ALL SAINTS DAY HIKE TO ROCKY TOP
--Let’s go as
far as that tree in the sun,
and
then turn around.”
Jane
Goodall, The Book of Hope:
A
Survival Guide for Trying Times
When my brother
walks through the door
I’m reading the
book he brought last week,
and looking up, say
to him, Let’s go
as far as that
tree in the sun. He smiles
at the cover, Jane
Goodall’s face is the sun,
he says, Let’s
hike until we see her face.
Overcast and cold,
we might be walking
the William O.
Douglas Trail
until we get to
Rainier.
Tahoma, he corrects
me, Mt. Tahoma.
Out Summitview, we
turn onto gravel,
Rocky Top Drive past
dump grounds
on the right into
the parking lot at trailhead.
My brother’s a
coach. Women’s fastpitch,
baseball,
half-century, retired. Atlanta
up 3 games to 1
against Astros, World Series.
Tell me about Color
Analyst Jon Smoltz.
He wouldn’t get
vaccinated,
Major League
Baseball wouldn’t let him
in the booth. I like
to hear him talk pitching.
Have you heard him
talk about batters?
That guy likes to
hit more than he wants
to get on base.
Pitch him outside the strike zone.
Horse Trail’s wide
and we walk side by side.
Trekking poles. My
brother, 70, younger
by six years, asks
about All Saints Day.
We’re walking
fence lines, in and out of gates.
It’s rocky. His
daughter, an elite runner
and mother of six
kids, runs out here.
She got lost once,
in the dark, he says.
She could turn an
ankle. Her kids
won’t let her
leave the house without
her phone. Back and
forth talk,
wound wire draped
over wood posts.
We’ll find a place
at the top
and put down our
jackets for a table cloth,
take out our
sandwich and apple,
trail mix and
shortbread cookie.
And water. We’ll
ask Mom & Dad
to sit with us,
Grandma and Charlie.
Then we’ll ask
Lena (his wife),
and Tyler (our
nephew) to the stone
we’ve made for a
table. Maybe
we’ll light up our
phones, pretending
they’re fireworks
clearing the trail
for them to make the
journey
through the night sky.
We’ll ask them to
refresh themselves.
Lena and Tyler both
died of glioblastomas.
We’ll ask all of
our ancestors to gather.
This is the practice
of complete inclusion.
This is memory gone
past the act of remembering.
We talk North
Dakota. We’ve traveled this road.
The two of us. Karen
(my wife) just found out
that Victor, Dad’s
Dad, remember when we looked
for him locked up
somewhere in Crosby
half-mad and
delirius, he was totally deaf
when he died. Did
that big house
we lived in have
an in-door toilet?
No, the privy was in
the basement,
winding downstairs
from the kitchen
around the cistern
only partially covered
with boards, large
as a room and deep, scary.
I remember the
basement was scary,
Yes, the two-seater
was there, beside the furnace,
and we had to shovel
out clinkers
every morning. Dad
did that.
We didn’t walk
through the coal bin
to poop, but I can’t
remember where
it was! We took
baths in the kitchen
and the galvanized
tub hung on the wall
going to the
basement. The kitchen!
Oh my
God! I’ve been counting
doors
as we’ve been hiking. The kitchen
had four
entrances. One door
outside to
the side of the yard,
one door to the
basement. One door led
upstairs the
bedrooms with the long hallway,
and the last door
opened to the dining room
and the main
entrance to the house.
There were sliding
doors that disappeared
into the walls off
Mom and Dad’s bedroom.
I don’t know when
they tore it down
but it was a
decaying Victorian mansion
built by Great
Northern Railroad,
and we lived in it
rent-free because Dad
ran the elevator
until we left in 1955.
Voices at Rocky Top
Summit
by the cell tower,
and fences everywhere.
Voices from two
women, mother and daughter?
Mother’s got to be
our age, fit. Daughter
on her cell phone.
Chuck stops to talk
and I keep walking.
If we cross under
the fence we’ll
see Tieton and Yakima
going down. We lift
the wires for each
other, rolling under
barbs to the other side.
Our table made, we
don’t spend
too much time with
anybody,
OK, Mom, we’ll
all have to eat fast. So sorry--
light rain falling,
not quite a drizzle.
We take selfies by
the post
holding the
barbed-wire heart,
two brothers. I ask
Dad if he liked
that almond butter,
frozen blackberry jam
sandwich, and eat
what’s left.
Three elaborate
cairns, temple-like
on the way down. We
replace
a couple of fallen
stones.
Chuck breaks the
silence
as we descend. When
was the last time
one of us spoke?
Hope is a disruptor, kind of,
I say. Is walking also a form of hope?
I like listening
to this rain
my brother says,
as it falls onto
my hat.
Jim Bodeen
1-4 November 2021
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