The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [99]
Chapter 25
Paisley—Climbing
We went to the Rockies once. When people asked how we liked it, we said, “Great! Great!” But there was more to it than that.
We rented a car at the Denver airport and headed straight for the mountains, planning to see the city on the way back. On the steep, winding road, ascending toward those spectacular jagged peaks, the sky was so blue, the trees so green, the snowcaps so unlikely that we might have been moving through a dreamscape.
“Before this day is over, we’ll be having a snowball fight,” I told Mason. “Look.” A peak had come into view, topped with snow as white as fine porcelain. “That can be our destination.”
“Maybe we should stop for a noonie first.”
“You’d be too worn out to do another thing.”
“Wanna bet?”
I unfolded our topo map. “We started out at practically sea level this morning. We were at fifty-two hundred feet in Denver, and now we’re at eighty-six hundred and still going up. The highest we’ve ever been before was six thousand on that hike near Mount Mitchell.”
I pointed upward to the tree line, an actual line almost straight around the mountain, forested below, bare above. “It’s as if all the trees got together and decided they weren’t going to grow one inch higher.”
“As if in protest.”
“Or else they unionized.”
At the campsite, we set up our tent, gathered firewood for later, stuffed sweatshirts into our packs. Mason checked his watch. “Ten to three. Plenty of time to get up and down before dark.” He slung two canteens of water over his shoulder.
The trail began with a footbridge over a stream of water, shallow and fast moving and so clear that the smooth oval stones beneath it seemed almost magnified. “The Laramie River,” Mason announced.
“Looks like a creek. Too small for a river.”
“In the West, this is a river.” Ever the newspaperman, he’d done his research. “The water all looks clean out here, but you can’t drink it. There’s some kind of invisible parasite in the streams that makes you sick.”
“What parasite? I never heard of a parasite.”
“Giardia.”
Poisoned water! Adventure! We’d been so bored, SO bored. And now, keyed up, flying west, gaining two hours, embarking on our first vacation without the kids, we were unstoppable. More than twenty years together and still sizzling!
The trail we’d chosen led through a field of wildflowers, then up the mountain, a path of hard-packed dirt and rocks. At first it was wide enough to walk two abreast. When the trail steepened and narrowed, I fell behind, watching our canteens bob on Mason’s back, his sturdy, muscular arms swinging, his legs covered with dense brown hairs above his running shoes. He wouldn’t wear hiking boots. In his scouting days he’d gotten an infected blister from hiking boots and was convinced it could happen again. “Okay, be stupid,” I’d told him.
He’d grinned. Now, though skeptical about his choice of footwear, I enjoyed the vista of his strong back, his strong legs, his hair curling at his neck beneath his baseball cap. Without the children, we’d be able to have sex anytime we wanted.
We didn’t talk much because walking began to occupy us. Despite the switchbacks, the path was steep. Despite a summer playing tennis, I was winded. Thirsty, too. I would have taken a quick drink, but Mason had both canteens and I wasn’t going to ask. I pictured the drinking fountain beside the tennis court, water coursing out in a thick silver arc. The air had grown cool as we ascended. What was odd was being so thirsty when it wasn’t hot.
“Take it easy the first couple days,” my mother had warned. “People need time to adjust to altitude. Don’t go on one of your Olympic marathons.”
Where she got the idea of marathons, I didn’t know.
Just then Mason stopped, shrugged the canteens off his shoulder, and held one out to me. We’d come around a bend, in full view of a nearby mountain. The snow seemed not so far above us. We sat on a flat-topped rock that hunkered about four feet above the trail. I drank for a long time. Afterward, I slipped the strap of the canteen