It was early Saturday morning, and Cree stayed in bed an extra hour. He didn’t want to stop feeling her warmth at his side. Then he was in the kitchen, brewing coffee. He knew she would be happy to wake up to the smell. That it was her favorite way to start the day. With the coffee brewing, he grabbed their school backpacks from the closet, pulled some bags of potato chips out of the cupboard and started putting together their ham sandwiches.
By the time she joined him, it was nearly noon. She smiled and thanked Cree for the coffee, and he told her that everything was ready. He glanced at the clock as he waited for her to wake up and eat her bagel but said nothing. Then they were off. They put on their thin hoodies, worn leather boots, and loose denim jeans, slung their satchels over their shoulders and set out to begin a familiar adventure up the trail only they knew.
…
Cree didn’t know, when he set out what he planned to accomplish by going up the mountain that morning. For a long time after she left him, he had thought the burden of that climb would be too heavy to ever attempt again. But there he was, wearing his boots, hoodie and jeans. His school bag, the only thing he owned resembling a backpack, was strung across his shoulder, only along for the ride to carry a ham sandwich, some potato chips and a water bottle – the one with the broken latch that she had won from a school raffle. He told himself it was just a hike. He would be fine. He loved this trail they had walked so often. It would be stupid not to use it just because Sarah was gone. Enough time had passed.
The path up the mountain was thin, only wide enough for two people if they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. It was one of those paths that was clearly begun out of some necessity and formed slowly through repeated use. Cree had found this trail by chance two years ago, when they had first moved to this small college town in Northern Idaho. He had convinced her hiking in the mountains would give her some great opportunities to take pictures. That was usually the only way to get her to go anywhere, but once they’d found the trail, seemingly abandoned, it had become their secret retreat.
The packed, smooth dirt at the center of the trail hinted that it had once been well-traveled, maybe by some hunters who had wandered the mountain long ago, but the roots and undergrowth that had begun to bite at its edges revealed the path had been forgotten over the years. Bit by bit, the forest was healing the wounds that selfish boots had inflicted. They – no, just he, now, Cree thought – would probably be the last to travel this way.
…
The sun had just barely begun to reach its tendril fingers over the peaks of the mountains and stretch them across the forest that covered its side. The chill morning wind, the only sign the season was beginning to change, swept down from the peak, high above.
Without the sound of his voice and hers filling the air, Cree could hear the trees whisper to each other in hushed tones as the breeze rustled through them. He stepped lightly, so as not to disturb their conversation, and strained his ears. He imagined that, if he listened close enough, he would be able to understand the thoughts of the forest. Maybe it would help him understand Sarah’s thoughts, understand why she had left.
It was Cree’s first time walking through that forest at daybreak. Since Sarah usually slept until midday — the price of constant late-night scrolling through dozens of photography pages on Instagram — they had always made the climb in the afternoon. Cree had always wished they could go earlier, and he was taken aback by how different the surrounding forest looked and felt when it was bathed in soft morning light instead of the blazing afternoon sun.
The trees were pierced in all directions by spears of light that shone through the branches and pine-needles. They set the dew clinging to every bush and log alight, and each drop sparkled like a lonely star. The light from those lonely stars, in turn, reflected off the mist that hovered over the forest floor, making it shimmer with an almost ethereal light. Birds sang alongside the sighs of the trees, and everything was profoundly still.
The thick smell of dew, sap and pine-needles — of nature, undisturbed and not quite awake — hung lightly in the air. Its scent drifted past Cree’s nose on the clear drafts of the mountain breeze. He took a deep breath and wondered if the morning could really change so much about a place, or he just hadn’t been paying attention. As he walked along the twisting, ever inclining path, Cree thought Sarah would have been furious if she knew what she had been missing.
He had always wanted to simply enjoy the sights and sounds of nature, like he did now, but she was constantly stopping, pulling up the camera hanging at her neck to take pictures of the various flowers that lined the trail, the piles of pinecones scattered through the underbrush, the squirrels scampering up the tree trunks. Cree had always just shook his head with a playful grin as he watched her, waiting for her to join him again.
As he walked, Cree tried to keep focusing on the beauty around him. But he had to force himself not to stop for too long at that gnarled tree trunk with the crack in its side where they always stopped to rest. Not to stare too long at those large, embracing rocks just off the trail that leaned together like two lonely lovers. He had to resist the urge to climb them.
They had often chased each other up those rocks. Sarah would say that she’ll definitely beat him this time, and Cree would flash his devious grin, saying she could certainly try. He could have sworn that the echo of laughter followed him on his way past. The laughter of two young idiots, who believed their first relationship would be their last, who didn’t know how to read the signs that it was time to stop. Or maybe it was just Cree that didn’t know. He supposed he had figured it out eventually.
He had to bite his lip and push back the memories. Had to lock them up again before his thoughts let the details, he wanted to forget come back to him. A weight pressed down on his chest, making his body feel like it was filled with sand. He shook his head and forced himself to think instead about the feeling of his feet pressing against the ground, one step at a time. On what kind of birds were filling the morning air with their music. On his new, quiet future. He pushed on, up and up the mountain, forcing his heavy legs to keep moving until he reached the goal.
…
By the time he reached the split in the trail, the mist and dew had dissipated, and the spears of sunlight had widened until they each combined into one bright force covering the entire wood. Cree’s hoodie was tied around his waist, and he panted for breath. His thighs and calves ached. It had been a long time since he had moved that much. For weeks, his only exercise had been moving from the bed to the kitchen, the desk, and then back to the bed. Working from home, and with no one to join him anymore on his hikes, he hadn’t had much reason to leave the apartment.
This fork in the trail was where they had always stopped. Sarah would sit on the left side of the flat rock that served as a sort of marker for the diverging trail, he on the right. They would eat their sandwiches and chips, and Cree would listen as she complained about her group mates in her photography class, nodding his agreement that they were all useless.
He would hand her his water bottle, and she would chastise him for using the same old one with the broken latch.
Someday, she would chide, he would drop it, and it would spill all over the ground.
Once they had finished their meal, and leaned against one another for a few minutes, they would head back down the mountain, shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, the fading sun striking their backs. They were happy. That’s what he told himself.
Cree let out a heavy sigh, took his solitary seat on the flat rock, and let his satchel fall from his shoulder. He reached into the bag and retrieved his water bottle and small lunch. Despite there being plenty of space on the rock, he sat on the rightmost edge, like he always had. They were happy. Cree tried to play those words in his head again and again. He hoped if he repeated them enough, something would change. But he knew nothing would. He was the only one there, on that rock.
But still, lost in his thoughts, Cree found himself reaching to his left to offer her some water and crack a joke. It was that small, innocent movement that brought the full weight of reality crashing down on him. His cheeks filled with fire, and he began shifting his weight to the middle of the rock but stopped halfway. His hand, which had been held out to offer the water, dropped to his side, and the water bottle slipped through limp fingers, falling to the dusty ground. The lid, with its broken latch, swung open. He stared as the water pooled at his feet as it began to form tiny rivers in the dirt. His other hand, which held the ham sandwich, had stopped halfway to his mouth.
His vision blurred, then it swam. They were happy. What a joke, he thought. Cree couldn’t keep pretending anymore. Couldn’t keep confining the details of his memories to the shadows. The parts of his precious memories that he had been so careful to keep caged at the back of his mind began to break their chains, one by one, until they spilled out like the water from the broken bottle.
He let himself remember the way his heart would swell and then shrink when she joined him in the kitchen as he prepared for their hike – smiling at him and thanking him for the coffee, but never looking as happy as he had hoped. The tug of annoyance he would feel when he noticed it was nearly noon, and the argument that almost started when he said, with a little too much force, that they would have to hurry if they didn’t want to walk back in the dark. He remembered the jealousy he felt at the attention she paid to her camera, unable to ignore that for all of her photos of the flowers and pinecones and squirrels, there was only one of the two of them.
When they stopped at the cracked stump for their break, Cree would have to bite back his suggestions that they might not need to stop if they went on more hikes together. When they raced up those embracing rocks, pride warred with guilt in his chest whenever he won, confusion pushing its way into his thoughts as he wondered why he felt the need to win such a small victory. Finally, they would make it to the fork, and the flat rock, and Cree would laugh at her jokes about her awful classmates, but he never thought they were all that funny.
She was always chiding him about that broken water bottle, but he was never willing to admit that he wasn’t ready to let go of the only gift she had ever given him. As the sunset lit their way down the mountain, Cree would tell himself that they were happy, but he could never help but notice the depth of the shadows surrounding their journey.
The tears Cree had been trying to hold back all morning joined his flood of memories as they spilled down his cheeks. They dripped into the puddle pooling around his boots, and rained down onto his now soggy sandwich, held limply in his lap. He tried to stop them, to lock his emotions back up, but his efforts went in vain.
Up on that mountain, at the place where one trail became two, Cree’s sobs drowned out the chirping of the birds and the rustle of the trees. Eventually, his tears stopped, but only when he was sure they could have filled the now empty water bottle. But the weight on his chest remained. It would for a long time yet.
He wiped his eyes on his shirt, mostly ruining it, and with a hand limp with regret, tossed the dissolved remains of his sandwich into the undergrowth. He had never made it to the chips. He looked around himself once more. At the towering pine-trees, the lush ferns and the flat rock. Then he stood with another, more defeated sigh, and slung his satchel back over his shoulder.
“I guess I just came to say goodbye,” he whispered to the trees.
They whispered back, and he imagined that, this time, he could understand the forest’s thoughts. Maybe they had helped him understand hers after all, by helping him understand his own. Maybe she had left because she was more ready to admit they weren’t happy than he was. Maybe that’s what she meant when she said she let me believe in it for as long as she could.
The cool mountain wind picked up again, and Cree began his journey back home. This time, on his way back down the mountain, Cree didn’t stop to look around. He kept his eyes firmly on the winding, worn, healing path. He knew if he looked at the places that held those memories again, the pain would come rushing back. He wasn’t ready for that yet. He had to keep looking forward. The sun was still high in the sky behind him, and no shadows stretched through the forest. Cree was alone, but all around him, the world was bright.
Story by Dylan Foster
Illustration by Emma Boobar