To the Mountains I am Drawn

I went to the mountains yesterday. A neighbor, who is more in tune with the land than I—although I don’t mean to sell myself short—joined me for a hike up Chamisa Trail, which climbs to 9000’. An entymologist by degree, she knows plant (no slouch am I), loves animals, and by her own words, she is “not afraid of work”. Climbing is indeed work. The hike was scenic enough, once you got about five minutes from the trailhead into the towering pines, and it was challenging.

At times I wanted to just sit on a rock, a little winded, my quadriceps aching.  I struggled on, even when I wanted to pause. It was a good reminder of the role the individual units play in a combined effort. If the ascent was tough in places, loose gravel contributing to the difficulty on one near-45-degree spot, coming down later was equally precarious. Yet at each plateau we were rewarded with reviving breezes and small stands of lupins—in the same family as out Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis), maybe the same species found in far west Texas, tall and a little more purple than the one that lines the highways and fills the pastures of much of central Texas.

A couple of times on the ascent I admitted that I needed some time to recover. Stopping gave us both the chance to look around, take a deep breath, register the aromas, and marvel at our experience. Finally, at the top of the trail, 30 minutes or so from the start, we were rewarded with humbling vistas in every direction and Raven soaring up high, announcing his presence, ‘KWAAK-KWAAK!” Oh, how nice accomplishment feels, and hears, and smells.

How blessed I am that on any day my body continues to allow me I can go to the mountains—on my own or in the company of another pilgrim fan of the outdoors. Hiking alone gives plenty of time for reflection and opportunity for pausing for as long as I choose. The challenge is up to me. Body and mind share the experience. Only the occasional greeting of another soul, and sometimes a brief conversation, change the nature of this solitary time. The sense of achievement is left to me alone. I like that.

I also like the sharing, especially with someone who turns out to be a bit of a soul mate. I love being a 65-year-old guy who is not intimidated by a more fit woman 10 years his junior. “I can’t believe you’re going to be 65,” she asserted after asking my age. Then we discovered we share the same birthday month. We are Virgos, September. Only four days keep us from being exactly 10 years apart. I know little about astrological signs and the human behaviors and preferences associated with these signs. While I know that we children of Virgo sometimes get a bad wrap from people who bother about such things as the characteristic behaviors associated with astrological signs, I nonetheless appreciate that almost always I am drawn to other Virgos. We of industry, reliability, drawn by perfection and introverted though we might be, we make pretty good company, at least for one another, on a climb in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on a perfect June morning.

To the Mountains I am Drawn—Sante Fe, New Mexico (June 19, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis