Decision to Leave the Dead

I might cope with sadness through self-induced suffering.

I could lace up my trail runners and stow water and go.

Let’s say I go hiking for miles in a dry landscape in triple digits like a fool. Imagine it with me . . .

I smell hot dirt. Feel dead grass crackle underfoot. Thank God for the light breeze.

As I hike, I admit that I’ve felt change coming on a while now. The kids are older. We’re older. Life gets easier. But it also gets harder. What do you do?

Me?

I fumble with pieces of time. Drop them. Pick them up and dust them off. Throw some out.

This heat dome makes you think about escape, don’t it?

Even the big red ants decided to pack up, head underground. Somewhere they made the decision to leave the dead. Adaptation is survival.

I question myself as I move down the trail. Have I adapted in my 40s? Can I truly change, or is survival falling haphazard from the top of the tree of life and hitting every branch on the way down? A game of chance?

I recall that I once kayaked this part of the river with my son. The greenish water ran deep and fast and cold then. We used home-tied flies and landed olive-green bass with stripes stippled down their sides. Admired them. Released them before they choked on air, all red gills and worried eyes and freshwater smells. We listened to osprey call their young in the giant cypress trees above, the sound of a thousand voices in the rapids below. We paddled and laughed and jumped in to cool off and took it all for granted.

Today I stand there on exposed rock, holding vigil for lost water. Lost life. The past.

This drought transferred water into vapor. Maybe it’ll come back to this river. Or maybe it’ll get frozen in a Swiss glacier. A snowflake that fell after floating over the Atlantic as gas.

The hydrological cycle. Water is never consumed, only transferred. It means I might have shared a drink with an ancient who made spears out of flint. Maybe you shared the same drink with the wooly mammoth they hunted. Maybe one day our great-great-great-grandchildren will share a drink with us.

I turn a corner and a deer bolts in my peripheral. The deer have adapted to the heat.

I seldom see deer on these trails, because they’re wild, unlike the neighborhood pets (pests) eating our shrubbery and dog food. I spook several whitetail this day, a sign that few humans have walked these trails of late. The deer embrace the heat-born solitude.

When in nature, do as nature does.

I wear a ventilated shirt with long sleeves. I sweat; the breeze is an air-conditioner against my torso. My cap shades my face. Tinted lenses protect my eyes. It is 103 degrees but on this contrived journey, I don’t care.

How can I lament a lost spring if I love summer’s fire?

I am here.

Embracing change.

I am older.

Embracing life.

Getting easier.

Getting harder.

It happens.

If I went on this hike, I would give my hurt to the dusty trail. To naked river rocks. To the bee in the beautiful buds near the river bed, the only surviving flowers I might see all day.

To the withering brown fields that were green four months ago.