Monday, August 1st, 2011

In the morning the aspen trunks look like flesh, smooth, wrinkled where the branches strive. I eagerly trot across the road to my esteemed teacher: an icy stream, all gold and silver, in its bed of granite shoals and lined with great cow parsnips, tender firs and rough spruce. I follow the stream down to a big aspen leaning across and hang my towel on it, undress, and unbelievably, find myself sitting naked on a log, my feet and calves burning with the cold. Will I get in? Should I get in? There is none of this. I am in, I am in the water and the breath is squeezed from my body, chasing all the layered duff of doubts, fears, arrogances and wishes– there is only the stream and the black tangle of needles and the racing pebbles and the deep cold like a fire on my skin– then it's out to soap, then in again– then in and down, so my body is in its pool, and now comes the heaving, the struggle to stay in while the water seems to throb with my heart– then kneel and pass the last gate, cup my hands and soak my head and face while the cobbles dig into my knees and toes– and out, into steaming sunlight and the creek clattering safely behind– warm and sensing, receiving the wind as the trees do– without question, without design. By the time I crest the little footpath and see the cabin I miss her again and want to be burned by her icy fingers.

Then it's time to pack our things and meet Jim and JoAn at Hollowell Park, a small picnic area in Rocky Mountain National Park. There's a sense that the roads have always been here, along with the toll booths at the park entrance, made ridiculously to look like tiny log cabins– that all these things define the valleys and the meadows– and instead of interpreting what is, they contain it so that some modern pharisee may insert it into his pharisee history.

But none of this means anything to us; we sit under a lodgepole and eat our macaroni salad and sandwiches, then drive up to Bear Lake and sit watching the lookers-on walk by with their bucket hats and t-shirts. According to JoAn there was a lodge here, but apparently it was pinched out by a rising clutter of regulation or its heirs simply grew tired of running the business. She and I stare out over the water, and I try to imagine the place we're sitting as the end of a dirt road populated by a few Model As and hikers strolling around in wool and leggings– a lodge in such a setting wouldn't be such a bad thing when you compare it to the city the National Park Service has built in the wilderness.

I'm forcefully reminded of this later, while Celeste and I march down the trail from Cub Lake– clammy and tired after a rugged two miles of steady uphill. Coming the other way are soft suburbanites, softer even than me, walking casually, dry, well-scrubbed– is this really our heritage? This exercise track in the woods? The terrain of the rockies from a distance inspires glowing generalities– but look closer, look at each other, you visitors– I include myself- look at that city in the wilderness– it cannot last.

And the wilderness? Say rather the wood, the place outside the farm, outside the pasture, the place inimical to humankind; whether it is a "wilderness" or a "reserve" or a "national forest". That it stay inimical, that is the important thing, whether it conforms to a federal standard or not. We walked through this forest, trudged through it;

the trail is a steep track through stands of pine and aspen–moderating only to climb again after a gentle turn– and we are both drawing deep breaths, surging with the effort, our hands heavy and a little swollen– and still the trail heads up; eventually, in a hogback covered with pines, the trail descends and off our right shoulder we can see white and pink Vs of water through the trees. But the lake is still many more toe-jamming grades away. Celeste concedes; her knee is flaring and we turn to go back. It is as well; as Nicholson Baker says, why break into fulfillment's desolate attic? the lake will become a lovingly-tinted illustration of memory as it becomes a reason for another hike– an ending made sweeter by years of waiting.