In the morning cold of a Colorado June nine years ago, you were the first up, already seated at the camp stove, getting the water ready and hot for oatmeal for the rest of us. I can see you in the morning a dot on the snow between tarps, a figure by a stove at the edge of the big mountain, big sky. That day we were perched on a flat of land like a stage in reverse, where the audience was great pool of shifting terrain, of rivers winding along the floor of rock and tree like a song that emptied out to mountains in the mist. Some days we slept on snow, some days weâd have to trek across steep cliffs under wind and rain. But I would come to love the smell of badger balm sunscreen and unwashed underarmour.
You were quiet, mostly because the other boys were loud. âPlayfulâ is what I wrote in my journal at the airport, but I meant that in the sense that professional outdoorsmen are, or gymnasts - their precision and levity in spite of the circumstances something to marvel at. Sport sunglasses guarding an elfish rosy face; your ears perked, listening. You would be at the front the group of us, or at the very back, talking with that tall, brown-haired friend whose name I canât remember. Carrying an extra water bottle in case someone else ran out. I liked everyone on that trip, including myself, but I could see you were the kindest of any of us; the best at living with almost-strangers out of a backpack in the wild; the best at caring for people and the best at being alone.
I was counting down the days until my seventeenth birthday. I liked how much of a bad-ass this made me, to be hiking three weeks straight across the remote Colorado wilderness. I liked the taste of complete self-sufficiency, the sweet exhaustion, how simple pleasures magnified. These highs owed to ruthless physical exertion, however, where in the moment the 1-2-1-2 beat of my aching legs still walking left no space for the mind to romanticize. There were also plenty of opportunities to be terrified: of the coyote howls outside the tent or that the crampon nails beneath my boots werenât enough to prevent a thousand-foot fall. And while the starkness of the landscape often lent me a cosmic awe (4 am pee break - moonless sky - deep stars down to the horizon), other times the total lack of human civilization lent me the sense of an indifferent universe. A nightmarish emptiness. It made me glad for the couple of nights when the group of us had layed our sleeping bags in plain air when the weather was dry, talking about our lives into the cosmos until we fell asleep.
There was a day you waited behind to hike with me. I was lagging again, canât remember why: Â maybe it was a beeâs nest, maybe homesickness. It might have begun with crying, or rain. We had been camping near a small forest beside a green, below a towering, remote cliff of rock that felt singularly indifferent to my home and family. As we walked, the terrain changed quickly from forest to hills of white, as stark as the moon, distance distorted by the sheer lack of anything between us and the jagged horizon. You, me, and that red-haired guide. You talking, you listening intently, and snow melting into water melting into rock.
It must have been less than a week later when we arrived at base camp in Marble, Colorado. You were already standing there when I crossed the finish line to hoots and claps, there with your clipboard and bandanna, imitating the guides. Under a great big house was laid out a feast sandwiches and chips, amid a clearing of grass, surrounded by an aspen forest. Â
I took my first shower in weeks. We set up our tarps in an enclave a short walk from the fire pit, not far from the house. A campfire was built and games were played. You set traps to catch chipmunks before disappearing into the woods with a Swiss army knife and scrap cardboard to fashion something, I couldnât guess what.
When I saw you again, the fire had quelled to hot coals and you had drawings up and down your arms, a sharpie marker in your hand. I asked if you would give me one. And so then we were sitting by the waning fire, talking, as you stroked a mountain into my right foot. The evening grew darker as we talked about how weâd evolved, which felt so definitive back then. I said that I was braver and dirtier and less prissy this time than I had been in times before. I canât remember what you said, but you must have been listening, the way you dragged that sharpie against my skin.
I avoided washing it in the weeks that followed. I wanted to keep this visible, bodily trace of where I had been, of what had happened there. I was proud of the dirt behind my ears, proud of my swollen knees. When I arrived at a pre-college program days later, the stuffy 16-year-old would-be lawyers who hadnât just traversed the wilderness for three weeks straight would ask if it was a tattoo, and I would say no, although I liked the illusion that it was. Â
But of course the mountain did fade, as did the swelling. The past nine years have seen its memory compress like sediment beneath the weight of everything else that has happened since, making you a mere grain in what was a thin sliver of my life, a bright flash of mica. After the trip I made a Facebook group for all of us, and there was a minimal amount of posting and messaging. But in time we would all de-friend each other, a sour modern ritual to say that there was no point of seeing each otherâs prom photos if we would never see each other again in real life. A few days ago, I Googled your name on a whim. The obituary was third down the list. Â
We canât afford to be so extravagant with memories of the living, I know. But if past is all thatâs left of you, I want to echo you back to you, or back out to the proverbial big wild space of river valleys and remote, towering peaks that meant more to me because you were there.
The next day was June 30. I was seventeen. The group of us had de-installed the tarp the night before so we could fall asleep in the open air, cradled on three sides by narrow trees and thick foliage. In the dark, we had talked about the constellations, freaked out about rustlings in the bushes, laughed playing truth or dare.
When I awoke at 5 am the air was crisp, the stars bright across the sunless sky. We packed our sleeping bags into their containers, the tarp and its sticks into its long bag, our belongings on our backs, our extra gear into the big house. We bid the clearing goodbye and headed down the hill.
It was morning by the time we arrived at the bus. Someone had set out a cake and the group sang happy birthday. We loaded our bags into the lower compartment. You handed me a cardboard card that you had everyone sign (âCongrats on another rotation around the sun!â wrote the red-haired guide). And then, a cardboard crown. In sharpie marker, extravagant letters spelled âQueen of the Peakâ stuffed beneath the outline of a mountain ridge.
I had been happy before and I have been happy since, but in the archives of my mind no other moment stands out such as this one does as an emblem of pure, unselfconscious, unequivocal joy. So happy was I, indeed, that when you wrote âsee ya again someday,â in earnest I believed that I would.
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