Los Angeles

Night.

Even night

The glow and haze descend upon my house.

The city lights

Shadow the men in cardboard sleeping bags

The women in tents

And I sit on my porch and long for home

As the sky burns

And the sun is mocked and the moon forgotten

Stars--

To guide me home

Are missing in the smog.

The ghetto bird calls.

And the engines roar and the dogs bark.

And I look into the starless sky and see no familiar sight

No truth to be found in this city.

Only the lights.

Lights.

Lights.

The Sounds of the Evening

In the waning days of summer, Anna sat on her deck listening to the sounds of the evening pierce the still-light air. There was not yet a hint of sunset, but in the atmosphere the night was clawing its way forward. A breeze from somewhere far off carried a cooler wind than the day could conjure. And in her peripheral things already seemed to be growing darker. 

At her feet the wooden planks of that old deck seemed damp and yet it had not rained in days. The air was so thick that it seemed to clamp all around her. Some days it was hard to even breathe. At night, when that grip should have loosened it seemed only to grow tighter. Her heart tried to jump out of her chest, her lungs gasped for breath, her throat clenched in desperation and anxiety. What, she sometimes wondered, could possibly survive in this air?

Most days she couldn't even face the sun. The heat was too much, the constant attention left her exposed, visible. The last thing she needed was for someone to notice her. And yet for the last few nights she came out on her deck and sat in a chair that had been ignored for years and allowed the sun to catch a short glimpse of her before it disappeared.

Things always disappeared.

Anna stared blankly at the pool; unattended and uncared for it had turned green and began to fester. Things grew inside of it, but it was a shell, nothing like what it once was, nothing lived there. Through the artificial pond that it had become in the intervening years she saw happy moments. Summers with Rachel--splashing, talking about boys, drinking lemonade, ignoring the reality of life beyond childhood and youth. Completely unprepared for the reality that yes, they will grow up and that sometimes that means growing apart. Remembering Rachel hurts, Anna cannot even completely recall why. It hurt more then; in the years since it has become a numbness. Anger replaced with acquiescence, replaced with…nothing.

Rachel wasn't the first case, but Anna hoped deeply it would never happen again. Now, as the sky faded into a hazy purple, she longed for that numbness.

The noise of the evening grew louder but more remote. The sun dipped toward the horizon, grew larger. Its light faded.

The evening was coming on now—the air thicker than before. The bugs began to bite around her ankles and her chest began to tighten and it was all too much. She slipped through the screen door and slid it shut. Quietly. Her mother would be in the living room now and if she knew Anna was stirring she'd make her talk about the things going on. About the things the sun had already seen. She had already been exposed. It was enough for one day. Too much.

Her mother called her from the living room.

Anna took in a deep breath and crossed the threshold between rooms and no one was there. But the voice—hadn't she heard? She shook her head. No, Anna told herself, no one else had been in this house all day. 

One day, she dreamed, there would never be another lonely house. Even when her mother was present it felt like she was alone. Not the daughter she wanted and never could be. Anna ran her fingers down a few strands of hair in front of her face. Working as hard as possible was simply not enough. She always worked so hard but perfection is a hard sister to emulate. 

It had been a unique summer. Not once since she was a child had this house felt so warm. Once it had been easy to just live exactly as her mother wished. It was rewarding to live up to those impossible standards for a brief moment. On top of the pyramid Anna saw her mother's face in the crowd and it wasn't her teammates lifting her up—it was that longing in the pit of her stomach being fulfilled lifting her weightlessly into the air. If only for a few brief seconds.

But trophies and ribbons don't win happiness, they do not measure love or pride. And when Anna broke her leg and the competitions ended the truth became clearer for Anna. The demands of competition became demands in the household. The quality bonding time was stifling. Friends on the squad were good for morale and trust. Friendship on its own was rebellion and betrayal. Good grades did nothing to console her mother; she was being irresponsible. She once had a purpose and a sense of drive; competition gave her meaning. What was she now?

When Anna went to college she met a boy named Brad. Brad and Anna dated briefly, and although he was always very friendly and respectable outwardly, Anna's mother disapproved. Anna was supposed to come home on weekends, but she would rather be with him. This meant that Anna was ignoring her mother.  "How can you be so selfish?" her mother asked without a hint of irony. Anna was appalled. It had not been the first time she was asked something like that.

"Do you ever stop to wonder how your actions effect others?" her mother asked when Anna explained she and her friend Rachel had planed to go to the beach for a week in high school. Anna's grandmother had to be taken to a doctor's visit that week. With no discussion or warning, it had been deemed Anna's responsibility. There was no argument, but Anna's mother stalked away in silence. Anna left the next day for what should have been a week of fun with a close friend feeling guilty.

Brad was supposed to visit over spring break but instead Anna got a call that his car broke down. The next day there were pictures of him drinking with his friends the night before. Brad stopped talking to Anna over that break and Anna was inconsolable. Brad had always treated her well, she thought. Why could this have happened? Why did the people who meant the most always disappear?

I didn't do enough, she told herself. It wasn't a healthy relationship, she rationalized, after all, my mother did say I was ignoring her.

She knew in her mind these things were not true, that she had done nothing wrong, but somehow the things closest to her always disappeared. Brad was not a real solution; he was a replacement, and so she clung to him desperately, though he never spared the effort to deserve it. She ignored any warnings from the people around her. Brad had dated a lot of girls. But he was different now. She could make him different. She had no one else, needed the way he made her feel or thought he made her feel. When she needed them most the friends she had played with in  that once-pool had disappeared. She couldn't even remember why. She almost wished she could stir up the energy to be angry. Apathy was more painful. She left Brad behind with Rachel in the past. A past that despite her best efforts clawed at her when the sounds of the evening whispered in her ears. 

Anna let go of her hair and let the house come back into focus. She peered over to the chair in which her mother sat so often. Whatever pride that she tried to seek so often was now a distant memory. Demands and reprimands were the new household vocabulary.

The silence in the house was overwhelming. Anything, she thought, would be better than this silence. The house was so empty. It had once been so full of life. When she was a girl she always had friends over. She always had her puppy to cheer her up in the dark nights when the thunderstorms rolled in or when the silence took over the house. But now, she only had herself and she didn't know whether or not she was strong enough to keep herself safe. She tried to be for so long. Told herself that she didn't need her mother's forced pride, her friends' temporary embraces, or any other phony show of support. In the end it had always just been Anna. On her own. Everything disappeared. She was an adult now and she had to face that truth.

But this summer was unique. She had laid on this couch and cried not out of loneliness but because for once she didn't have to try to fight to feel accepted. She fought to keep herself from getting hurt. Insisted she didn't deserve any kind of attention. That he was wasting his time on her. That he could disappear now and it would be better than to think that for once something would work out. 

Now she was alone in this silent house. The sun had gone away and the smothering air from outside had crept its way in. The noises of the evening were drawing in all around her. Anna collapsed onto the couch where she had once been held and tried not to think. Tried not to think about anything else disappearing. The house was so hot and everything was closing in. 

She had to get out. Had to leave. She ran out through the front door and tried to breathe. It was still warm from the sun and damp and thick. Like taking a breath under water. Trying to recover herself she looked into the sky, which they still shared. Sometimes at night she'd look into the sky and imagine him on one of the planes flying overhead. One day soon he would really be flying over her. But it was too far off. 

Fighting for breath, tears began to trickle down her face. She was tired of waiting, tired of having to pretend to be strong. She just wanted to rest. She fell from the weight of her own thoughts and buried her head into her arms. Her tears pooled around her face. Anna had heard so many promises and didn't want to wait to see if this one would be like all the others. She trusted him like she had never trusted anyone before. But the sounds of the evening whispered to Anna. 

She didn't know how long she cried. She didn't know what time it was when her mother came to the stairs from a late night at work and wrapped her arms around Anna without a word. She didn't know how to respond to this foreign act. But she accepted it and fell into her mother's arms. The weight slid down from her shoulders and poured out of her. She couldn't carry it all alone, and though her mother said nothing that embrace said everything. The air didn't seem so thick, the sounds of the evening were now farther off.

Anna would be safe. Some things didn't disappear. 

we'll say we're sorry for the things that we forgot we did

and inside it is an apology to self

for the masking of wounds

and

the terrifying realization that something is broken inside

that only what we're missing can fix

No Place Like

His breath danced in the air for a moment and then disappeared. It was close to midnight and there was no one to share the moment with. This far from the road, he could hear only the faint echo of cars. Past the trees, the headlights were but a hazy glow.

Mark sat on the cold bleachers and pulled the collar of his jacket tight around his neck. The air was cold, but had, until now, been still. The breeze picked up and carried another breath away into the silence of the night. Mark took his hand from his pocket and checked the time on his phone for the third time in five minutes.

He bent over and picked up an old, crumpled leaf that had settled in between his feet and looked at it through peered eyes in the darkness. With a sudden swell in his chest, Mark crushed the leaf in his fingers and stood up. It was a gesture of defiance, but with no one to witness it was an empty one. He smoothed his tie against his stomach absentmindedly and then stepped down the bleachers. 

His breath puffed around him like unspoken thoughts fading away. 

It had been more than a year since he was last home. He thought his friends would at least care enough to see him once before he left again. Hands in his pocket and with his back to the increasing wind, Mark walked across the empty park in silence. It had been almost a week and there had not been so much as a text. He had made a point to let everyone know he'd be in town. Called a few people the night before arriving, posted a Facebook status, everything a tech-savvy young person was supposed to do to have a social life these days. 

It was growing colder quickly. When he left New York it was with the promise of warmth. The city never did anything for him, even less after having lived there for a year. It was noisy, it was crowded, it was always busy, and it was always lonely. Coming home--leaving the skyline behind--lifted from Mark a great burden he never even realized he had accumulated. Life in the city was always cold. Coming back to this town, Mark was expecting--well, some feeling of completion he had never been able to find in the city. There was nothing special about this place, but it was reassuring to be coming back to something familiar.

"What are you up to while you're home this week?" his mother asked after the family came back from dinner for his older brother's birthday.  

"Who knows?" Mark responded with a smile. "There's a lot to catch up on. I heard Dave is going away to grad school in the fall. MD/PhD program. Tom's engaged to that girl he's been seeing forever."

"Sounds like there are some celebrations to be had."

"Well that's the plan at least." He reached into the fridge and took out a beer.  

"What happened to that girl? Jess, was it?"

"Can we not talk about that?" pleaded Mark, before taking a long sip.

"I was just curious what she's up to," responded his mother, feigning innocence and disinterest in that way mothers are inherently experts.

"She's in New York. I don't know. Probably drinking coffee and writing her next great artistic breakthrough." Mark loosened his tie. "I'm out with that one, I think."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Whatever. There's a billion people in the city. There's plenty of time," Mark went on, half to himself.

"You know you're 24 now, out of college for a year already. I'm just worried about you. We hardly hear from you throughout the year, and when we do it's not often about anyone else."

"I don't feel like talking about this," Mark interrupted too quickly to sound polite. "I don't want to talk about that stuff. I'm not in the city, I'm home now and that's what I'd like to concentrate on. Being home."

Home. He laughed as he peered through the fence of trees that separated the park from the road. The Christmas lights across the street blinked in a cheerful rhythm. 

"Yeah, by the baseball field. We can walk to the bar after. It'll be fun. I'll let Dave know. See you in ten."

That was more than an hour ago. No one ever showed up. He never even got an insincere apology text. It was not completely unexpected. The last time Mark spoke to either of his friends was well before he left for New York. Maybe he was deluded for trying to recapture something that had fallen apart a long time ago. No one ever tried to catch up or visit him in the city.

Was it this town? Did people come here and disappear? When Mark left, first for college, then for work, it may as well have never existed. No one else ever left. The place fed on dreams, on ambition.

Mark brushed past the trees and made his way down the street. His path was illuminated by the red and green light of the holiday season. Christmas had past, it was not yet the new year. Everything was ending but nothing was ready to start again. 

Mark was accustomed to having some kind of clean slate in the new year. In a new semester, things were fresh. But this year he only had a week and nothing new to look forward to. Nor, as it turned out, did he have anything old to fall back on. 

Mark left the city expecting to find solace in familiarity, but nothing here was familiar. In fact there was nothing left here at all for him. Everyone had found their way, and now Mark was alone--whether it was in the city or here.

He stopped by the bar he had planned to spend the evening catching up with Tom and Dave. He sat down, ordered a beer and watched the regulars come and go. He was not much of a conversationalist to begin with, and not in the mood to chat with a bartender or that OK-looking girl in the corner who he may have gone to high school with.

"Mark Wyatt!" The name resounded across the room and he looked up to see the familiar, if wider face of--what was his name? They went to school together their whole life. "How have you been?" the classmate sat down at the stool next to Mark and slung his arm around him. "Richie! Get my boy here another beer." Mark waved his hand dismissively. "What are you up to? What's it been, six years?"

"Something like that. I'm OK. Working in a publishing company up in New York. Home for the holidays, you know how it is. How've you been?" He let the sentence trail off. John? Justin? Ryan?

"Chillin', chillin'. I'm around here. Doin' this and that. I got a nice thing going up the road at the Shop Rite." Mark spent the next ten minutes pretending to listen to this old classmate. His eyes wandered the bar and at one point met with the OK-looking girl, who he was now convinced was the girl he had a crush on in high school. She gave him a knowing and sympathetic shrug before leaving. He watched her go, her name was Liz, he remembered, and he wondered if she even remembered him. But high school was a long, long time ago, and as this conversation with  John/Justin/Ryan, a man who was essentially a stranger, continued, he realized that there wasn't all that much worth remembering from those days.

At long last, J/J/R finished his tale and Mark quickly downed the last of his drink. "It was nice catching up, but I have to go." He exited the bar abruptly and retraced his steps down the Christmas-lit street. It was nearly two in the morning, and the New Year was steadily creeping closer. There was not much to celebrate--not from the past, certainly, and Mark spent the walk home admiring the silence. There was something to be said for being alone in silence. 

The cold air licked at his face and when Mark finally reached his door and entered, he breathed in the warm air greedily. But he was not even completely inside the house before he was hit several times in the face by a flurry of orange.  "Augh--what the f--" he looked down the hall to see his little brother standing there with a Nerf gun in hand and a smirk on his face. "Nice to see you, too. What are you doing awake?"

"Can't sleep, playing video games. Wanna play?"

Mark smiled and threw his coat on the closest chair. "You know what? I can't think of anything else I'd rather do."

In the Car

There was snow on the ground and it wasn't even November.

In the waning light of an autumn dusk that tinted the snow a pale violet, branches fell from trees to join the leaves they had discarded. And I--we--drove. 

The unseasonable cold had left me unprepared and the car was louder than usual as I tried to thaw out the frigid air. Our conversation was almost as chilly. "I can't believe this weather," you said. I nodded. I wanted to say something funny, but the more I wanted words to form the less they did. It was typical behavior for me. With you it didn't start out that way until we started talking more. "Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it. My dad flat out refused to drive me."

"Hey, I've got to be good for something, right?" you laughed at that; I was always good at making you laugh, do you remember? "Are you excited?"

"Terrified is more like it. It's a great opportunity but it's so far away, you know? I've never been away all that long." I stopped at a red light and looked over at you biting your lip to keep yourself from biting your fingernails. The dimming light of the sun reflected off of the snow on the side of the road in just a way to bring out those auburn highlights in your hair you had put in at the end of September. The airport was only twenty minutes away and I could see you watching the seconds tick away, counting. The conversation was for your own benefit, I was barely there.

I waved my hand across the emergency brake in an aborted attempt to place a hand on your shoulder and brought it back up to the steering wheel. It was too late now. "If you weren't terrified you'd be crazy."

"Helpful."

"Hey, I'm just being honest. Halfway across the country? It's a big commitment. I get stressed out planning a trip for a week." I got a raised eyebrow at this and smiled apologetically. The light turned green and we drove again. 

The familiar landscape passed us by, and even though you were the only one going away it felt like we were both descending deep into the unknown. The sun was almost down. "What if I forgot something?" you asked suddenly, looking at me frantically. 

"Do you think you forgot something?" I responded dismissively. There wasn't a reaction and when I looked over I couldn't even see your face you were so deeply entrenched in your purse. "Calm down, if it was important it would've been on a packing list. I saw that list, you are covered." A sigh and the purse went back on the floor. 

"I'm just anxious. It's so weird to just be leaving everything behind. I knew it'd be hard to say goodbye to my mom and dad but I mean you and I haven't even been friends that long."

"Gee, thanks."

"You know what I mean. I keep thinking about all the things that I got started over the last couple months and now I'm just up and leaving." I kept my head facing forward and my eyes on the road to hide the way my jaw clenched at the thought. If my insides were visible you would have seen my stomach doing somersaults. 

"When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, my dad just told me to pursue what made me happy, what I enjoyed. Granted, I still haven't figured out what that is, but it's worked out pretty well so far. If I hadn't we wouldn't be having this conversation. So I think things haven't gone so bad. This sounds like exactly what you've been talking about since I met you."

The highway opened up in front of us and we trudged forward into the deepening night, the path ahead of us illuminated only by the brake lights of other travelers.  I've always enjoyed driving at night. There's something about the solitude of a highway in the evening; a sense of communal pilgrimage with the other stray cars on the road. 

Tonight it felt like a procession. 

There was a long silence. I felt like maybe I tipped my hand. The next few minutes felt like forever. The only sounds were the car's engine and the random soft rock station that had been playing on the radio the whole time. It was a station neither of us liked, I'm not even sure what it was doing on in my car, but that night we never even noticed the music. We were in that car together but I could tell you were already on that plane and across the country. I wanted to pull you back and force you to be present, but I've always been bad at being selfish and I knew I had to let you go.

In front of the airport we unloaded your bags and you gave me a hug. You promised to call when you arrived and then I watched you enter through those sliding doors and exit my world.

I drove home that night from the airport and I listened to the music on the radio but never heard a word. I was trying to remember the last thing we said to each other before we parted, but couldn't remember. 

You did call me that night when the plane landed. We talked a lot over the next few months, more than we ever had. About our hopes, our failures, our trials, our joys, and our defeats. And those conversations were like the ones before that autumn ride to the airport and before the October snow; effortless and honest. 

In the end, though, you were happy. The phone calls dissipated. I still think about how different things would be had I met you earlier, or if I had just been a little more selfish. But maybe you'd be less happy, and that thought is even worse than the image of that sliding door closing behind you. Maybe nothing would have been different. 

Maybe everything would be. 

Waiting Rooms

I've spent a lot of my life in waiting rooms.

Waiting rooms are afforded the same design aesthetic of college residences, for what I imagine are the same general reason: to inspire no particular emotional reaction in any way. A waiting room won't keep you calm, it just won't make you upset.

I have become a frequenter of waiting rooms. A regular at the white washed walls of emotional absence. I've come to recognize some of the regulars; not specific people, but archetypes. I've noticed my own place in the pantheon.  There's the friendly middle-aged man who knows all of the receptionists and hands out bad jokes about his middle-aged wife and twenty-something children. "She put me in here, didn't she?" one man laughed, his mirth interrupted by a cigarette-smoke fueled cough. He fishes in his pockets for his wallet and pulls out a ten for the copay, unfolds it on the reception desk and sinks his hands back into his pockets in a ritual as practiced as tying his shoes. Not that this man ties his shoes anymore, he's moved onto the single motion loafers in an early bid for the retirement lifestyle, even though he's still twenty more years of laboring away for his last kid's college education. He turns around and returns to his seat, grabbing a magazine that looks as old as his youngest daughter. He buries his face into the magazine as he sits one seat past the comfort zone between myself and anyone else. 

There's the elderly woman who shuffles along in her slippers and looks like she should be using a walker but is too stubborn to admit it. Her snow-white hair has streaks of gray that seem to, remarkably, represent a sign of youth. She, too, knows the receptionists and chats with them. Too old now for the banter, she goes through the motions of the sign-in process with mechanized efficiency, but all the while still as polite and warm as your grandmother. She walks to a seat near the middle aged man, and all the while I want to sit up and take her by the hand to make sure she doesn't fall, but I'm too busy trying not to be noticed. The middle aged man politely strikes up conversation, his bald head iridescent in the fluorescent light. They chat about their now-adult children.

Then there's the ten year old girl who is even more out of place in this room than I am, but she is trailed by her mother, younger than the middle aged man, colder than the old woman, but on her way to being as versed in the art of waiting room expediency.  The daughter is bitter she has to come here, taken away from the much more productive act of watching the Disney Channel show reruns of the same five shows all afternoon. The mother whispers just loud enough for everyone else in the waiting room to know that she spoke, but just below the ability for any meaning to be taken from this noise. She walks to the reception desk with a hurried dispassion, pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder where it had begun to slip from bending over to speak with her daughter. Her hair is taught in a ponytail, but fraying at the front and a few stray single strands bounce before her forehead. She is as brutally efficient as the old woman, but in a hurry. No doubt she just came from work to pick her daughter up from school to get her into the office on time. "Traffic was unbelievable," she says, and the receptionist smiles and pretends to take in this woman's complaints. The mother has no qualms with burdening others with her first world woes of minor inconvenience, and as she scribbles the copay into her checkbook, her whole body seems tense enough to snap like a rubber band stretched too far when a child tried to shoot it across the room.

A waiting room has no life of its own and inspires no emotion, but it takes on the attributes of those within. Maybe the receptionists can tell, with their too-polite-to-ignore-your-complaints continence  acting as a counterbalance to the strange, hollow, mechanized ritual and stilted conversation brought on by waiting room regulars.

Because the middle-aged man, despite the fulfilled life of family and career, is still sick and needs to wait for a doctor. The old woman knows that she has spent more time in a waiting room than she has seen her grandchildren in the last two months. The mother fears that her daughter is going to be the twenty-something sitting awkwardly aloof and out of place, staring at a phone that doesn't actually have anything on the screen, trying to pretend that he does not exist.  When my name is called to sign in and present all of my information I do it with a fumbled practice that is purposefully ignorant. Because admitting that I am as practiced at this as the middle-aged man is a disheartening realization. To think that I was once the ten year old child who just wanted to watch TV is heart-breaking. And then there's the old woman who is the only one that truly belongs in this waiting room, and it  fills me with a sweeping joy for her that maybe, just maybe, she was never any of us.

Random Memory: West Virginia, Project Appalachia, March 2011

Wednesday I was sick. Violently ill. I left the work sight after lunch following some awful stomach pains and, yes, I'll admit it, vomiting. I spent an hour in the car trying to recuperate, thinking that I'd be OK if I could just lie down. It wasn't the case and Fr. Carl and Katie drove me back to the church we were staying in.

I had some lovely conversations with Katie that day through the bathroom door as I was too sick to stay in bed and had to get up every time my stomach needed to rebel. Eventually, I was able to settle down and fall asleep. I tossed and turned for a while as my stomach did summersaults. I've never had that kind of stomach bug before. I've had lots of stomach problems but never such a crippling 24-hour virus. I still don't know what caused it--I was the only one who got sick.

The next day, Thursday, was our field trip day. I was worried that I was going to have to miss this. But I woke up early that morning 2-3 AM, I guess, feeling a world better. It was wonderful. I wasn't tired anymore, after having slept the day away, but I stayed in bed. There were three other guys in the room (this was the first year there were enough men to get our own room!) and I didn't want to disturb them. 

I woke up the next morning, and got dressed.

"How are you feeling?" from just about everyone. Fine, fine, totally better.

We hiked New River Gorge that day. A couple miles. Beautiful scenery. A couple times we stopped at lookouts and looked down at New River and the cliffs from high above on the mountain. There was one particular clearing that was breathtaking that only myself, Rick and Katie were able to find. I noticed it through some spare trees and wandered over. The three of us were in the back, so they wandered over when I did. Trying to capture such an expanse in words is a futile effort. Capturing it in a photo was a poor enough substitute. I stood on the edge of a mountain and looked at the River below and for that moment, I was overcome with calm.

 After spending some time taking in the primal beauty of a land untouched by the horrors of modern life (which was hard to believe, considering how close we were to such squalor and poverty) we caught up with the rest of the group, who were settling down for lunch.

I don't know that it really was, but as far as I was concerned, this was the top of the mountain. The breeze on top of a mountain is like the breath of God Himself. A calming serenity comes with that wind. But strangely in this natural splendor, there was a cutout on the rockface, and through this narrow passage was a ladder descending downward into some kind of gorge below. When we arrived, three people had already made their way down. 

Rick had no hesitation in going for it. I am somewhat scared of heights and ladders, so I had made the decision not to go. "Come on, man, when will you get the chance to do this again?" Rick asked. I shrugged and laughed. It looked scary. 

As Rick readied himself to go down he turned to me and said, "You should do it. Sick one day and climbing mountains the next." Again, I simply laughed it off.

Rick went down and Katie followed, bolstered by Rick's fearlesness. She later admitted that she was initially scared, but couldn't let Rick show her up. The rest of the group that had already been there awhile had not gone down and had no plans to.

As I watched both Rick and Katie go down the ladder, what Rick said ate away at me. "Sick one day, and climbing mountains the next." That was a  damn good story. I remember my inner debate being longer, but it could not have been more than a few seconds because the two were still on the ladder. I hollered down that I was on my way and descended to join them.

The climb was longer than it appeared. The ladder was only the first stop. There was a short rocky slant that led to a thin, metal bridge, connected to another, even steeper ladder. I felt my way through that slant,  grabbing the rope that lined the rock wall with all the strength I could muster. I somehow managed to keep my legs from trembling,  perhaps by sending that nervous energy into my grip and through the rope. I came to the end of the bridge, which was only a few feet and turned precariously. All in all this whole process took seconds, and when I set my foot onto that second ladder's first rung it was still trembling. As I took another step the fear disappeared in a single instant, as if it never existed.

I descended the ladder and reached the bottom victorious. Rick and I exchanged high fives. 

Suddenly, everyone that had stayed up was coming down the ladder. We gave each new adventurer cheers and support as they screamed down about how scared they were. We were a team, suddenly, a community. That ladder brought to our week-long family a uniting force of support and camaraderie. It was a surreal moment that seemed to come from nowhere, like many things about this last trip to West Virginia. But it fit so perfectly. It made sense and brought us together. We all overcame something there in that strange, carved out descent. We explored this new area for a time, and then went back up and there I unwrapped my sandwich and breathed in the fresh air. Just yesterday I had been too sick to get out of bed. Today, I was eating lunch on top of a mountain.