serveitup61
07-19-2012, 08:17 PM
by Tommy
The morning cold wakes me quick, and makes me draw a fast intake of air to freshen and warm my torso.
For a moment, I see little but an elaborate blurred display of gray and blue, stronger and brighter in color in some spots than in others. My pupils adjust to the morning light and I realize I am in my tent and I have slept far longer than I have intended to. The sun is getting high, too high, and the air in the tent, although freezing, is getting warm, too warm.
After unzipping, zipping, zipping, zipping, unzipping, tying, and unzipping, I am dressed and ready for the hike. My watch tells me it’s 7 a.m.
I curse and spit in the dewy dirt and cuss a few words in my head. Too long, I think, too long I slept. Need breakfast. Need water. Need to break camp.
I have camp down in five minutes and I’m ready. Everything is packed into a pack, 30 pounds, carried on my back. My shoes are tied; pants held up with a belt tied up to the tightest notch. Lost a lot of weight, I think to myself, lot of weight. Need food. Water.
Four or five bars I like to eat when I hike are in my pocket. They will tide me over until 2 p.m. when I will stop, rest, and eat a less-than-hearty lunch. Two canteens slosh from karabiners on either side of my pack. One contains water I have treated and purified with Iodine tablets, and the other is being treated now. It will be ready to drink by 2 p.m., when I will have lunch and I can refill my other canteen.
Ready, I think to myself, ready now.
I start down the trail to Mount Adelphos. I am walking downhill. An easy pace.
Setting off, I feel neither awake nor asleep. I feel a perplexing sensation that perhaps I am not in my own body. My legs and arms, the nose I’m breathing through, they feel hazy and unfamiliar. This feeling, like many other feelings I am experiencing, I write off as little more than the result of a terribly short and unpleasant night’s sleep.
Still, the sun is shining brightly now, and my outer layers of clothing are beginning to feel heavy and burdensome and hot. The heat is replenishing, charging me to forget the fatigue and the strain of the load on my struggling back.
No clouds, I think to myself, no humidity. Need water.
I stop to shed a few layers, a jacket, a wool hat, the zip-off ends of my pants. I sip some water and it tastes metallic and earthy all the same.
The weather is simply flawless. Even with the heat and the damned pack on my back I am able to walk for miles without stopping, or even noticing, really, that I have walked all that far at all. I notice things, like the way the sun shines through flowers and makes them glow all throughout, and the way the air tastes good to breathe.
Breathe, I think to myself, good for me. Very good for me.
The reason I’m out here, perhaps, the same reason as anyone ever comes out here, is because my life met a hellstorm not too long ago yet not too recently. I need this. I need this air.
Good for me, I think, very good.
My sister is waiting, maybe, at the end of the Mount Adelphos trail. She will pick me up, I hope, to take me back to my home. I haven’t spoken to her, to be quite honest, in quite some time. Not, in fact, since the day of the hellstorm. The accident.
Jess will be there, I think to myself, probably, Jess will be there.
She picks me up from the bottom of Adelphos every year after Jeremy and I finish the trail. Every year she brings us ample amounts of hot coffee and warm donuts. We all share a laugh or two, splurging on too many donuts on the drive back home, just the three of us.
Same time next year, Jeremy says every year.
I think to myself, hopefully Jess will be there. Maybe not. But hopefully.
My feeling of dizzy vagueness -- that feeling like maybe I’m not even in my own body — subsides towards noon. I have eaten all the snack and energy bars I allotted myself for this morning and feel peppy, energetic, and hot.
I sweat a lot of sweat as my legs sweep up the Adelphos Trail’s makeshift rock-steps. I take my steps quickly, authoritatively, and with a lot of power. My hiking poles propel me over steps that are too high. The terrain is almost entirely uphill by now.
I look at my watch.
There, I think to myself, right on time. Beautiful.
It’s 1:04 p.m. and I catch my first glimpse of Mount Adelphos.
A smile catches me, the first time it’s happened in months, perhaps.
I feel my face. Hmm, I think to myself. The smile feels forced and maybe so does the happiness.
Smile’s a smile, I think to myself.
I drink some water and continue up to the top of Adelphos. I decide I could make it there within the hour.
After some time I plateau a ridge that gives me the finest view of Mount Adelphos in all its proud majesty. From this point I am only a short walk, perhaps 20 minutes, from reaching the peak. I knock the mud off my shoes with a hiking pole.
Looking up again I see a figure I haven’t ever really noticed before on the top of Adelphos. I crane my neck and squint my eyes. It appears to be the figure of a body, human, ostensibly, and it appears to just be sitting there. The sun silhouetting the figure tells me it’s a man, simply based on its sturdy shape. His neck, even from the ridge I’m on a half a mile away, seems strong and thick like a tree trunk. His posture is stiff and uniform, but he appears to be comfortable in a relaxed sort of way.
Guess I have company today, I think to myself.
I have not seen a single soul on this trail in the entire two days I have been hiking, save for this lone figure. Looking more closely as I sip water it seems as if the figure is a statue. It has not moved. It has not even budged. I can maybe even sort of make out that the sun catches around its metallic trunk of a neck. Oh, but it looks so familiar.
We’ll see, I think to myself, I’ll just see when I get up.
I put my head down and power up the mountain, splaying my feet and stepping with inconsistent and crooked steps. I search for the easiest rocks and footholds to step up with. I am making stellar progress, considering I am alone, without anyone to talk to and keep one time-forgetting half of my consciousness occupied. My mind is wholly consumed in where I am stepping and then where I am stepping next.
And then I am stepping onto the last step, the one that levels me out onto the mountain peak, where I can see for miles and miles, miles and miles.
I check my watch. It took me only ten minutes to reach the top. Need water, I think to myself, breathe. Catch breath.
I look out over the mountain range and the land below as I sip water. Of course, I spit out the water into the hardened dirt when a gravelly voice behind me startles me to a near breakdown.
Hello, it says.
My mind remembers the figure I saw from the ridge down below.
I turn.
You.
I fall to my knees.
No, I say, no. No. No. No, no, no.
The man just looks at me, perhaps smiling, or smirking.
It can’t be you, I say.
Sure it can. I’m here. Right here. In front of you.
It isn’t possible.
Sure it is.
Jeremy?
Yes. Hi Chip.
But you—
Don’t fight this. I’m here now, right now. Why become upset over it?
I suppose I feel myself beginning to cry. I cry hot tears that leave clean streaks on my dirt-covered face. They roll off my chin and smack the dirt with a Tap, Tap, Tap.
This isn’t fair, Jem.
How come it isn’t?
It just isn’t. I’ve almost managed to get over what happened to you up to now. I’m even out here hiking our trail, living our tradition, to prove to myself that I can.
I commend you for that.
But I’ve worked so hard to get over it. What I did to you. But now you’re here again, and I’m miserable again.
You didn’t do anything to me.
Stop that. You know that’s not true.
He comes up off his rock for the first time and stoops beside my collapsed and shaking body on the ground. He puts an arm around my shoulder, in his old big-brothery kind of way.
I’m not here to suck an apology out of you, he says with his voice quiet like a whisper. I know you’re sorry. I know you’re still fighting it. I know that you can’t sleep or relax and you haven’t been able to since the accident because you’ve blamed yourself every second of every day since then. It’s all right.
He gets lower as to meet my eyeline.
I’m here just to see you. To tell you everything is as it’s supposed to be. To spend a few minutes with you.
A few minutes?
Well, I was told I could only stay at the top of Mount Adelphos to see you. I’m not supposed to leave with you.
Oh.
He pauses a moment, stands up and looks out into the distance.
What do you want to do, Chip?
What kind of question is that?
An honest one.
Well, gosh, I don’t know. We can talk about anything. I just want to talk. I guess. I wasn’t exactly planning for you.
I unwrap a few snack bars.
I ask Jeremy if he eats.
Yes, Chip, I eat.
I hand him one and we sit silently. Chewing, Swallowing.
Two hours later, Jeremy and I are sitting with our legs overhanging the peak of Mount Adelphos. We haven’t said much of anything really. We made small talk for a while, but we stopped, apparently satisfied simply to be in one another’s presence after all this time.
The sun is going down, Jem.
I see it.
I better start making camp. Care to help me?
You can’t stay here tonight Chip.
I can’t honestly believe that you would think I’d leave you.
You can’t stay here Chip.
Why not?
Because our sister Jess is on her way to pick you up right now. You wouldn’t keep her waiting would you?
I will never get this opportunity again, Jeremy.
Perhaps, but you said it yourself, you’re moving on. Besides, I have somewhere to be. Don’t keep Jess waiting.
I didn’t—I didn’t think she was coming.
Why wouldn’t she? You’re her only sibling. Gotta look after one another.
She hasn’t spoken to me since the wreck.
Chip.
Yes.
I’m not here to teach you anything. This isn’t a big brother learning experience. No. But you’re wrong about Jess. You think she blames you for everything. That she wants you out of her life, just because of what happened to me with you driving.
It’s true, though. I haven’t spoken to her since the accident. Even at the funeral she just—she just ignored me.
Jeremy stands up and gathers my pack and my hiking poles. In his strong arms the pack seems to be weightless and un-burdensome.
She’s having just as hard a time as you are, he says as he helps put the pack on my back.
I doubt that.
Believe what you want. And in fairness, she truly believes, same as you, that you are dodging her. You haven’t tried to communicate with her at all, don’t you realize that?
Yes, I say. That’s the only way I could think to respond. I hadn’t actually realized what he was telling me was true.
Jeremy is standing silhouetted in front of the sun again, and I can only barely make out his facial features that I have loved and missed so much. He looks at me and smiles.
He hugs me.
Time to get going, he says.
I am crying again. Uncontrollable sobs. My knees are shaking now.
After much pleading on my part to get him to stay, I am finally convinced that I have to go. Jess will be waiting.
I look down the long channel of crude stone steps.
Time to go, I think to myself, time to go. Jess.
I take my first step down. My pack feels light. I hardly feel it while I’m wearing it.
Chip, the gravelly voice of my brother calls after me.
I turn quickly, too quickly and almost lose my footing.
Yes?
Same time next year.
[/B][/B]
The morning cold wakes me quick, and makes me draw a fast intake of air to freshen and warm my torso.
For a moment, I see little but an elaborate blurred display of gray and blue, stronger and brighter in color in some spots than in others. My pupils adjust to the morning light and I realize I am in my tent and I have slept far longer than I have intended to. The sun is getting high, too high, and the air in the tent, although freezing, is getting warm, too warm.
After unzipping, zipping, zipping, zipping, unzipping, tying, and unzipping, I am dressed and ready for the hike. My watch tells me it’s 7 a.m.
I curse and spit in the dewy dirt and cuss a few words in my head. Too long, I think, too long I slept. Need breakfast. Need water. Need to break camp.
I have camp down in five minutes and I’m ready. Everything is packed into a pack, 30 pounds, carried on my back. My shoes are tied; pants held up with a belt tied up to the tightest notch. Lost a lot of weight, I think to myself, lot of weight. Need food. Water.
Four or five bars I like to eat when I hike are in my pocket. They will tide me over until 2 p.m. when I will stop, rest, and eat a less-than-hearty lunch. Two canteens slosh from karabiners on either side of my pack. One contains water I have treated and purified with Iodine tablets, and the other is being treated now. It will be ready to drink by 2 p.m., when I will have lunch and I can refill my other canteen.
Ready, I think to myself, ready now.
I start down the trail to Mount Adelphos. I am walking downhill. An easy pace.
Setting off, I feel neither awake nor asleep. I feel a perplexing sensation that perhaps I am not in my own body. My legs and arms, the nose I’m breathing through, they feel hazy and unfamiliar. This feeling, like many other feelings I am experiencing, I write off as little more than the result of a terribly short and unpleasant night’s sleep.
Still, the sun is shining brightly now, and my outer layers of clothing are beginning to feel heavy and burdensome and hot. The heat is replenishing, charging me to forget the fatigue and the strain of the load on my struggling back.
No clouds, I think to myself, no humidity. Need water.
I stop to shed a few layers, a jacket, a wool hat, the zip-off ends of my pants. I sip some water and it tastes metallic and earthy all the same.
The weather is simply flawless. Even with the heat and the damned pack on my back I am able to walk for miles without stopping, or even noticing, really, that I have walked all that far at all. I notice things, like the way the sun shines through flowers and makes them glow all throughout, and the way the air tastes good to breathe.
Breathe, I think to myself, good for me. Very good for me.
The reason I’m out here, perhaps, the same reason as anyone ever comes out here, is because my life met a hellstorm not too long ago yet not too recently. I need this. I need this air.
Good for me, I think, very good.
My sister is waiting, maybe, at the end of the Mount Adelphos trail. She will pick me up, I hope, to take me back to my home. I haven’t spoken to her, to be quite honest, in quite some time. Not, in fact, since the day of the hellstorm. The accident.
Jess will be there, I think to myself, probably, Jess will be there.
She picks me up from the bottom of Adelphos every year after Jeremy and I finish the trail. Every year she brings us ample amounts of hot coffee and warm donuts. We all share a laugh or two, splurging on too many donuts on the drive back home, just the three of us.
Same time next year, Jeremy says every year.
I think to myself, hopefully Jess will be there. Maybe not. But hopefully.
My feeling of dizzy vagueness -- that feeling like maybe I’m not even in my own body — subsides towards noon. I have eaten all the snack and energy bars I allotted myself for this morning and feel peppy, energetic, and hot.
I sweat a lot of sweat as my legs sweep up the Adelphos Trail’s makeshift rock-steps. I take my steps quickly, authoritatively, and with a lot of power. My hiking poles propel me over steps that are too high. The terrain is almost entirely uphill by now.
I look at my watch.
There, I think to myself, right on time. Beautiful.
It’s 1:04 p.m. and I catch my first glimpse of Mount Adelphos.
A smile catches me, the first time it’s happened in months, perhaps.
I feel my face. Hmm, I think to myself. The smile feels forced and maybe so does the happiness.
Smile’s a smile, I think to myself.
I drink some water and continue up to the top of Adelphos. I decide I could make it there within the hour.
After some time I plateau a ridge that gives me the finest view of Mount Adelphos in all its proud majesty. From this point I am only a short walk, perhaps 20 minutes, from reaching the peak. I knock the mud off my shoes with a hiking pole.
Looking up again I see a figure I haven’t ever really noticed before on the top of Adelphos. I crane my neck and squint my eyes. It appears to be the figure of a body, human, ostensibly, and it appears to just be sitting there. The sun silhouetting the figure tells me it’s a man, simply based on its sturdy shape. His neck, even from the ridge I’m on a half a mile away, seems strong and thick like a tree trunk. His posture is stiff and uniform, but he appears to be comfortable in a relaxed sort of way.
Guess I have company today, I think to myself.
I have not seen a single soul on this trail in the entire two days I have been hiking, save for this lone figure. Looking more closely as I sip water it seems as if the figure is a statue. It has not moved. It has not even budged. I can maybe even sort of make out that the sun catches around its metallic trunk of a neck. Oh, but it looks so familiar.
We’ll see, I think to myself, I’ll just see when I get up.
I put my head down and power up the mountain, splaying my feet and stepping with inconsistent and crooked steps. I search for the easiest rocks and footholds to step up with. I am making stellar progress, considering I am alone, without anyone to talk to and keep one time-forgetting half of my consciousness occupied. My mind is wholly consumed in where I am stepping and then where I am stepping next.
And then I am stepping onto the last step, the one that levels me out onto the mountain peak, where I can see for miles and miles, miles and miles.
I check my watch. It took me only ten minutes to reach the top. Need water, I think to myself, breathe. Catch breath.
I look out over the mountain range and the land below as I sip water. Of course, I spit out the water into the hardened dirt when a gravelly voice behind me startles me to a near breakdown.
Hello, it says.
My mind remembers the figure I saw from the ridge down below.
I turn.
You.
I fall to my knees.
No, I say, no. No. No. No, no, no.
The man just looks at me, perhaps smiling, or smirking.
It can’t be you, I say.
Sure it can. I’m here. Right here. In front of you.
It isn’t possible.
Sure it is.
Jeremy?
Yes. Hi Chip.
But you—
Don’t fight this. I’m here now, right now. Why become upset over it?
I suppose I feel myself beginning to cry. I cry hot tears that leave clean streaks on my dirt-covered face. They roll off my chin and smack the dirt with a Tap, Tap, Tap.
This isn’t fair, Jem.
How come it isn’t?
It just isn’t. I’ve almost managed to get over what happened to you up to now. I’m even out here hiking our trail, living our tradition, to prove to myself that I can.
I commend you for that.
But I’ve worked so hard to get over it. What I did to you. But now you’re here again, and I’m miserable again.
You didn’t do anything to me.
Stop that. You know that’s not true.
He comes up off his rock for the first time and stoops beside my collapsed and shaking body on the ground. He puts an arm around my shoulder, in his old big-brothery kind of way.
I’m not here to suck an apology out of you, he says with his voice quiet like a whisper. I know you’re sorry. I know you’re still fighting it. I know that you can’t sleep or relax and you haven’t been able to since the accident because you’ve blamed yourself every second of every day since then. It’s all right.
He gets lower as to meet my eyeline.
I’m here just to see you. To tell you everything is as it’s supposed to be. To spend a few minutes with you.
A few minutes?
Well, I was told I could only stay at the top of Mount Adelphos to see you. I’m not supposed to leave with you.
Oh.
He pauses a moment, stands up and looks out into the distance.
What do you want to do, Chip?
What kind of question is that?
An honest one.
Well, gosh, I don’t know. We can talk about anything. I just want to talk. I guess. I wasn’t exactly planning for you.
I unwrap a few snack bars.
I ask Jeremy if he eats.
Yes, Chip, I eat.
I hand him one and we sit silently. Chewing, Swallowing.
Two hours later, Jeremy and I are sitting with our legs overhanging the peak of Mount Adelphos. We haven’t said much of anything really. We made small talk for a while, but we stopped, apparently satisfied simply to be in one another’s presence after all this time.
The sun is going down, Jem.
I see it.
I better start making camp. Care to help me?
You can’t stay here tonight Chip.
I can’t honestly believe that you would think I’d leave you.
You can’t stay here Chip.
Why not?
Because our sister Jess is on her way to pick you up right now. You wouldn’t keep her waiting would you?
I will never get this opportunity again, Jeremy.
Perhaps, but you said it yourself, you’re moving on. Besides, I have somewhere to be. Don’t keep Jess waiting.
I didn’t—I didn’t think she was coming.
Why wouldn’t she? You’re her only sibling. Gotta look after one another.
She hasn’t spoken to me since the wreck.
Chip.
Yes.
I’m not here to teach you anything. This isn’t a big brother learning experience. No. But you’re wrong about Jess. You think she blames you for everything. That she wants you out of her life, just because of what happened to me with you driving.
It’s true, though. I haven’t spoken to her since the accident. Even at the funeral she just—she just ignored me.
Jeremy stands up and gathers my pack and my hiking poles. In his strong arms the pack seems to be weightless and un-burdensome.
She’s having just as hard a time as you are, he says as he helps put the pack on my back.
I doubt that.
Believe what you want. And in fairness, she truly believes, same as you, that you are dodging her. You haven’t tried to communicate with her at all, don’t you realize that?
Yes, I say. That’s the only way I could think to respond. I hadn’t actually realized what he was telling me was true.
Jeremy is standing silhouetted in front of the sun again, and I can only barely make out his facial features that I have loved and missed so much. He looks at me and smiles.
He hugs me.
Time to get going, he says.
I am crying again. Uncontrollable sobs. My knees are shaking now.
After much pleading on my part to get him to stay, I am finally convinced that I have to go. Jess will be waiting.
I look down the long channel of crude stone steps.
Time to go, I think to myself, time to go. Jess.
I take my first step down. My pack feels light. I hardly feel it while I’m wearing it.
Chip, the gravelly voice of my brother calls after me.
I turn quickly, too quickly and almost lose my footing.
Yes?
Same time next year.
[/B][/B]