“My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir
It's not a secret to anyone that I love shoes. I am a "shoe-a-holic" and I am not ashamed. So when King gave me a pair of three season hiking boots for Christmas it was hard for me not to get excited. Shoes are always a good idea. Now, using the hiking boots for actual "hiking" would be some thing else again. King is a modern day "Grizzly Adams" and being outside, hiking, is probably his most favorite thing to do. I wanted to share that with him. I had hiked before but not to the extent my husband has. Never up mountaintops...until I met "Grizzly Adams." So yesterday, January 1st, 2017, King asked me if I wanted to give the new boots a test drive. I agreed. A winter hike would be a first for me in a very long time.
We layered up and on went my new boots. As I was lacing them up around my ankle, a surge of fear came over me. I didn't want to fail and did I didn't want to fail my husband. It was the identical feeling I had the day we got married. I wanted to take the boots off and crawl back under the blankets of my warm bed and say "It's just too hard. No."
King grabbed our hiking poles and packed a day pack with a thermos of tea. We were on our way. It was in the 40's, the sun was shining and the winds were mild as we approached our path. The first quarter mile was a complete sheet of ice. "Use your poles," King instructed. I was petrified. Ice is never anyone's friend. "You never know what you're gong to come across in the woods, so you can't panic," explained "Grizzly" as I used my poles and step by step up the icy path. I didn't know whether to kiss him or slap him. I could feel every muscle and every tendon in my arms and legs trying to work together. I didn't want my body to fail me. I didn't want to fail period.
Luckily the path warmed up, a break in the ice, and King waited for his partner. "Need to rest?" he asked. My husband suddenly looked different to me at that very moment. I felt safe. How could I let him down? Clearly, I was in the process of mentally detoxing. I was beginning to remember how good it felt to be outside. The sun was warmer now. It shined down on King and I as we kept walking up the mountainside. As we climbed higher, I needed my poles to keep me steady and to hoist me higher. "Do you want to stop?" Grizzly asked. "No," I managed to speak the one syllable word. We kept going, the weather cooperated. I could see other mountaintops and other forests. Finally, I had to ask "How much further, dear?" He wouldn't answer. "We are almost there," he smartly answered. In a matter of five or ten minutes, he looked back over his shoulder and said, "This is the top.
You made it dear!" I couldn't believe it. The ground had leveled out and there in front of us was fallen tree log. We sat and King took out the tea he had made and poured us each a cup. The sun warmed us. The tea was perfect. Life was perfect.
We kissed. King packed up and we trekked home. I used my poles like an expert on the way down and King watched carefully with a loving grin. I stopped looking at the path and looked at the world around me, the woods, the quiet beautiful woods. The ice was but a small inconvenience now. Getting down the mountain was much easier than going up. Marriage is the same way. There is a path but there are no guarantees as to what appears on the path. Sometimes you maneuver around the icy parts, sometimes you fall right on your posterior. But there are tools you use to get back up as long as you overcome your fear. I realized when we got home, as I soaked in a hot tub, that I had been afraid of so many things over my lifetime and had survived. I realized by watching my husband, my "Grizzly Adams," that he knew how to get back up too. He is confident in the woods. He is a survivor outside, in the woods and in life and now, at least in this moment so was I. This is a new year, with no guarantees, no silver bullet but if you have the right tools, the right partner by your side, none of the past matters. One single step can change everything.
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