A Winter HIke: January 2018

"The past beats inside me

like a second heart."

John Banville

I originally was supposed to hike with a friend today, but the ice storm two days ago unfortunately made me rethink or overthink and cancel.  But today, I realize that I can't stand it anymore:  I have to get out of the house.  If I fall on the ice, I fall on the ice.  It is just the way of it. So off I go.  I decide to go the the Henryville Forestry because it is close and I really don't know how things will go.  When I was a child, I tromped the woods in any weather, snow, ice, rain....but I am not so young anymore, at least on the outside.

I do not realize all the memories this hike will bring up for me, but it does:  perhaps because I am alone and have time to reflect.  Or perhaps it is because I brought the small "I" thing, I can't its remember the name but it is a small blue square, that Jeff and Lena bought me that slips in my pocket and carries my music.  Whatever the reason, the memories arrive, ghost-like and unexpected.  

There is only one trail that I know of in the forestry, but I don't want to drive back that far to the entrance as I am unsure how clear the roads will be.  As I walk to the start, I wonder if I will be able to follow it, for while the snow is not deep, it covers everything.  I reason to myself that if I get off the trail, mine will probably be the only footprints and I can retrace my path.  And I am right.  The path is virgin with no footprints.  It is, however, recognizable. Past footprints have caused the path to sag in them middle, like an old mattress.  

While I am sure I have hiked this path more often, I only remember three times.  The first was with my Girl Scout troop when my daughter was young.  We hiked the trail and then had a cook-out.  They tricked me by icing a slab of Styrofoam and having me try to cut it before they brought out a real cake.  I have a picture that I like of all the girls hanging upside down from the monkey bars, smiling ear to ear, a brilliant moment of time captured.  I realize I don't know what happened to most of them.  One I know is tragically dead from a drug overdose.  Another girl's mother told me a few years ago had numerous kids and was using drugs.  The rest have vanished.  I had twenty in my troop.  Do they ever think of me as I think of them?  Why do we let relationships fade?  Is it even possible to keep all of the alive?  For we no longer live, as ancient man did, in small groups, huddled together for safety and companionship.

The second time I hiked this trail was when I had a fight with my husband and I came here to cry, hot tears raining down my cheeks as I ran most of the trail.  I don't remember what the fight was about, only how it made me feel as if my world had crashed and things would never be okay again.  There is a passion in early marriage that somewhat abates or changes, but it leaves behind a comforting security, at least that was how our marriage worked.  And perhaps there is a different type of passion that takes its place. By the last years we were together, I knew that it would take an act of God to separate us, and indeed, that is what happened.  The third time I hiked this trail was with my daughter, full grown, when we were just hiking and spending time together, teenage angst and disagreements a mere shadow.  

It strikes me that the woods are splendid despite the cold and lack of color, crystal snow providing relief from the stern austerity of winter landscapes.  The ice still clings to trees, hard to capture on film but shining brilliantly in the sunshine.  For some reason, a line from "The Night Before Christmas," comes to mind:  "The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below."  The snow gleams in the sun, sparkling and twinkling.  The only disturbances I have seen at this point are deer hoof prints.  For once, I stop to write my name of a tree and to make a snow angel.  I am playing and it feels good.   And I know he would approve of this, my smiling, for he wanted me to be happy. And I approve of this.  How much better I feel when I make myself get out and about, even alone.

Soon, however, I come across other prints.  I don't know what made them:  errant dog, coyote?  Are there mountain lions here?  Do coyotes run alone or in packs like wolves?  I realize the only thing I know about them is the sound of their song ringing out across the night, beautiful and haunting. I feel no fear, merely curiosity. So many things I don't know.  How did I get this old and still not know so many things?

I see no other footprints during my hike.  No raccoons or birds or rabbits.  At the few places the creek is not frozen, I see no footprints at all and I wonder where the animals get their water as the creeks are mostly frozen. 

As I reach the end of the trail, I decide to hike it backwards for it is so beautiful and I don't want the day to end.  I think of the last time I came here with my husband and how the snow kept us from the target range where he wanted to go to shoot.  I think of how after that snow melted, he came on his own as I was working and, thinking his truck was in reverse, wrecked.  How the lady at the wrecker company scolded me about his not having a cell phone.  But he did:  I bought him one.  He just would not carry it.  How lucky we were that someone found him?  For that was near the end when his strength was nearly gone.  I could not scold him for I was glad that he had a hobby he could still do.  It seemed as if everything else he loved to do had been taken from him.

I toy with the idea of climbing to the top of the Fire Tower Hill, but the road here has not been treated and I have visions of sliding down that steep hill on my rear.  I remember failing the first time I tried to climb it by bicycle not understanding why I could not stand without my front wheel leaving the pavement, and Diana, at work, telling me her husband said that if I could climb it on a bicycle I was a better man than he was.  Not too long afterward I made it and went to work telling her to go home and tell her husband I was a better man then he.  Who knew that we would become friends? And who knows if I can still climb it?  Perhaps this spring or summer I will try again.

The day is over and I head home.  Entering the house I am slapped in the face by the delicious aroma of the soup I put in the crock pot this morning.  Only a bath and then it will be time to eat.   And to dream of what tomorrow will bring.  Life is good.