more days like this
I needed this. Walking land I’ve never walked—through wildflower fields of Queen Anne’s Lace and Milkweed, up a rocky slope lined with ferns that climbed up to six thousand feet and the edge of the Shining Rock Wilderness. With my hair in a tangled knot and my face wet with sweat, I kissed him in the ferns in the soft light.
She pointed out a plant and said it was called Ghost Pipe. It was fuzzy white like the wings of a moth, delicate and ethereal, with bell-shaped flowers. She said the roots could be used to create a tincture to help increase pain tolerance, much like opium. My back ached and I held back plucking it from the wet soil.
On the steepest part of the incline, I listened to the ceramic mugs clank in her backpack. When we reached the summit I unlaced my boots and sat cross-legged on my thrift store flannel, looking out across the mountains. He put his hand on my leg and I settled into the sticky warmth. She poured a California red into our mugs and it was syrupy sweet in my mouth.
We talked about our families and how we grew up. She said her family used to lock her in a closet with a Bible and my stomach churned. He said his dad found an old film camera by the road and that’s where he first discovered his love for photography. All I could think was how much I wish I had those photographs.
I counted the layers of the mountains, nine in all, each one growing lighter until the last layer dissolved into the sky. We took photos in the sunset and my teeth were stained with wine but you couldn’t tell because the red sun had lit our faces on fire. We hiked down in the dark and stumbled over the tree roots that crawled across the trail.
When we reached the meadow we could see Jupiter shining its gold glow in the distance. He took my hand and spun me around under the open sky. The world turned like when I’d have too much whisky on all those nights when life felt like it was moving on without me. When the spinning slowed I noticed that all the wildflowers had fallen asleep. Had I been sleeping too? Maybe, but not on this day. On this day, this night, I was very much awake. Alive to all that was living around me.
