Cal
Thetrailbacktothe main loop takes forty minutes at an easy pace. I'd told her that. What I hadn't told her was that I intend to make it last longer.
I know these paths in the dark, in fog, in the disorienting sameness of a landscape under snow. I could walk her out in thirty minutes while wearing a blindfold if I had to. I choose the route that curves along the upper ridge instead, where the trees thin enough to show the mountains layered to the south in shades of blue and gray, the furthest ones nearly the same color as the sky.
She stops to take in the view.
I stand beside her and watch her take it in. I stopped being able to fully see this view years ago — it became background, context, the wallpaper of my working life. Watching her see it returns some of the magic I’ve taken for granted.
"I need to draw this," she says.
"Go right ahead. I'm not in a hurry."
She draws. I watch her, mesmerized by her skill.
When she’s finished, we walk on. The trail descends through a stand of hemlocks and the light changes, going green and filtered, and she reaches out and touches the bark of one as she passes it — the way she's probably touched every tree she's sketched this week. Trying to understand the thing, not just see it.
"Tell me something about this place," she says. "Something you wouldn't tell a regular hiker."
I think about it. "There's a section of trail about a mile east of here that follows an old Cherokee trade route. The park doesn't advertise it. Most of the interpretive signs focus on the European settlement history, so people walk right over it."
"That's sad."
"It is. I've been writing reports about it for two years. Someone will do something with it eventually."
She glances at me sideways. "You write reports."
I chuckle. “I’m a government employee. Paperwork comes with the gig. Or did you think I was secretly a hermit just pretending to be a park ranger?”
She laughs. “You’d make a good hermit.”
“Alas, there are bills to pay. So, this is the next best thing.”
The main trailhead comes into view through the trees earlier than I would have liked. The parking area beyond it, her rental car still sitting there, undisturbed. We stop at the edge of where the backcountry trail meets the marked loop.
She turns to face me. "See you soon?”
"Absolutely,” I promise. “I'll text you when I have service. We'll figure out where to have our official first date."
"Somewhere I can wear something cute for you… not dirty hiking pants.”
"You’d look gorgeous in anything… or nothing.”
She blushes and looks down at the borrowed sweatshirt she put back on this morning, the sleeves pushed up to her forearms. "I'll give this back next time."
"You can keep it.”
She steps forward and kisses me once, her hand flat on my chest over my sternum. I put my hand over hers and hold it there for a moment. The morning is cold and clear and smells like pine and woodsmoke, and I'm aware that I'm standing at the exact edge of the life I've arranged for myself and the one that is now, apparently, beginning.
I'm not afraid of it.
I am, for the first time in longer than I can honestly account for, looking forward.
She pulls back and meets my eyes.
"Don't get lost," she says.
I watch her walk to her car and don't move until she's pulled out of the lot and the sound of her engine has faded into the trees.
