift, the rocks it swirled around too menacing. There was another path I knew. Back down the trail, a little way off among the trees, a steep scramble would bring me to the main track above the second crossing. There was brush across that path, too, but I made my way around it and climbed up on all fours. I stumbled to my knees when I reached the top, breathless, my heart racing in the crazy runaway beat of tachycardia. “Hush,” I said, laying my hand over my heart. But it took a long time for it to hush, and longer still for the beat to settle. So I had to rest again.
It was becoming harder to get going after a rest. My legs stiffened so quickly. I got up slowly. Not much further now. The trail left the stream and climbed, curving around a steep fall to a valley below.
A vertical slab of gray rock jutted out of the uphill side of the trail. I remembered the time Jon and I had walked there with Robin when he was seven or eight years old. I had sat leaning against that slab of rock while he and Jon played, throwing stones over the edge of the precipice, watching how far they bounced and rolled.
Jon had been a devoted father, adoring his young son, lavishing him with loving attention, supporting him in all he endeavored. A devoted husband, until—
With a swift kick I sent a stone flying down the steep bank.
And before Jon there was Dan, who courted me with poetry and kisses and married me when I was barely out of high school, too young to know any better.
Another kick, and a second stone clattered down after the first.
Perfidious husbands.
As I stepped to the edge to watch the stones still tumbling far below, the earth under my foot crumbled and fell away. For a breathless moment I teetered there, before I caught my balance and pulled back. I leaned against the rockface on the other side of the trail, my heart pounding wildly.
“Careful, woman!” I muttered aloud. “Sure, there’s a few other rocks I’d like to send down after Dan’s and Jon’s, but not my body.”
I rested there until my breath quieted, the rock warm against my back, then went on up the trail. Slower now. My injured knee was complaining and the pack was heavy on my shoulders. Or maybe it wasn’t the pack but the weight of anger, grief, the long years of loneliness.
Here. This is the place. The path wandered off the trail to the right, faint in the grass. I looked up and down. No one was coming. Once beyond an open space and a stand of stunted evergreens I would be out of sight. I hurried to the evergreens. They had grown thicker since I had last been there. It was a struggle to push though them, but I finally found a way and emerged on the other side, scratched and breathless.
Over the years, it had become a ritual to take off my boots here and go barefoot the rest of the way, partly because bare feet would be less damaging to the fragile tundra, partly because the delicacy of the tundra felt so delicious underfoot, and there were marshy places to walk through, cool mud even more luscious. There was also the sense I was on holy ground, and, like Moses before the burning bush, must take off my shoes.
Before me the terrain dropped away to the valley below. Autumn colors had already touched the grasses. They rippled in the light breeze, green, gold, rust. Across the valley I saw the stream I had followed all the way from Sapphire Lake and the rounded hump of the huge boulder that sheltered my special place. I was close.
As I bent to unlace my boots, my heart stopped, did a double beat, stopped again. I blacked out for a moment. When I cam
e around, my head spun. I laid my hand on my heart. “Hush.” The beat was settling, but my heart ached.
A cloud passed over the sun. The clouds were bigger now, still white but edged with gray.
I stuffed my socks into the toes of my boots and tied the lacings together for a handle. I must keep going, I said to myself.
No! the voice within me warned. Go back. You’ve already gone too far.
But, my spirit cried, I can’t go back now. It’s only a little further. I’m almost there.
The inner voice was silent. I got to my feet, staff in one hand, boots dangling by their laces in the other, and started slowly down the side of the valley. I could see the boulder clearly. It did not look far, but I always forgot how the clear air of the high country deceives, making things distant seem close. It took me a long time to cross the valley, bare feet tasting mossy grass, cool mud and water, smooth, warm surface of rock. Finally I came to the stream, to the waterfall dividing around vivid purple-pink flowers. One last climb.
Clouds had gathered as I crossed the valley, but the sun broke through when I reached my special place. It shone on the surface of a deep pool rippling in the curve of the stream and on the vivid green grass and tiny wildflowers at its edge. All was sheltered by the huge, rounded boulder that had guided me across the valley. Sunlight glinted off tiny bits of mica embedded in its surface, and gray-green lichen sketched their delicate patterns across it. At the top of the boulder, where the mountainside folded around it, one lone, ancient krumholz tree curved low to the ground, creating a cave beneath its twisted boughs. All around, the jagged peaks rose up. I stood still, gazing. Always the wonder of this place surpassed my remembering.
Gently I stepped forward, found that one particular hollow in the ground where it was perfect to rest, and eased myself down. I slipped off my pack, pulled off the pinching knee braces, and stretched out on my back. My head whirled and my heart pounded. But I had made it.
After a while I sat up. It was time to consider what I must let go of from the year before. For many years it had been the same—I must let go of complaining and resisting my limitations. Every year I let go of that and then, alas, still fought the encroachments of aging in the year that followed.
Oh, it’s hard to know—what is the line between accepting and giving up? Dan often quoted from a poem by Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I did not think I wanted to rage when that time came. I thought it would be more graceful to go peacefully. But if so, I’d need to practice. Who knew when that time would come?
I stood up and slipped out of my clothes. Standing naked at the edge of the pool, I prayed, “Pure waters, cleanse me of fighting against what I cannot change.”
I lowered myself, hands on the rocks at the edge, and put my feet in the water. It was very cold. I drew my feet out again. If only the sun would stay out. I knew I would have to move quickly or I would lose sensation in my feet before I could dip my whole body. In then. A few steps to the deep place. Complete submersion. Ice cold baptism. I came up with a gasp, scrambled to the shore, and stood wet, naked, and exulting in the warm sun.
If that doesn’t cleanse me, I don’t know what will.
I wrapped myself in my bathing cloth and sat down again. My heart was steady. I laughed. My cardiologist would never have recommended high-altitude, icy plunges for arrhythmia.
It was time to think of my intentions for the next year. In the past, my intentions had been about projects I wanted to accomplish in the coming year. Now all the affairs of my life seemed far away, down the long path I had climbed, down the long canyon I had driven up that morning. Nothing seemed to draw me as I sat there, high above it all.
A cloud darkened the sun and I shivered. No intention came to me. Focus on my massage practice? There are plenty of massage therapists in Boulder. I shouldn’t be teaching yoga; I can’t model the postures accurately anymore. It’s become hard to keep my garden up. I never last at tango more than an hour. Is it worth dressing up and going out? My family? My husbands are long gone, my children all grown and immersed in their own families and careers.
I drew my cloth more tightly around me. It tore. It was old, blue with patterns of big white flowers. Jon had bought it for me in Hawaii more than thirty years before and I had carried it on every hike since to wrap myself after icy plunges in high lakes and streams. It was dear to me, imbued with the songs of all the waters I had dipped in summer after summer. When it wore out in the middle, I cut it in half, sewed the sound ends together, and trimmed off the worn edges. It had lasted another ten years, but now…
Too many memories. All the way up the trail—And there were a myriad more not connected to the path I had just walked. More still. Memories I couldn’t remember. Often the children related some incident in our shared past that was vivid to them, and I had no recollection of it. But I knew those memories still lived, somewhere in the unreachable regions of my mind.
It was too much. I couldn’t hold any more. My life had been too full.
It had not been an easy life. It was like the wild mountains around me, ecstasy in the high places, despair in dark ravines at the bottom of sheer cliffs. Not often the wide, level path beside Silver Lake.
Too many memories. They weighed me down like the pack I had carried up the mountain. No, heavier. Much heavier. Like an immense manuscript hanging over me, riffled by the thumb of God, a blur of endless pages falling on me, page upon page, pressing me into the ground.
Bowed by the weight, I drew my knees to my chest, bent my head, and sank down, down into myself until I came to that nubbin of courage that always brought me back.
I straightened. “Come on,” I said aloud. “It’s been a lot, but you’re not done yet. And only you can shape what remains.”
An intention. Perhaps at age eighty it should change, become less about accomplishments, more about a way of being.
Slowly it came. “May I live gracefully with my limitations. May I accept aging as part of my life, a part to be lived richly and fully and with gratitude.”
I sighed. It was good. I got up, threw off my bathing cloth, and plunged again to set the intention.
The wind was a little rougher, prickling my wet flesh when I emerged. I dried off, spread my bathing cloth on the grass, and dressed quickly, snuggling into my gray cloak. Such a delicious sensation, warm clothes over cold skin.
I ate lunch, savoring the flavors of cheese and bread, the warm richness of a ripe tomato from my garden, the thick, smooth texture of dark chocolate, hot tea from my small green Thermos. Leaning back against the boulder, I rested my eyes on the mountainside across from me, the steep rise of it, the rocky outcroppings, the varied colors of the vegetation.
Suddenly I sat up straight. There it was again, high in the sky, catching the sunlight. This time I thought I could make out the shape of a silver disc. And it had moved. Now it hung over the northern peaks. A shiver of wonder ran through me, a sensation of inexplicable expectancy. A cloud blew across, obliterating the silver disc. I stood up, fixing my eyes on the place where it had been. But more clouds blew in, swift and gray, piling up, hiding the tops of the peaks.
Finally I turned away. I should start back soon, I told myself, but I need to lie down a little first. Still marveling, I curled up in my cloak and nestled into the soft grass at the base of the boulder. I meant to rest only a few minutes, but I fell asleep.
Raindrops on my face awakened me. The sky was dark. Thunder rumbled behind the peaks. I sat up bemused, the shreds of a dream drifting away. Wind whipped around me.
A gust caught my bathing cloth and flipped it into the stream.
“No!” I cried, leaping up, grabbing for it. Too late. The current swept it away down the waterfall that divided around pink flowers, bending now in the wind. I stared after it, stricken wit
h loss. As if all my years of walking free in the mountains were swept away with that worn blue cloth.
Lightning made a jagged path through the dark sky, the crack of thunder swift after it.
Oops, I thought. I should have been out of here long ago. Still more concerned for my possessions than myself, I snatched up my knee braces and socks and stuffed them into my pack. The rain became a torrent. Another jag of lightning, boom of thunder. I looked around wildly for shelter. The krum tree. I grabbed my boots and pack and made a dash up the side of the boulder. The rock was wet. I slipped and fell flat, face down. For a moment I couldn’t move in an agony of paralyzed breathlessness. Flash and crash came together. I gathered myself and made one last desperate scramble for the shelter of the krum tree.
Searing light exploded through my body.
It was dark when I opened my eyes. My head was turned to the side. Something sharp pressed into my cheek. I saw stars and the black shapes of peaks shutting out the stars. The images whirled. I closed my eyes and spun away.
When I opened them again, the stars had moved, new ones wheeling up out of the valley. The valley. Where was I? Something sharp pressed into my cheek. I sought to move my hand to push it away. Nothing happened. I could not find my hand. I struggled. I could not move, not my hand, not my legs. Panic surged through me. I tried again. No movement. In my struggle, I became fully conscious. I was prone, splayed out, the surface under me hard. Rock. And I was cold, bitterly cold. I looked again at the stars, the shape of the peaks that blocked the stars, and knew where I was.
I’m in my special place, I realized. It’s night. And I’m cold. I can’t move. I struggled again and managed a slight movement of my head. Pain seared through me like lightning. Lightning! There was a storm. Memory sifted back. The last scramble toward the krum tree, the simultaneous blaze and crash.
Never Again Page 2