Finally, I'm one of them

Green Mountain: Second Highest Elevation in Kitsap County  Photo:  www.summitpost.org

a lot of rocks. . . embedded rocks, everywhere! Photo:  www.summitpost.org

During our week stay in my in-law's very gracious house, we remembered the glories of being teenagers.  We ate fried chicken, chocolate, cookies, ham dinners, and drank sodas and coffee from a pod machine.  We stayed up every night until one o'clock, chatting, piecing puzzles, watching movies, and. . .yes, eating.  The eating was amazing, especially my mother in-law's famous gumbo, served with crusty french bread slathered in butter.  We remembered we had children for a few moments every night, when we tucked them in bed.  Every morning we slept until ten o'clock or so, got up, showered, and started the same fabulous, bohemian existence all over again.

On the way home on the plane, Martin and I were mellow and thoughtful.  As we organized all our luggage, hauled tired girls to the restroom, and piled into our car for the chilly ride home through the darkness, we turned to each other, of one accord.  We were tired.  We were already tired of being adults again, even though we'd only been adults for a few hours.  The entity who had decided that we would make responsible grown-ups and conscientious citizens was utterly deluded.

The next morning, I awakened to the realization that our house burst with too much stuff: packed suitcases, teetering towers of Christmas presents, piles of mail and school papers.  And it was all up to me.  Martin awakened with the knowledge of unwritten syllabi and deadlines; he walked about in a fog of post-family-time blues.  We could easily spend the next two days in the house, busy being adults.  What a drag.

Then I talked to my  brother-in-law, Luke, on the phone:  It was my sister's birthday, and they had a day of fun and frivolity planned.  Would I like to come along?

The house and its organizational troubles dragged me back.  The upstairs hallway was entirely impossible to cross, dammed with suitcases half-opened and half-emptied by the gorgons who are my daughters searching wildly for their new outfits.  Then I remembered a line from a magazine that I'd read cover-to-cover on the long ride home.  Sometimes we need to leave undone tasks--important as they seem--to be with people we love.

Martin's work couldn't wait, but mine definitely could.  As one woman so famously noted, "The mess will always be with us."

I called Luke back.  I was in.  Soon my sister and I zoomed down the highway headed for Silverdale, the waterfront, and the bakery.  (The kids and Luke led the way in another car).  After eating quiches drenched in butter as the kids played by the water, we climbed in the car again and made our way to Green Mountain, the second highest elevation in Kitsap County.

It was a sunny day but as soon as we entered the old-growth forest, everything dimmed.  But I was wearing my amazing, expensive water-proof parka, the one that I finally splurged on shortly after our arrival on the Kitsap Peninsula.  Water beads on the fabric and rolls gently to the ground; inside, I am warm and happy.  I've worn that parka almost every day we've lived here, through gentle and wild rains, on hikes, to church, shopping. After a few months, Martin pointed out that the only garment he ever saw me in was the purple coat.  True, and worth every REI penny.

As the trail meandered over a beautiful old bridge, I congratulated myself on my good fitness, despite a week--or a month--of holiday eating.  I breathed normally, and if my thighs began to burn a bit as we started switch-backs, that was a good burn.  We'd be at the top any minute.  Then, just like that, we turned sharply off the path and started up a renegade trail, incredibly steep.  No need for switchbacks here.  Up, up, up, as a children's book would say, up, up, up.  Now my calves were singing, Mercy, o have mercy on us.

But Luke was just ahead of me, Bea balanced in one arm, Eliora, Bea's cousin, in the other.  Following this Paul Bunyan-like man, I girded my loins and gritted my teeth.  Better not to look up to see how much more path rose above us.  Surely the top was just beyond.

And it was.  We broke out the pastries and munched them inelegantly.  Seattle was a toy city far away, and the Olympics rose into a haze.  Mt. Rainer shouldered the horizon to the left like a celestial football player and the Sound spread out in the sunshine.  Luke expressed disappointment, wishing the sun had banished more clouds for an unobstructed view, but the rest of us were satisfied.

Stuffed with delicacies, the children's faces smudged with sugar and lemon paste, we turned around, ecstatic to know that the trail back led downhill all the way.  The kids sprinted off in front like horses out of a starting gate, and the adults followed, full of joy.

The sky was dimming quickly; even if we ran the whole way down the mountain, it could be nearing twilight by the time we pulled out of the parking lot, headed for home and Heather's birthday dinner.

We ran.  Down, down, down, the rocky mountain we ran, whooping all the way.  The same trees I'd seen in an agony of endless ascent blurred in green streaks on either side as I skipped around rocks, yelling encouragement to the youngest girls.  Wow, look at you guys run!  How fun! 

And then it happened.

My foot caught an embedded rock, and I began to flail, unable to cease my momentum.  I heard Luke behind me as I windmilled my arms.  Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa!  I wished I were a horse that could be slowed by his verbal entreaties.

The thing about flailing for a few moments is that you have time to think.  Am I going down?  It would be bad if I went down right now.  Maybe I can stop.  Nope.  It's just not going to happen.

The next day, I limped into REI, parka in hand.  Underneath my yoga pants, a bruise the size of a watermelon swirled like an elementary painting project on my left thigh.  You could trace where I'd skidded across several embedded sharp rocks by noting abrasions, more bruises, and cuts starting at the knees and descending down my legs.  Both hands were red and sprinkled with tiny cuts, and my shoulder throbbed round bruises where I'd hit yet another rock.

A woman in green REI vest started aghast at my parka, gashed two inches across through the waterproofing layer.  "Whoa," she said respectfully, meeting my eyes.  "You must have really wiped out."

I should say here that I have always felt like an outsider at REI, not fit enough, not hardcore enough.  I don't strap on Tevas and clamber up the rock sample, and I can't hang out in the camping section and talk about my backpacking trip through the mountain range where there's little water and I can't possibly add another ounce to my backpack.  Nope.  I hopelessly search for affordable clothes in the Clearance racks, ask for walking shoes, and buy things to keep me warm.

But something was palpably different today.  "Where were you hiking?"  the woman asked.  She was young, maybe in her mid-twenties, chiseled and fit, with that REI aura of I'm-gorgeous-but-in-a-hardcore-outdoor-way.

"Green Mountain," I said.  And then I added, "I was running down Green Mountain."  I adopted the nonchalance of a veteran trail runner.

"Oh, yeah," she enthused, "I just hiked that trail yesterday. . ."

And we were off from there.  We stood under the lights and I basked and glowed and throbbed with bruises and cuts and the knowledge that for the first time, I was truly an REI member, and not just because of the card in my wallet. 

As I filled out the form to have my parka sent out and mended, the checker surveyed the rip.  Then glanced up at me sympathetically.  "I totally know how you feel," she said.  "I was climbing a cliff in Hawaii and fell off."

Exactly.  It was almost as pleasing as when Bea and Eliora squatted down to survey my "owies."

"What'd you get, Auntie Kimby?"  Eliora said, as if we'd just been shopping.

I showed them.

"WHOOOOOAAAA,"  the two girls breathed, full of awe.  Awe and a new respect.
It was almost worth the injuries.