28.4 – The Long Way Home

Annie decided to keep her baby, and continued living with her parents so her mom could help with the birth at the end of the year.  Mike came back from his fishing trip with a masculine notion he’d rather fight for his country than raise kids, so he joined the Marines with Rob, Dave, and Terry.  Marty stared at him for a long time after he got his jarhead haircut, and couldn’t believe he was the same friendly guy he’d met on the freshman baseball field.  He and his foster brother had finally grown in opposite directions, or had manifested their innate tendencies, but Marty couldn’t bring himself to criticize the closest person he had to a brother in this world.  He told him he’d make a good soldier as long as he didn’t argue with his superiors.  Mike thanked him for being his brother, and the two of them smiled with the unmistakable bond of opposites that attract.

Julie landed a full-time job as a mechanic, and was earning good money.  She lived her own life with her dogs, and the latest boyfriend who tolerated being told what to do all the time, and wondered why she still wasn’t happy.  Susie was never home now that good weather had returned, and had picked up the party torch to carry it through high school.  Beach keggers, road trips, and teenage debauchery filled her busy schedule.  Marge emerged from her cave one weekend with two plastic trash bags full of debris, pulled everything out of the room, and scrubbed it from floor to ceiling with disinfectant.  She wore clean clothes around the house, and spent lots of time outdoors in the fresh air, collecting the endless debris that fell on the forest floor.  Marty swept off the roof and helped his mom for a few days, then asked if he could go to the Trinity Alps for the weekend… only because he knew she’d have to work harder at the pet store without him.

“Of course!  But by yourself?” she marveled, in a tone of admiration instead of concern.  He told her that everyone he knew had to work, and it was the truth.  His friends were all chained to their oars already, and pulling for all they were worth.  He felt like he needed to get away from the monotony for a while, before he joined the slave galley.

So he blasted up Highway 5 in the Apollo, on a trajectory for release from the bonds of gravity.  He spent the night inside his truck at the trailhead, staring up through the sunroof at the stars and remembering the night he took a whole bottle of sleeping pills just a few weeks before.  He felt oddly alone once again, but was excited about his future for a change.  Tomorrow he would be in the wilderness!  He hardly slept, and got up as soon as he began seeing the outlines of trees.  With his new backpack, and a walking staff made from a springy redwood bough, he set out with the confident stride of an intrepid adventurer as he left the Apollo behind, and disappeared into the forest.
 
The trail was more beautiful than he remembered, or perhaps he was in better shape to handle it from not partying so much, but the difficult first sections passed very quickly.  Soon he was ambling through an intensely lit alpine museum of mixed Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pine, Incense Cedar, and Noble Fir.  The ferns in the meadows grew taller than his head, where bumblebees bobbed on poppies.  Tiger Lilies sprouted from marshy spots, and mountain azaleas flooded his nostrils with intoxicating fragrance.  His artistic soul, long buried under the weight of oppression, sprung up in exuberant enthusiasm for life, and all its beauty.
 
The jagged mountains started to peek through the trees about noon.  He had been gaining elevation steadily, and was nearing a mile in elevation.  He started to feel the altitude, and the decrease in oxygen, and stopped for a rest.  He’d been planning to stay the first night at Big Bear Lake, but he felt like he could make it all the way to the upper lake that he, Rob, and Dave visited years before.  He hadn’t seen another hiker on the trail, but when he crossed over to the rocks leading up the pass to Little Bear Lake, he saw some folks camping around the lower lake.  It was just as well, he reasoned, there might be fewer people farther up, anyway.  There were actually two lakes up ahead, he recalled.  All the better.
 

When he walked the final paces to the top of the pass and saw the tiny jewel of Wee Bear nestled in its granite setting, his soul flew from his body like an osprey, circling the water and screeching with delight.  He was so glad to be alive!  While he longed to have a special companion with whom to share such a spectacular setting, he appreciated that this moment was for him alone.  So far, he didn’t see any other people.  Slowly, as if in a dream, he meandered around the shore of the pretty little pond, touching the bushes and tree limbs in appreciation, and venturing up to Little Bear Lake.  He glimpsed the surface, glimmering emerald green through the trees, and exclaimed out loud, “Oh, my God!”  Quickly, he dropped his pack and floated, weightless, down to the lake shore.  Sunlight glinted off the water in a fractal pattern of sparkling diamonds.  A sheer wall of lavender granite rose almost 800 feet behind the lake, decorated with ledges of hemlocks and greenery.  It was the most exquisite nature scene he had ever witnessed.  As his eye ascended to the pinnacle of the mountaintop, he saw a stone figure of an osprey, keeping watch over the alpine basin.  The best thing about the moment was that he experienced it all by himself… except for the thousands of mountain spirits gently welcoming him.

For the first time in his life, Marty felt truly loved.  Not by a beautiful girl, or dear family members, but by a numinous benevolence that permeated the air, rocks, trees, and water.  He knew himself to be a part of everything he could see, and the incredible natural beauty all around him filled the empty spaces in his heart.  He was finally okay.  He was home.

“Can you feel what’s happening around you?
Do your senses know the changes when they come?
Can you feel yourself reflected in the seasons?
Do you understand the need to carry on?

— John Denver