probably the last
for days my anxieties built,
I'm now 75 years of age, ¾ of a century,
will my body and spirit still enable me
to step 5 steep miles up the mountain?
then the same way back down?
"What specifically are you worried about?" my wife asks,
I don't know: I fear my body won't be able to pull it off,
my mind won't be able to hold my body to the task,
the way up challenges me,
so many feet to haul my body up,
countless rock steps lovingly chiseled out of the bedrock,
many wooden staircases, rocky dirt on each landing,
sometimes a cable to help keep me to the trail,
the air cool and dry enough
to help body and spirit endure the effort,
granddaughter there to help carry my things,
and to be there if needed,
and, after 4 hours of work, we're at the Lodge,
just below the summit of the fourth highest peak east of the Rockies,
Walisiyi to the Cherokee (home of the Great Frog),
Mt. LeConte for now, since American culture assumed a feeling of control
by naming mountains to honor those seemingly dominant at the time,
maybe 60 times in my life I have been able to hike up Walisiyi,
here the human footprint is large enough
for comfortable beds, meals, bathrooms,
and limited enough to allow the forest
to work its magic of tree, fern, moss, and flowering shrubs
who drape themselves over the great uplift of sedimentary stone:
Africa's plate collided with that of North America,
and uplifted the Smokies in a grand wrinkle
that holds heights that once were tens of thousands of feet higher,
there are countless stories in the geology, the flora, and the fauna here,
I have come up again, and again, to savor what of the telling
I can slow myself down enough to hear,
sunset is quietly breathtaking
as the Sun shows its orb just before dropping away,
we share bars of chocolate with others at Cliff Top
who sit to watch this scene,
so like what has been here for thousands of years,
yet is a new treasure each night,
I share Native American words of how to open self
to the West, and to the sunset, and to endings,
I then retreat away from the others,
and just cry, and cry, and cry again,
for the beauty here is too much,
and I feel this is my last time up here,
the price my body pays to get here is just too large,
I snap picture after picture to hold these moments as well as I can,
night falls, and sleep comes,
and in the night rains start,
sunrise is of grey and mist, and of nobody in our group,
the first light full of whipping wind and blustering clouds,
our trip down wet but not rain heavy,
the dry air of yesterday is gone,
the sweat just depleting my body without cooling it,
by the last mile and a half of the descent
my body and spirit are daunted
and I move slower and slower,
each step a victory over dissolution and falling,
I get to the end, and to the car,
"We did it!" I note to my wife,
whose body is at its edge, too,
too often in life, we don't notice a last,
particularly a person who was there and, now, just isn't,
I don't know for sure that this is my last trip
up and down the mountain,
I fear it is,
and I want to celebrate, and mourn, what has been,
and what cannot be any longer for me,
how wonderful that family and friends, and those I don't know,
can continue to savor what this mountain, Walisiyi,
offers in the fullness of its self.
by Henry H. Walker
June 19, '23
