Ragged Mountain

It was my birthday this past weekend and it was the first birthday that kind of a little bit bugged me, getting-older-wise, even if the year itself has been the most rewarding and productive year of my adult life, and I have a neon-green Post-It on my study wall with a list of local peaks that I want to bag this summer and Ragged Mountain was the next one

The trail up Ragged was overgrown and faint and the twigs scratched my legs and the virgin-green spines on the May berry canes scraped like highschool rumors and the path was littered with fuchsia petals from the flowers and how wondrous is that Monet-brush-daub of colour 

There’s a part of me that wants to apologize for hiking alone and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t apologize for hiking alone, this time is sacrosanct, this time is necessary, even if bears, even if men, even if 

At the top of Ragged Mountain the view was a real view that is to say obscured by trees but the air was full of spruce tips and bees and the ground was full of twisted silver juniper manzanita I laid down for ten seconds and stared at the sky till I could only see blue and the sun

I ran down the Veitch Creek Trail like a trail runner and yes I exalted in the strength of my body, the corded IT band and the hewn calf and the hip dip below the Lulu Nulux seams all heiroglyph-d with berry scratches flared red with nettle brushes and the divot in my bare shoulders and if there’s more flesh than I want well it’s not up to me because it’s hard to argue with a body that loves to run and runs like this

I thought of a story that I’ll write when I come down, a flash piece, 300 words max, about gold necklaces and twigs and how obliteration is not painful, but incomplete obliteration is the most painful thing of all