We met at the top of the trail. Paused together as if it was previously agreed upon. I was returning from the ridge of Murdock's bowl. She was rising out of Millcreek. "Which way did you come up?" She questioned.
"Red Pine, why?" I asked.
"I am looking for a better way down." She said.
She went on to explain that she had concerns about the condition of the trail. I agreed, it was going to tricky.
At the top of the mountain in the snow it is easier to read people. It's easy to hear because words are direct. They don't bounce off the noise and fake business of the city.
I looked at us as we talked. Each with a dog both wearing running shoes and shorts in the snow. Her shorts much shorter than mine. My shoes more worn. She was older, leaner, & fitter than me but the same kind of woman.
Both of us carried into the mountains a small slip of technology. Hers a GPS tracker, mine my camera. Its coldness pressed into my chest under my bra. Like kangarooing a baby with skin to skin contact, the heat coming off my body was the only thing that cleared the fog off the lens.
I have said before that hiking alone gives purpose to isolation. Being alone in the mountains is powerful. It turns weakness into a strength.
The isolation on the trail was glorious; occasionally cracked by the distant sound of fast dogs wearing cow bells on their collars and the frozen tracks of a wandering moose.
The bow hunters' high in the hills their presence felt but unseen. I wouldn't have distinguished that the weight of being watched came from the eyes of men if it was not for the brotherhood of trucks left like carcasses on the side of the road that I had passed on the drive in. I had no idea what time it was. I hadn't crossed anyone else for at least a mile. I wasn't sure about the condition of my right foot. The sharp pain growing crankier with each misstep. Turned one too many times in the narrow icy trail it was beginning to refuse to bare weight.
I hadn't eaten breakfast and had pulled an apple out of my bag when the woman and I met the for the first time.
I was glad to see her. She was glad to see me. And we were each happy to part ways again.
On the way down she passed me a mile or so down Red Pine. Her slow steady running feet out pacing my walking stride as I babied my right ankle. She stopped long enough to tell me a fact about the trails mileage and then she was gone.
I walked the river of mud and slush right down the middle the trail the rest of the way. It seemed the safest route. No longer worrying about making it home in time to change before racing off to the gym to see the PT coming in to see Beach. No longer grieving the death of my camera. Or questioning the chance that Beach's season might be over before it even starts.
I passed a young woman at the mouth of the trail. She was done-up like a winter clothing ad. Looking uncomfortable in the mud, but she was there with her dog. Blinking at me from beneath the mask of her fake eyelashes as I splashed by. She was blank her story unwritten. Her trail stretching out in front of her.
In the mountains age brings beauty, September brings snow.
