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Historically, Through hiking was my season of the year. The annual pilgrimage I promised myself, deliberate time I took in nature to come back to myself. My liberation from trying to please others and fulfill the needs of everyone around me. My time to escape the pressure of fitting into social norms that felt less than organic.
I took off every year, for weeks or months, taking unpaid leave from life before it got hard (or harder), before I had the opportunity to mess up, burn bridges, disappoint anyone, or let my cracks show. Hiking season was for me alone.
But not this year.
This year I had a Hiking Partner.
Wren and I had spent much of our hike trying and failing to adapt to each other. At one stressful moment after another, I abandoned myself, fawned, and avoided hard conversations. It was getting on my nerves. I was getting on my nerves.
”Come on, Wren,” I thought, aggravated, as I slipped out of my sleeping clothes and into my hiking gear, feeling goosebumps rising on my stiff legs in the desert’s pre-dawn chill.
Minutes passed. Wren’s alarm chimed, on and on. Loudly, like a warning. She hadn’t moved.
“Oh my God,” I thought as my heart rate pricked to an alarming rate. “Something’s happened.”
She lay about 10 feet away. I staggered barefoot across the slanting rock, my feet unsure, and looked down at her. I held my breath as I stood over her, watching her still body for signs of life.
“If this bitch died on me,” I thought, “I’m going to kill her.”