Mile 5

I began these missives alluding to a company, a journey, a destination. I return to my allusion reminded of younger travels, more physical than allegorical.

Several spring to mind, mountains, pastures, streams, shores, some successful, some nearly disastrous. Assets and liabilities, each revealing inner details formerly unknown, credits and debits on a balance sheet of experience to draw against as equity of a life.

The first is a ten-mile trek with three days of food and equipment strapped across our shoulders. A company of twenty, we set out from familiar territory. Asphalt, concrete and stucco are softened by the green, suburban view to which we've grown accustomed, schools, churches, neighborhoods interspersed with the semi-wild outskirts of development.

We are young so most start quickly, their exuberance outpacing their stamina. My feet are last upon the path. An elected leader, I ensure the youngest and least experienced are ready for the road ahead. I find myself encouraging stragglers early on only to trail them before the first mile is behind us when a piece of my equipment comes unraveled.

By the second mile, the company is strung out before me. All eyes remain forward with little interest in what, or who, lay behind. Past the highway, trees conceal our ragged line as orchards of houses are replaced by the maintained wilderness of windbreaks, lakes and pavilions that transitions into the pasture, pines and palmettos lining the dirt track near mile three.

By mile four, I achieve the middle of the pack, closing the distance with dogged determination. Cliques of preference have been replaced by groupings dictated by pace. Straps rhythmically rub out any remaining banter as the weight of our journey settles upon our aching shoulders. Breaks become too frequent, too extended. Our timetable begins to tatter with our goal nowhere in sight.

With more miles before than behind, exhaustion drains encouragement into mere example. As I shoulder my pack after too short a rest, an old formula surfaces, pick a point near the horizon, perhaps a mile away, rest a moment beside it, then scan for another.

At each respite stiffness seeps from the ground like clinging Lilliputian vines that fatten the longer I tarry. Ignoring the protests, mental, physical and from others only arriving, I rise, my vision constricting to a pinpoint surrounding each interim destination. The road tunnels to a distant curve, a palmetto brake, a sapling that grows into a tree as I attempt to close on an ever-distant horizon. Fatigue fades to numbness as ten thousand steps narrow to a seesaw rhythm of one followed by another.

By the end, half our number succumb to the temptation of the tailgates trolling our line with water and the equipment our adult leaders can't survive a weekend without. I am not among them.

At the edge of a stand of pines, a shallow stream, no more than a rivulet, marks the boundary of our destination. A dozen paces on, I drop my burden to claim the first unmarked and unadorned campsite chosen from the random wilderness, then return to the water to cool my burning feet and greet the others as they stumble past.

Five years later at dusk in the mountains, I would scout ahead to report the distance left uncovered, then light a hot meal to greet the five behind me. Fifteen, and I would linger to ensure each of the ten who set out made the miles over cobblestones strewn with driftlog timber, extending a silent hand across each obstacle to those trailing while others raced ahead.

But that first day all I had to offer was my back, soldiering on so others could see what was possible. We were children then, incapable of masquerading as adults as we sometimes do today. I wasn't the strongest or the fittest, even the oldest or the most experienced. I was just the one who endured.

Some days on this journey I carry her pack as well as my own. That day taught me there are times when I must ignore the ache, the fatigue, the silence, the miles left untrodden, shoulder my burdens and move on.

Mile 5, and we lever each other from the ground, tottering entwined in a 2 a.m. embrace like derelicts down the Bowery, not looking back to see who still follows.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III