The wind is chilly as I step up to the trail head blowing faster and colder than I’m used to.
As if to ward off unwanted visitors or to mourn the season, the clouds are also leaking their tiny teardrops of rain. But they’re more foreboding than the warm refreshing September showers I know.
This rain feels like ice. Microscopic explosions on my skin sucking the warmth and vitality from my face and hands.
“An hour. I only have one hour”
My feet crunch like usual on the familiar gravel, but there’s also the echoing crunch of other shoes. Whether it’s the time of day or the annual spectacle of changing leaves that brings the others, it feels more crowded. In the diffuse light, I see brilliant oranges, reds, and yellows that seem to be working their way down the mountainside. I see fire being pulled by gravity towards the valley. And like fire, these colors bring death.
Feeling short on time, I neglect the well worn path I love and leave the other hikers to their conversations. With each deer-trail and partial path I see, I choose the one that leads higher. Steeper. I want my legs to burn bright and fast much like the leaves that are dying around me.
Maybe this canyon exists as I do: Squeezed for time.
Maybe each tree only wants to shine it’s luminous colors before it falls asleep.
I find the dry gulley of a springtime waterway and take it as my trail. It’s faster and more direct if I want to get higher in my short hike. My legs combust and my chest heaves, and I wonder open mouthed without words:
“Why do we die”?
The question feels burdensome so I shake my head, but the wrinkled carcasses of once verdant leaves keep the question on my mind if not on my tongue.
My hands and feet pull me upward and I never stop to wonder why. I have no goal. I have no aim per se. I just want to be…here. To hold the hand of summer as it breathes it’s last breaths. To comfort it as it has comforted me through it’s bountiful warm days.
Time slips and I frantically continue my climb through yellow trees for unforgiving minutes. There are so many trails that cross mine. Each one tempts me and I make a vague mental note that I would like to explore them, just not today.
I glance at the time and pause for a moment to enjoy the golden light of a setting sun peering through the blueish clouds. But my hour is over and I have to go. I smile at the beauty feeling I could just as easily add my own tears to the skies’.
And I go back down.
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