climbed a hill
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
The family took a trip out to a place in the sticks that had outdoor tennis courts, to let the boys (aged 4-13) run off some energy. Mari told me, "There's a river, so you can do some photography." Noted. When we got there, she handed me her father's phone and I set off.
I dutifully checked out the river and discovered that there was a small network of hiking trails beyond it. So I climbed a steep trail that led up the edge of a right-angle bend in the valley. It only took about half an hour, but the climb rate was something else. In fact, what had been billed as a "nordic hiking trail" (e.g. for use with ski poles) was in fact almost entirely a stair-climbing route.
As I ascended a long and particularly steep bit, I noticed that the dense tree cover was letting through a bit more light. It seemed that I was reaching the top. But then I heard an unmistakable sound: my son shrieking the name of one of his cousins. Emerging from the final climb, I found that I'd come to a small outlier that was separate from the rest of the valley rim. The trail split in two directions: one that doubled back down into the saddle point that separated the outlier from the main valley wall, and another that led to the edge of the high point I was standing on. I took that, and found a wooden shelter with a bench. Looking down, I could easily spot the tennis courts, where the kids seemed about two millimeters tall. My son's voice had carried that far?
Then I heard it again. No mistake.
So I bellowed, "Mari!" and waved. The phone I'd been given rang, and Mari asked, "Are you okay?" She'd heard me! We chatted a bit, and I climbed back down the hill.
But not before capturing a few snaps of the length of the valley as it wended back to the ocean. Here's where it took place. You can see the wooden shelter that was the top of my climb as a small brown dot at the end of a short trail down from the road that traipses across the very top of this image.