The Trek

My feet ache. My brand new hiking boots I thought would be my savior has become my tormentor. I can feel blisters forming all over my feet. They have become blisters. I can imagine all of them congealing into two massive blisters, one on each foot; I am walking on blisters. I look up ahead of me for some sign of assurance. I see none, just the desolate rock stairs, stretching up ahead of me, a stony Jacob’s ladder. Someone coughs politely behind me, and only then do I realize that I have stopped. Wearily, I force my foot up the rocky ledges, one blister at a time. I imagine them eventually squishing beneath my weight, the pus… yeah, better not think of the pus.

I instinctively take a swig from my water bottle again. Sweat pours out of me faster than I can drink in. A thought appears, I’m going to die up here. I’m going to die in my dusty old clothes, and with my shiny new hiking boots on. I’m going to die of exhaustion and thirst even though my water bottle is still half full. The thought quickly passes as my bleak surroundings give way to lush ferns and trees. Trees? All the way up here? The trail, once devilishly filled with jagged sharp rocks is now carpeted with grounded moss and dirt. The slope smoothes out and people are chatting once again. Instantly my mood veers away from the dangerous precipice of despair, and as the birds and laughter lift my soul, I take a deep breath and look around.

I rub my calf, which had done me wrong. Near the start, it cramped up, and forced me to double up in pain, it felt like it wanted to just shrivel up and die, or perhaps that was just me. All my friends forsook me, was this how Jesus felt before he died?, I wondered. But no, unlike Peter and the rest, one stayed behind, told me to sit on the ground, and stretch my leg. Keep my toes up, he warns and a passing trekker agrees. I’m happy they both can make jokes while my foot is starting its own civil war. It seems to be winning too. But eventually it surrenders like General Lee at Appomattox. How do I even know this? I’m such a nerd! No wonder I’m single.

A laugh and a giggle snap me back to the present and I see my friends taking a break, some going off deep into the woods to relieve themselves (they must have drunk more than they sweat!) while others are cracking jokes and laughing. All look blissfully blister-free. My black mood returns, but fleetingly as my gaze falls on those majestic mountains in the back, half hazy with fog. Their sweeping slopes with evergreens artfully dressing the granite, capture my eyes, and I think immediately of all those grandeur Psalms. Did they too look upon nature spread out before them and marvel as I have, “My God, how great you are!”

Knowing the end was near, I forget quickly the arduous expedition up and even my blisters have quieted down. I feel a spring in my step as I lithely climb up the new stairs. I’m an explorer, heading across the west, with nothing but a backpack and 100 of my closest friends. Soon, I’m a rock climber, jumping gleefully from one nail-pierced board to the next, while only briefly grabbing the guidewire. And finally, I’m a photographer, my eyes are the lens, as I take in the grandeur of being on the top of the world, ok Half-Dome, as the mountains fall away from my sight, the sun in its zenith, and I’m caught up in God’s majesty again, alone, yet among friends, tired yet refreshed.

That is until someone asks, “Shall we go back?”