I remembered my mom, and how strange it had been to be in her house, with her recently vacated body, after she died. She had left it only about an hour before we arrived, but I had the feeling she had already been gone for days. The last time I saw her alive, her chest was just a bellows – heaving in syncopated dependence on a respirator. The pain and morphine had taken my mother away long before the body stopped its mechanical spasms. There was just an empty shell lying on the rented hospital bed in her living room. It had no presence at all, as if it was merely old furniture waiting to be donated. The tender hands that used to hold mine were curled up and desiccated like bird claws. The face that had smiled at me was drawn and creased, like a dried apple. Joy and I tearfully covered her with a blanket, and thanked the angelic hospice nurse who had been with her to the end. We waited in stupefied impotence for my sisters to arrive so we could take her to the crematorium. She had insisted on no ceremony or expense, and wanted her body to be disposed of in the humblest manner possible.
When we reached Big Bear Lake it was already late afternoon. It had taken us more than six hours to hike about three and a half miles. The toil and suffering of the journey once again paid off in blissful surroundings, but we were too worn out to appreciate them. Thinking of those fit hikers who travel dozens of miles in a day, with long, confident strides that eat up the distance, it felt so ridiculous to be completely stuffed by this little snack of a trail. For us, the object was not to put the miles behind us, but to devour them and burn them in the pits of our bellies. We may have been a couple of middle-aged, out-of-shape, overweight office workers, but we earned the right to be there.
David was dehydrated and sore, and just wanted to lay down. He postponed his enjoyment of the fruits of his labor, and stretched out on his sleeping bag for a nap. I took the time to pitch my tent and set out my gear, knowing it would be much more difficult when the trail adrenaline wore off, and my ravaged body realized the extent of the damage. I shuffled about the campsite stiffly, taking a moment here and there to gaze out at the wonderful scenery. The late afternoon sun filled the lake basin with a yellow glow, and the air itself seemed to be on fire. When I unrolled my sleeping bag inside my tent, the warm, fluffy down was so inviting that I decided to lie down and close my eyes for a few minutes before dinner.
When I woke up, the morning sun was shining on the other side of my tent! I had slept through the night with no food, water, or dreams. It was as if 12 hours had passed in the span of a moment. I gathered my uncooperative legs underneath me, and stumbled outside to see what had happened to David. He was sprawled out in the bushes, a few yards from where I had left him the night before, his hair and clothes full of twigs and leaves. His sleeping bag and foam pad were filthy, and he had managed to separate himself from them entirely, as if he were trying to burrow into the undergrowth. I was horrified that we had “missed” an entire half day of our vacation, and nearly woke him up before I decided he would be happier if food and coffee were ready. I was beyond hungry, as if there was a void inside my body that nothing could fill. With practiced camp efficiency I prepared our dinner and breakfast at the same time, and ate while I cooked. Saving the fresh-brewed coffee for last, I considered several unpleasant ways to arouse David from his coma, but opted for an experiment. I placed a steaming cup of java about a foot from his face, and weighed it down with the edge of a flat rock so he couldn’t tip it over. I counted to twenty, and he began to stir.
“What the – ?” His leaf-encrusted head was the first to move, ever so slightly, followed by twitching of his arms and hands, then a half-hearted swimming movement of his legs, and my friend slowly returned to the land of the living. “Oh my God, I love you!” was all he could say at first, as he found the source of the tantalizing odor that had brought him back. He repeated this even louder when he saw the heaps of grub nearby, and he attacked his breakfast like a starving animal, mindless of the forest debris that fell from his hair into his oatmeal. We ate silently and reverently, with much lip-smacking and rolling of the eyes, laughing at the grubby spectacle we surely made. “You look like hell,” he pronounced, cocking a red-rimmed eye in my general direction, and then he looked all around him in wonder, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time, “But this must be heaven!”
He still hadn’t stood up. After licking his plastic plate clean, and wiping some of the leaves off his trail clothes, the call of nature required that he either crawl or walk to a suitable spot, or soil himself right there in the dirt. He got to his feet carefully, with the undignified grace of a wino being released from the drunk tank, and staggered off to the latrine kind of bent over, as if permanently twisted. I took a few stiff steps towards the lake, and sat on the most comfortable rock I could find. I had toiled under many burdens up that trail, but only one of them was on my back. It’s hard enough to bear the load for which one is destined, without adding new baggage along the way. I was so trail weary and sore that I felt a crushing weight, as if all the problems of my past were piled on top of me.
The pent-up pain was so great that it flowed from the past into the present, like the slow crash of a glacier fragment plunging into the sea after centuries, then rising again to a new life as an iceberg. Sitting there on a flat rock, looking out at the vast expanse of water, granite, and sky, I came to the realization that every mistake in my life, every disappointment, all the bad luck and emotional pain, every wasted dream and misguided action – all of them led me to this present moment; on this rock, and with this insight. What if they were all meant to happen so I could be here, right now? Or more aptly, what if all the choices I made – good and bad – were intended for the development of all my present moments? I used to think there were no forks in my road; that all the hardships of my life’s journey were predestined. In reality there have been millions of path choices – at least one every second of my 43 years on this planet. The choices I made have been my road. They all led me to this epiphany of self-awareness. I had chosen the trail less traveled, and was made by all the difference.
Some lessons leave scars. Others are like an open wound that never really heals.
I realized these beautiful mountain lakes are really open scars upon the land, where life has not yet fully taken hold. Where the land is good and fertile, and rivers flow, the trees and plants thrive, and life is abundant. Up here, it seems as though the fertile skin of the land has been scraped away, exposing the hard granite bones beneath. It was therefore ironic that I came to heal my own scars; to scrape away the veneer of vanity and falsehood, and bare the essence of my soul by opening my innermost wounds to the healing wild.
The clatter of camp gear pulled me from my reverie, and I looked back over my shoulder to see David was finally unpacking the sweat-stained, lumpy body bag he called a backpack. He had packed it hastily at his house and tossed it in the back of his van with all his boat gear. He was one of the most intelligent and perceptive people I knew, and yet also one of the most unorganized. Capable of sheer brilliance and astonishing insight, he was his own worst enemy with self-doubt and self-flagellation. If he had been a monk, David would have been the sort to minister to the sick and serve the poor all day, and then mortify his flesh all night until his back was bloody because he didn’t do enough. I couldn’t wait to see what last-minute objects of necessity he had thrown into his pack.
The racket was from a set of camping pans that were designed to somehow nest together, but their only reliable function was to resist being nested. David was repeatedly trying to fasten the small aluminum latch that held them all together, and three times they sprung apart in his hands like a squirming puppy. Crash! Bang! Rattle! The metallic cacophony would have been annoying even at home, but here in a postcard-perfect landscape, with the stillness of the lake basin permeating my awareness, the crashing cymbals were excruciating. I jumped on them with his blanket as if trapping a chicken, just so he couldn’t get to them anymore. And yes, he did bring a blanket. He also brought a pillow, slippers, and a bathrobe. These were all crumpled up at the top of his pack, instead of layered along the back where they might have at least cushioned his spine.
“Did you say you went backpacking before?” I asked innocently, with a deeply sarcastic intent that I knew David would understand immediately.
“Yeah, I climbed Mt. Shasta with four Sherpas and a llama,” he retorted in like manner, neatly parrying my thrust. “Where’s my toilet paper? Did I forget the fucking toilet paper?” As usual, he was overly frustrated by the possibility that he had not followed proper protocol.
“Did you bring your makeup, too?” I lifted one arm of the bathrobe distastefully, as if it stank.
“You’re gonna wish you had that in the morning.”
“Yeah, a lot of good it did you this morning. Did you take a shower yet? There’s a wicked smell around here like a bear’s ass.”
“Oh, you would know what that smells like!”
We continued our witty repartee for several minutes, in a running philosophical commentary on the contents of his backpack, as a metaphor for our self-worth as human beings. David had confidently assured me he had everything he needed (except for my brand-new backpacking tent), and would be ready to survive in the wilderness for three days. Actually, we could only stay for two days due to work obligations, but you never know.
Four cans of fuel emerged from somewhere in the depths. “Are you going to roast a pig with that?” I was just warming up. I grew up in a family that hurled sarcasm like hand grenades, but I preferred the sniper’s approach to a verbal barrage. “If we find some tomatoes we could make spaghetti sauce. If you brought the stove, that is.”
“Of course I brought the stove.”
“Good. So did I. That’s how I made the coffee you enjoyed so much this morning.”
“Thank you for that, by the way. It was really sweet of you but I was expecting a massage.”
“It’s a good thing we now have two stoves, in case we have to entertain company.”
This scintillating display of wit went on for far too long, as the pile of odds and ends extracted from David’s backpack grew into a yard sale. Finally, he produced something useful: two bottles of wine. That’s right: bottles. And a cast iron corkscrew from his kitchen.
“Is that breakfast?” I asked disinterestedly. There was no way I was going to waste my day in paradise being drunk.
“No, we’ll have one each night.” He placed them carefully in the bushes; for they were of truly magnificent vintage. Then he proceeded to attempt the assembly of my tent.
I glanced over at the tried-and-true ugly green thing I had been using for 15 years, which I had already put up the night before. Then I looked back to where David sat cross-legged on the ground, reading my new tent’s instructions.
“I’m going out to get a croissant,” I tossed deftly over my shoulder, as I left him to his own devices.
“When you get back you can do my nails.”
Oh, the jocularity. This display of wit could easily have been heard by 10,000 spectators, the air was so still in our natural amphitheater. When we finished, there was no applause.
“Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what bothers you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
Say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke