The Hiking Trail

The first thing I remember about the hiking path is a caterpillar. I was six, and till then, caterpillars were hungry blobs in picture books. The translucent emerald worm inched across a branch at my eye level. 

“It’s like a gummy worm!” I said with bug-wide eyes.

“Why don’t you eat it?” My dad suggested.

I giggled, “No, that’s silly!”

“Come on, I bet it tastes like candy!”

I clutched at my dress, still giggling but growing more uncertain. “No, it doesn’t.”

My mom handed me a leaf. “Maybe it’s hungry,” she said.

I put the leaf in front of the caterpillar because, from my experience, caterpillars were indeed hungry. Instead of eating a hole through, as expected, the tiny alien creature climbed on. Holding my breath, I cradled the leaf and its precious rider in my hands.

My mom walked ahead, then turned back to where my dad and I stared transfixed at the bumbling bug.

“Come on,” she said, and we obeyed.

Our hike slowed, for the caterpillar captured all my attention, leaving none for the roots and rocks at my feet. My dad hovered behind me, gently guiding me through the meager obstacles. Eventually, the caterpillar left the leaf, and its multitude of legs tickled my skin. 

“His name is Binky!” I decided.

When it was time to turn around, my parents made me leave Binky behind. “This is where he lives,” they told me, “You don’t want to take him away from his home.”

I cried and cried the whole way back, for I had held a treasure, a living jewel, and I loved him. My lament echoed through the trees. “Binkaaayyyy! Binkaaaaaaaayyyyy!”

The trailhead of the hiking path emerged from a fragrant forest of pine and cottonwood. Roots pushed through the uneven surface, alternately helping and hindering my childhood footwork. I’d hop from root to root and see how far I could go without touching dirt. We walked that hiking trail countless times, but each hike was unique. Sometimes, we passed meadows or rocky crags. We crossed streams and ate lunches next to lakes, but never the same ones twice. We’d emerge unexpectedly onto vistas overlooking a hillside and sit to contemplate and shout at the echoing mimics across the valley. We’d sing hiking songs to occupy my active mind and dutifully take down and pass around every single one of the ninety-nine bottles of root beer on the wall. 

The hiking path revealed so many extraordinary discoveries. Peeling back the bark of dead trees, I found intricate wooden reliefs carved by worms, who preferred to hide rather than flaunt their profound artistry. My parents taught me that secret stars nestled in the knobs of the finger-thin sticks scattered on the ground. I cracked the sticks open like party poppers and coated the forest floor with stardust. I noticed the tiny invisible worlds in the veins of the leaves and the furrows of the dirt, where tiny people went about their tiny lives. 

Sometimes, we walked only as long as it took to find a pleasant place to eat lunch. Other times, we trekked hours and hours from dawn to dusk until I thought my ankles would snap. Yet, whenever we decided to turn around, we reached the car in half an hour.

My parents’ friends sometimes hiked the trail by our sides. One, named Curtis, taught me a rude gesture, and my mom laughed. “You can make that gesture, but only at Curtis,” she said.

“There’s a trail with three identical lakes at the top of a waterfall,” Curtis told me. “I also went on a trail once dotted in red glass. They say it’s the tears of the people who used to live there.”

“Why don’t we go on those trails?” I asked my parents.

They shrugged, and my dad said, “Been there, done that.”

“We’ll take you there,” my mom promised.

They took me to lots of trails. I saw baby salamanders with pink frills and white skin. I swam in the streams of fairy villages. I learned that every trail was special.

“People make trails to places worth going,” Curtis explained.

Only as I got older did our hiking trail puzzle me. Other trails had fixed mileage and expected landmarks, but ours lacked these traits.

“Where does the path go?” I asked one day as we wandered its aimless route.

My parents both laughed. My mom answered, “Why? Are you trying to get somewhere?”

“What’s the point if there’s no end?” I asked.

Again, my parents laughed. “Why would you want it to end?” My father asked.

“But how do we know when to turn around?”

“When we don’t feel like hiking anymore.” My mother responded.

Despite the lure of promised sights, my parents always preferred our hiking trail. If not for my wanderlust, they’d never cease walking its endless length. They were always glad to accommodate my requests for other trails, except for a few they avoided.

“Why can’t we go see the mountain goats in the fog?” I whined.

“The path is too difficult,” my mom explained, “It’s not fun.”

I became a teen, and I tired of the hiking trail of my childhood. Paths of endless possibility filled the world. Ours could no longer satisfy, for though it always differed, it was also always the same– the same pine scent, the same clear water, the same ever-green coating the hillsides.

“Lets go hiking!” my dad said one day.

“Do I have to hike with you?” I asked.

My parents looked at each other, and my mom admitted, “No.”

“You go on, then.”

While my parents continued their silly hike to nowhere, I sought a worthy destination. I wanted to go places! I couldn’t waste my time on a trail that led to nothing. I searched instead for trails worth treading. I found renowned hikes that boasted the widest waterfall, the highest mountain, and treacherous climbs that few mastered. Too difficult for my parents, maybe, but not for me. I’d collect trails like trophies on a shelf. Confident that I could master the world’s wonders with the strength of my will, I set off on my solo journey.

I walked across great arches of land that reached like ribs across a pottery landscape. I found impressive trees, canyons, and rivers and traversed the widest, the deepest, the tallest, the longest, and the steepest of every natural feature. My fortitude served me well, for instead of tranquility, these new roads offered only obstacles. I scraped my knees and palms on cheese grater rocks and sprained my ankles on river beds with slippery fish skin. I stumbled and fell in every color of dirt, but each trial I overcame boosted my pride. I grew stronger and smarter, honed to perfection by merciless paths that grew more treacherous every day. If it were easy, I told myself, everyone would travel these roads. If I could only endure, it would be worth the journey for the glorious ends they promised! I saw treasures and marvels, caves of gargantuan crystals, the bowels of mountains where the heat of dragons rose from the depths. I soldiered on. My trophy shelf grew. My muscles bulged and my wits sharpened until I became the quintessential mountaineer.

“You actually swam the lakes of goo?” my friends jealously exclaimed.

“And climbed the trees that reach the clouds!” I boasted.

Each trail I overcame granted me new bragging rights but wore my spirit. Despite my strength, every new challenge, forced me to confront my weakness. Like battling a hydra, each one I vanquished left only more daunting and difficult hikes in its wake. Eventually, I dreaded the imminence of each new battle, with fresh aches and harrowing heights. Hovering over pits of lava with only a rope between you and certain death is a tolerable danger in small doses, but the Crawl of Hellish Infinity hiking trail, a path that claims dozens of hikers each year, requires a master of fear above and beyond the call of passion. I faced many such hikes–my mortal foes. Still, I forced myself forward. When I grew frightened and trembled, I reminded myself that I couldn’t turn around before I reached the end without admitting defeat. So, I endured my joyless trek toward lofty goals. I ran myself ragged, plodded, and crawled until I returned home each day exhausted and empty.

“How was your hike?” my mom would ask.

I’d only groan.

“Come with us tomorrow,” my dad would say, “Just this once. It’s fun!”

I’d shake my head, “I can’t. I need to reach the end.”

Only a few years passed before my collection of trails was the envy of all I knew. A lifetime of trial lay behind me, and no joy before me. I stood at the trailhead of my latest nemesis, the Trail of a Thousand Spikes, and could not push one foot in front of the other. What’s one more hike? I asked myself. Am I so weak and afraid I can’t brave a thousand spikes? Apparently so, for all my muscles and all my tears would not cause either foot to step on that path.

I’d gone as far as I could go, I realized. This was the end. The finality terrified me, an abyss of conclusion threatening to consume and stagnate. How could that be it? Did I somehow miss the part where these paths were worth treading? When did hiking become such a nightmare? There was still so much out there. How could I have reached the end already?

I don’t know how long I stood, unable to move forward, too ashamed to turn back. My mother and father found me and took me home. 

Gently, they reminded me of another hiking path, one without an end.

In the days that followed, I found myself floating like a ghost down our hiking path, head hung, deaf and blind and numb. My parents talked. They pointed at the trees, at the streams, the mushrooms growing on dead logs. I observed but did not see. Normal trees. Normal streams. Normal mushrooms. I’d seen the best the world had to offer. What was the point?

At night, I lay awake as my mind carved its way along rote, painful paths. My heart raced too fast for sleep to catch up. 

Then, one night, I took a deep breath and climbed out of bed. I put on my hiking shoes and drove to the trailhead in the starlight.

I walked.

And walked.

What did I hope to find? This path defied prediction. It went on and on without purpose, endless, unremarkable, and easy. So easy. How lucky my younger self had been to tread a trail so effortlessly. How little I’d known of the depth and torture of the world’s tribulations. 

I walked till morning and then kept walking.

A secret in the woods nagged me, something I’d once known and now forgot. Gradually, as I searched for the source of my frustration, my blindness and deafness lifted. I missed the smell of pine and the sound of water babbling over brooks. I relished the lack of pain or strain in my gait. I hadn’t enjoyed a hike this much in years.

Then, a branch came upon my path. I reached to brush it aside when my breath caught. A brilliant translucent green caterpillar walked across my sight.

The wind blew. I took a deep breath, and my eyes filled with tears. I blinked and looked up at the ancient majestic pines. I placed a palm on the bark of a tree and remembered the worm’s hidden reliefs, the constellations of invisible stars—all the tiny miracles of this normal forest.

I coaxed the caterpillar to my finger, then slowly knelt and cried.

I hiked the trail of my childhood for all the years after. My parents, weathered by time, joined me for as long as they could. I found my true love on the endless path. Children came, eager adventurers born into a world of endless possibilities. We carried them upon our shoulders.

Now, in the twilight of my days, I still return to the endless trail. My steps are slow, my breaths labored, but I press on, for life hardened me for these moments. My grandchildren skip ahead in gleeful abandon. They ask me where the path leads, their eyes alight with curiosity.

I whisper, "Nowhere."

“But where are we going?” they insist.

I know my wisdom falls on ears as deaf as mine had been at their age, but I try anyway and say with a smile. “You don’t have to go somewhere. It’s enough to be where you are.”