lineage

when my friend bound e-mailed me recently, uncertain about whether she could complete the trail, i suddenly recalled a passage inspired in me by way of adverse conditions, which i relayed to her:



the thru-hiker is a master of adaptation, fierce as campfire embers,
malleable as earth in a stream, cold but emotional, so vulnerable,
impervious to the elements...they breath air, allowing sunshine to
reveal, darkness to obscure...they are ghosts, wraiths, and living, breathing beings....

they are so difficult to provoke, to anger, yet in battle they are formidable, terrifying, they exhibit olympian strength...i cannot tell you how gentle they are...they are first among friends to animals and innocents...they are indescribably peaceful...possessing an unnerving calm that fails to shudder during cold, strives toward pose during inhuman heat...

they are biology's exhibition of spirituality, they convert oxygen into carbon, sugar into energy...in moments of emotion they cry without embarrassment, when they are happy they are absolutely hysterical, inconsolable, a product of wilderness, indistinguishable from the world around them - the earth, the trees...

they are figures recorded far more permanently than any footnote, any textbook, they leave an entire anthology in the branches they bend, the rivers they lessen, the depressions of their footsteps, even rock yields to them, yet they accept the system that covers their passing as they embrace their place in this world, a single thread...a shadow could create more impact than they...they are infallibly human, but they are sad at times, they long impossibly to become the be the entire scene of the sun setting behind the ridgeline, to merge with this wonder...

they are stewards, rangers, sentinels...they assert themselves even in their absence, in the tread of everyone in their footsteps, in those of who they follow as well, the proudest lineage, a race without nationality, standing taller than the himalayas, causing light to illuminate the morning, and casting shadows at night, way over the ridges and valleys, after the last ember is gone out, the last mile is walked, the smoke permeates the shelters, the new generation sleeps, absolutely in awe, in dream...