How Far the Mountain. Robert K. Swisher Jr.

      At first the wind hitting the bare skin between her hiking shorts and sock tops was cool, almost uncomfortable, but the feeling only lasted a few seconds and the breeze was refreshing. It did not take her long to have her backpack on, the book stuck in a side pocket, and headed for the trail that began up a steep incline through thick timber. After she walked several hundred yards she was hot and had to unbutton her over-shirt. After another hundred yards she stopped to adjust the straps to the backpack and catch her breath. “Maybe I won’t walk as far today as I’d planned,” she said.

      After walking less than a mile her legs were already tight and sweat was running down between her shoulder blades. The back pack that had been light on her back in the living room seemed to gain ten pounds with each step. Sitting down heavily on a large boulder she leaned back against a pine tree and while slowly regaining her breath she spotted a woodpecker diligently pounding his beak into a rotted tree stump, his dark head moved back and forth like a miniature jackhammer and it made Sheila smile. She struggled back to her feet. “If you don’t think about the pain it won’t bother you,” she told herself picturing in her mind an old Chinese sage walking barefoot across an endless desert in search of truth and wisdom.

      After another hundred yards of the steep trail, she wanted to stop but forced herself on. “You always wanted to take me camping,” she huffed. “Now I know why I didn’t go.”

      She suddenly felt like crying, but held her tears. “I should have gone with you. I should have been with you more.”

      Trudging on, the image of her husband’s smiling face came to her. He was holding three, six-inch long trout, but, by his smile and happy eyes, they were as big as a house. She fried them and they had eaten them with a tossed salad with a light vinegar dressing, washing them down with two bottles of white wine. Afterwards they made love and he told her about the mountain stream and how beautiful it was and how he wanted her to see all the beautiful sights as he saw them. “It would have been better with you there,” he told her before he fell asleep with his head on her stomach.

      Sheila stopped again and turned around. She could not see the parking lot, only the trail she had huffed along. The trail had not yet come out of the thick timber and she had not bothered to look around as she walked, more engulfed by her loss and physical pain. She fumbled in one of the side pockets of the pack and got out her topography map, more of an excuse to rest longer than to look at the map. She examined the elevation lines hoping there was a meadow close by where she could camp. “This could take me years,” she said remembering Sylvia’s words. “A camping trip for me is a suite in Vegas.”

      “Hell, it hasn’t been two hours and I already want a hot bath and my shag carpet,” she chastised herself.

      Studying the map she noticed that if she had driven to the trailhead on the other side of the mountain, her hike would have started through the middle of a wide, level valley.

      She continued on, trying to look around her, and absorb the trees, and not look down at the ground although it was easier to walk if she only looked at the ground. The pack straps were hurting her shoulders, but there was nothing she could do about it.

      Feeling as though her legs could not go another step the trail leveled off and she entered a small clearing.

      The sunlight was like walking into the lobby of a Hilton. The clearing was level and there were several patches of white flowers resembling miniature daisies. She let the pack fall heavily to the ground and plopped down beside it. After several minutes, she dragged the pack over to the edge of the trees. She figured she had gone no more than two miles but it was far enough. “You’re not in as good of shape as you thought you were,” she said as she rolled out her tent, “Pocahontas my ass.”

      It did not take her long to pitch her tent and roll out her bag and sleeping mat. She found a small stump and rolled it over to her tent for a table and picked several of the small flowers and stuck them in a crack in the stump. She leaned her pack up against the stump. Stepping back, her camp was beautiful in its simplicity. Her legs no longer hurt as much and, her shoulders, though sore, felt stronger. She spent thirty minutes picking up dead branches and carrying them back to her tent, and another thirty minutes bringing rocks to form a circle for a fire. When everything was in order, there were still several hours of light remaining. She did not want to sit down and tried to fight the feeling that she had to do something, anything. Over the past years she had never really been idle—when she was idle—she could not face her pain.

      She decided to walk down the trail she had been on and try and see what she had missed on the way up. She felt as though there were springs on her feet without the weight of the backpack. As she back tracked she noticed ferns growing in damp areas and the way moss clung to the trees. Several chipmunks scolded her from the safety of a pile of boulders and she saw the footprints of a doe and her fawn. She had not noticed how noisy the forest was as she huffed up the trail, but now, she could hear the wind, the distant calls of unseen birds, the rumble of a stream and her own steady, rhythmic heartbeat. She stopped walking and shut her eyes. “I’m alone, but I’m not alone,” she said. “I’m a part of all life, of all time.”