Ohps (a combination of Oh and Ooops), this may be it, kids . . . the day I break my streak.
I got up super early today (actually two minutes before my alarm went off, not sure how that happens) so I could drive thirty-five miles south to meet a pair of high school friends to go on a hike with them. We had planned to do it two weeks ago, but there was a holiday, then a week ago, but one of us couldn't make it, and today was the day that all three were available.
Problem was, I wasn't sure how far up the canyon my destination was, and once I got a mile or so up the canyon, my cellphone service disappeared, and I was just stuck. Luckily, there were dozens of hikers, bicyclists, and child predators enjoying the canyon, so I was able to ask a couple of them for directions. I arrived about ten minutes late, and nobody was there (except several parked cars with no one in them), and I was worried I missed them. But my buddy Rhett had always been physically incapable of arriving anywhere on time for the thirty years I've known him, so I just wandered around for another twenty minutes until he showed up. Our third friend never did show up (unless she was there on time and gave up when we never arrived), but Rhett brought his son with him.
His son is fifteen, tall and skinny and awkward, and somewhat endearingly, he insisted on being part of every conversation his old man and I had, even when Rhett was reminiscing about his high school days (the thing that Rhett does best of all). I'm not sure why he did it, but there was something refreshingly innocent about that (Rhett asked me about horror movies at one point, and I told him how few I see nowadays, and said, "How 'bout you? Do you ever watch horror movies anymore?" and his son said, "No, I don't watch those very much," which was kinda off-putting).
It was quite a hike, and this is coming from someone who runs every night and hikes once a week. Distance-wise, it was probably only four or five miles, but it was climbing up a mountain, and then climbing down, trying not to fall at the steep points.*
Rhett swore quite a bit in front of his kid, and after an hour or so, I followed his lead. But when I used the word "mother-fucker," I felt I may have overstepped some unwritten law, and dialed it down a couple of notches for the rest of the day.
Two years ago, there was a massive forest fire all throughout the canyon, and Rhett described going on a similar walk last year, and seeing everything just blacked and ash-covered. This year, though, although every tree was dead once you got up a certain height, there was new plants on the ground and lots of little sprouts and bushes that were apparently new for 2020.
Rhett really wanted to go see Big Tree, the largest tree in the forest, which has become something mildly sacred to him over the years. He said that when the fire happened in 2018, he was worried Big Tree wouldn't survive, but somebody who had hiked up there last year said it had been missed, so he was hopeful.
But no, it was not only burned, but spectacularly so, and had broken in half, the top pieces lying around its base like fallen soldiers. In places, the blackened bark had fallen off, leaving yellow beneath it, and it was like the bone showing through a dead man.
We stayed there a while, looking, drinking what remained of our water. He talked about the various times he had gone up there (he's lived in the same town for his whole life, and still loves to go out on foot or on a bike or with his dog, exploring the trails and enjoying the seasons), and there was something tragic about it, pretty as it is.
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| I took five or six pictures just of this tree . . . and they were not enough. |
Look, despite me writing 164,000 words since February first, I'm not enough of a wordsmith to describe what it looked like to see hundreds of burnt, blacked, dead trees pushing off in all directions, and at the same time, tons of new green growth at the base of it all, including pink summer flowers. In the midst of death we are in life or something.
Rhett took the loss of Big Tree pretty hard. I think, were the man capable of tears, we might have seen one or two. He took his teenaged lady love up there one time, and showed me a picture he had brought of that trip, and how different it had all looked before the fire. He reminded me that I had actually been up there in 1996 or so, even though I had only the vaguest memory of seeing that big tree before.**
This was a super bizarre dead tree we saw going back down the hill. Most of it had rotted away, leaving only a C-shaped hole in the base, but it had not yet fallen over. It was sad, yes, but also kind of amazing.
We had a good hike, and I was pretty exhausted and totally dirty by the time it was over, and then it was time for my nephew's third birthday party, which was neat.
Now, I am sunburned and tired and super sleepy. My options are to go to sleep, or to drink a Mountain Dew (Rhett gave me one, as is his tradition every time he sees me--he always finds these obscure, limited flavors, and saves them for me, sometimes more than a year), and try and write something. Which do I choose, a hard or soft option?
Well, I drank it down, and it was divine (it was some new flavor called Frost Bite with a shark on the bottle), and then I got a few words in, 475 to be exact. I also forced myself to do a hundred sit-ups, which might become the norm rather than the exception as this month goes on.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In June: 1612
Words Today: 657
Words In June: 12,457
These are not a lot of words, but considering I was going to go to sleep with ZERO, I consider it an accomplishment.
*I did drop right onto my butt at one point, when the ground gave way beneath my feet, but either I'm in better shape than I thought, or I'm not as old as the calendar (or the people around me) insists I am.
**It's funny what you attach significance to. I remember crying when my mom sold our old station wagon, because it was the car I had learned to drive in.
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