TRAIL DAY 47
Thu, Apr 7, 2016 I awoke in the “wee” hours of the morning and saw Theo lying so peacefully on the typical motel rug which I eliminated from the attached picture of my very good friend now suspended like an angel. I do know that this buddy of mine is an animal. But in a deep, fundamental way, so am I. I love and treasure him with all his “mere-animal” limitations and I know in the infinite realm, he will be very close to me forever.
When I awoke again to make my way into daylight, I trekked back to the Americana diner and had breakfast. After packing up, I got the same shuttle and driver back to the trail. She was a middle-aged, short woman who was talkative and helpful about the trail which she obviously knew well. We both agreed it was not necessary to filter water right out of the ground. She recommended not changing into summer gear until after Damascus. I took her advice.
She took me to the parking lot where she had picked me up and we were back on the trail by 10:00 a.m.
As I hiked up the hill on the north side of the highway, I looked back toward the cemetery and there, through the barren threes, was Quiet Paul serving up Magic to hungry hikers. Kind and generous.
It’s another day since I wrote the last paragraph. The trail will never leave me. The more life’s contradictions and conflicts, worries and concerns take me over, the more I think of the bare-bones life on the trail. A simple goal. Only what’s needed to achieve it. And dirt, trees, mountains and weather instead of positions, postures, plunder and payments.
But, in truth, the two go together. Nature and Society. The wild and the willful. God made. Man made. It’ s a blend. It’s all of a piece. The one wouldn’t be the same without the other. Shama!
Somewhere in the south, I was descending one of the long, tedious, brown-out, switchback trails on a sunny day filled with the goodness of my undertaking after 60 years and I thought of my wife back home. She’s my wife. Those words just kept passing into me – and through me. Really the one word: WIFE.
I kept saying it to myself – out loud. “She’s my. . .wife.” All possible definitions of the term coursed through me or rose up from within me. This person, home, far away, has given her life to me. As if she would place all that she is upon a silver platter and offer the priceless gift of herself to. . .me!
Does one not bow before the living God and beg mercy and forgiveness and wisdom and an infinity of divine resource to answer this gift? Does not one’s heart, beyond knowing, beg to surrender to the divine life within to protect and cherish and even die for the giver? She’s my wife.
Oh Quiet Paul, shuttle driver, Indian at the desk, Eric and Verizon, grass, and path and trees and sun. Thank you.
Is reality bigger in the recall? Is the telling bigger than the boulder, cliff and skinned knee? The one feeds the other in a never-ending cycle of seed to bloom.
The goodness of the day and the goodness of the way led me onward in prayer. Not pious, on-my-knees, urgent prayers. Not even I-thou prayers. Rather knowing-beyond-knowing, worst-and-best, mercy-and-grace, lacking-but-filled, prodigal-feast, upright-at-the-forested-banquet-of-sunlit-brilliance prayer. Each breath, each step, each near-miss or even wound a prayer. Simply a blossoming of gratitude, of awareness, of yes.
I can hardly encompass the beauty and joy that fills me as I revisit the mountains of this day.
I climbed up and away from Quiet Paul and the cemetery and in an hour and a half came to an open grassy stretch of trail with an uninterrupted view north to Big Bald, rising up into intermittent white and blue hovering overhead, a symphony of bright color.
Who on this good earth is so privileged as to witness this?
The arduous task of climbing kept me grounded, preventing heart and soul from evaporating and perhaps now I should stay grounded in my verbal hike – just keep going – just keep climbing but, as I did at several balds, I must stop and take in the scene.
The ground, the sky, the light shifted as we moved forward traversing miles of high bald peaks. Soon the sky turned dark and the wind picked up. Snowflakes whipped across my cheeks as I squinted into the wind and pushed forward after taking in the majesty of the scene in pictures and a video.
Some there are, I’m sure, who want only to think on such a scene while comforted by hearth or warm bed. The precious soul I call “wife” is one of these.
Where it comes from I can’t say but there is something in me that rallies to the howling wind, the driving storm, something that breaks free and rushes to meet the wild tempest. There are times to come never to be forgot, each a step in the stairway to heaven for sure.
When I was a boy, my brother and I used to ride a nearby river in a hurricane. We camped out in one. We were building stories in breathless gasps of air.
After white-flaked, howling winds at the summit, Theo and I made our way down the north side of Big Bald below tree line coming eventually to the Bald Mountain Shelter at 5516′.
As usual, I hiked deeper into the day than many. When I got to the shelter, it was full. I preferred my tent. But then the prime tent spots were taken. Again, O.K. As at Pecks Corner and Cosby Knob Shelters, I enjoyed the challenge of finding a spot, no matter how rough, and making it work. So here.
I pitched my tent amidst small saplings, up against a larger one near one of the forest’s fallen senior citizen. We just fit. I got water from a piped spring filling my bottles and my apple bag for morning. The winds were strong. The night was cold. The tent and sleeping bag all the more welcomed and warm.
Day #47 Sams Gap (Erwin) > Bald Mountain Shelter 7.7 miles