Based on the description in the guide book, we assumed the trail would be nothing more than an easy little diversion. Thirty minutes uphill. Vigorous but not overly challenging. In his write-up, the author said he’d rarely exerted so little effort for so much return, and referenced the ease with which his ten-year-old scampered up the path.
Cut to three city dwellers, red-faced, sweating, panting, ascending to the summit. What we’d assumed were going to just be switchbacks were instead narrow, sparsely marked trails cluttered with jagged rocks, which we negotiated while swatting away the sweat bees and mosquitoes and other buzzy, clingy insects that were drawn to us. Had we really so misinterpreted the text, or was the passage penned by some sort of of North Country Giant, who easily fee-fi-fo-fummed up the mountainside with his gamboling, dexterous ape-child in tow? And even though we were due to be somewhere and would surely be late, we didn’t turn back, because how much further could it be? We had to know.
The summit, when we finally arrived, did as advertised offer breathtaking views of Lake Champlain and the lush, verdant farmland. A victory of sorts.
The trip back down was that accelerated version of nostalgia, recalling out loud to one another the names of things we’d only just christened: The Perilous Pass, Chipmunk Shrub, The Loose Stone on the Left. I was in last place, lagging behind my married friends, who bantered and bickered in that way that some couples still in the first blush of marriage do, every step a negotiation, checking in and “watch that rock, it’s wobbly,” or “I said I’d carry the bag,” and “why don’t you let me…” “I told you…” “I love you honey” and “yes, dear.”
My mind wandering, I began to envision a story where, say, the wife had taken a terrible spill and injured, unconscious, the desperate husband, seeing no other option, has to abandon her on the mountain to seek help. Before leaving he would cradle her head, then remove the wedding ring from her finger and, whispering softly, swear that when they were reunited and she was safe he’d slip it back on her finger, another vow, another beginning. But I could not find in the moment a way to frame it that didn’t veer towards the melodramatic, the soap-operatic, a way to ground it in anything like truth, so I returned my attention to the path, carefully negotiating the wet stones as we made our descent.
