ALL SAINTS DAY HIKE TO ROCKY TOP

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