When my parents each died, and they were not kind people, my husband knew just what to do. He understood. He took my hand , each time, and we went up the mountain.
When we had a child, grown, and in such distress, and tried so hard but knew not what else to do, we put each other's hands together, and went up the mountain.
We had a dear one in federal prison, and visited each week, during the pandemic, and I composed weekly letters complete with photographs so they would keep in touch with their former life, and when it became hard, we will take each other's hands, and go up the mountain.
Heading over across the street to an age old mountain range, and striding up the steep trails, pushing your legs as hard as you can as fast as you can, just pushing to go as far as you can, it does something. It's something powerful that moves and awakens and stands up inside of you.
And now, with life calm. With unkind ones dead. And all others stable and happy, there is a young dog, large, and what he often needs, more than not, is to go up the mountain.
As far as I can manage. In the glistening dew of early morning. In the midst of mid August evenings.
Where small chipmunks and minute Pine Siskins silently move through the forest, beneath the pup's notice.
Where occasionally, a bear rumbles over past a ravine, or a deer is surprised by us.
So always, there is loud talking on my part. And some hooting and hollering. Possibly some strange line in a song that I sing brashly, loud, as I wander along, watching the late summer blossoming in the Fern blanketed forest.
Watching all of the trees listen , as if heads cocked, to the approaching fall, and then one more winter.
This land we walk upon is so aged. Made up of things inconceivable to us, from so long ago.
And so are we. Made up of those self same things.
When my time is done, truly, I do not want to be locked in a box, all of my cells and hairs separated for so many years from the soil.
Still, the most divine process happens no matter what we do.
I want to fall apart, as these old tree stumps in the forest do.
I want to become fertilizer, as all the leaves now on the trees soon will be, come the cold days of fall, and the freezing wintry winds of winter.
I want to compost. I want to become part of earth and mosses and plants that small animals eat.
I want to become dust, so that when some wind blows, years from now, some small inestimable part of me will go floating up into the air, caught up in airstream, sweeping by some remarkable bird of prey.
Maybe taken a hold by a Northeaster, pulled up until maybe some huge storm formation sweeps me far up into space.
To join all else that is aged and timeless and contributes some small part to the formation of the birth of some enormous star.
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