The Hike (Revised)

Ascent
We start late.
The sun smirks down.
We climb quickly,
as if gold still plays in those mines.
Lungs burning, knees springing,
thrusting off of stones
and roots lodged in dirt.
Smaller rocks,
long ago chewed up and spit out by monsters,
crunch underfoot.
I only hear the munching
and my wheezing breath;
All I see of mountain
comes just before each footstep.

Pastoral
Clouds unzipping the sunshine as I open my yellow pack;
My pink and tingling hands shakily unscrewing a blue Nalgene lid;
Our souls unearthing mountains, reading rocks, studying granite volumes;
Water caresses our lips like a kiss,
saturates the throat, swells the belly.
Water stirs our eyes in wonder:
a bowl of blue extending out from a bottle-green valley;
a vale dotted with brunette boulders and golden grasses,
surrounded by crags and walls of stone,
seeded long ago from molten movement and grown by shifting plates.
The trail switchbacks across her,
dirt fingers bent across the rocks.
I breathe; stretch the soreness into a dull sensation;
The joy of fresh air, the achievement,
The satisfaction.

Decision
I’ve never seen it.
There’s reason enough to move forward, up the slope:
For the satisfaction of triumph—
Not of conquering the mountain,
But of conquering myself.

Second Ascent
We start upward.
The storm builds overhead.
We move quickly,
As though to reach the clouds and stop them.
Knees cracking, eyes scanning
For rocks and obstacles
And roots wedged in dirt.
On the ridge above,
thunder cackles like the ghosts of miners
heckling our weakness.
I only feel the grinding of my teeth
and of the rocks beneath my feet.
All I see of mountain
rises above the rock in thunderclouds.

Descent
We gorge ourselves
on GORP and granola bars
before we run;
Like deer fleeing a looming predator,
we high-tail it down.
Stumbling across scree fields
with heavy ankles,
bound to betray.
The only sounds:
jacket sleeves rustling,
thunder growling.
The sky spits on us,
I lick the spatter from the corner of my mouth.
I pause; look back at the storm,
smell fear on the wind,
swallow pebbles.
We slide and trip down the hill,
Sometimes running and
Sometimes falling
on a monster’s rejected rocks.
And then, sometimes stopping
to look up and admire
the beast of mountain.

Finish Line
We did it.
There’s reason enough to celebrate:
(and a cold beer sits on the edge of the tub
While hot drizzle pours over me)
For the satisfaction of success—
for the mountain in my legs,
for the mountain in my heart.