We decided to take a slight diversion from the path. The illustrated trail map provided for all hikers at no additional cost proved to be largely inaccurate and ineffective. Copyright 1974, it seemed to have been made by an high school student for a civic project.
It's not as though getting lost was ever an issue. The desert is flat as a pancake, spreads out for miles and miles, and does not provide a vast amount of landmarks which obscure one's vision.
Jane scaled the bluff in ancient gardening clogs which I initially expressed doubt could provide her enough foothold to scale to the top. She proved me wrong by her slow, methodical approach, digging her heels into the each raised ridge and slowly pulling herself to the top of the sun-soaked boulder.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
~Off the Path by Comrade Kevin~
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
"Jesus, I'm going to have a freaking heart attack."
We're on a nature vacation and I'm determined to show my kids I can do it.
Spa? Sleep? Relaxation? Dinner reservations? Not for me, I'm climbing. Climbing to prove a point, climbing to show I can. I can't give up because then I won't be the "fun parent."
This fun parent may be a dead parent. But my kids are waiting for me at the top. A curse slips through my lips.
"Mom, you owe a quarter to the jar!"
Am I hearing some kind of perverse satisfaction from my own flesh and blood?
Screw this.
"Fine, get it from my corpse after they carry my body down the rocks."
A little guilt is good for them.
As I lift m leg to climb to the next rock, I hear a soft click. My husband has chosen to take a picture of me hoisting myself up. He's very funny.
I then decide to live long enough to kill him.
Mick used to take me out to the woods, and we'd walk on this particular old suspension bridge. It was a death trap waiting to happen, this old bridge, and they tore it down eventually, but we used to stand on it, looking down into the whitewater below. Mick called it, "a place between places." Mick called all bridges "a place between places." The idea was, we weren't anywhere.
I feel that way, sometimes. Halfway. Not up, not down. Except now I can't even walk back to the earth. A place between places. Not anywhere.
We decided to take a slight diversion from the path. The illustrated trail map provided for all hikers at no additional cost proved to be largely inaccurate and ineffective. Copyright 1974, it seemed to have been made by an high school student for a civic project.
It's not as though getting lost was ever an issue. The desert is flat as a pancake, spreads out for miles and miles, and does not provide a vast amount of landmarks which obscure one's vision.
Jane scaled the bluff in ancient gardening clogs which I initially expressed doubt could provide her enough foothold to scale to the top. She proved me wrong by her slow, methodical approach, digging her heels into the each raised ridge and slowly pulling herself to the top of the sun-soaked boulder.
Post a Comment