While the Others Climb Ben Lomond

I'm always the slowest as we walk, always at the back of the line. I dimly remember not being last--I remember being strong and quick as a child, running for the joy of it. But adulthood, motherhood, grandmotherhood, the passing of time, and I am slow and soft. At home I ride my Bike O' Death and swim in the BYU pool, strenuous efforts to delay further dissolution--but it's a holding pattern now, and the long slow decay.

Today I sit on a tussock of grass and moss at the edge of the lake, listening to birdsong, the sigh of wind in the trees, the never ending buzz and hum of traffic on the other side of the loch. I doze, still recovering from jet lag, and try to guess the kind of tree above my head; its tender spring leaves are serrated; its humped and knobby roots support my hummock of soil and small plants on the rock beach.

The lake water laps against the shore, sometimes silently, sometimes like a big wet kiss. The wind rises and chills despite the gentle sun. Across the loch the mountain sleeps, sides clad in dark evergreen and bright oak and charcoal heath and heather.

My knee is very sore from our walk along the lake yesterday. I wonder when the rhododendron buds will pop into wild magenta glory. I breathe quietly. I hum "On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond." I look at the used condom package and cigarette butt at my feet, and kick the rocks and sand over them without getting up. I close my eyes.

I dream that I am floating, up past the serrated leaves and into the open sky, sharing the sunlit air with quick birds that dart in and out of the canopy. The weight of flesh is gone. I blow and puff and tumble in the breeze. I stretch into thin little wisps, wind-spun cloud-threads that vanish in the light. I am sun above and lake below--far below, a shining mirror reflecting only sky.

A fish leaps and splashes near the shore and I start awake. I am warm on the sun-side and chill on the shadow-side, like a planet. My knee aches a little--I feel the sciatic nerves down the backs of both my legs, stiffness in my shoulders from carrying my pack. I watch the reedy grass bend in the ripples of clear water. I must tilt my head to see things up close with my bifocals. I close my eyes entirely to hear a bagpipe from the village below. Faintly. Maybe I'm dreaming again.

The earth is old and heavy, lined and worn, but fecund, gravid with life. The planet breathes. Her veins run quick and blue with water, but deep inside, her red heat, dense and pressured, creates new islands in the sea and mountains on the land. Much of the earth is ugly, homely, negligable. She is both varied and regular in grandest geology and smallest detail. She tolerates colonization and parasites, she lets others use her, she bears with their hunger until they are gone. She is patient until she is not.

The earth is my mother, I am her child. I learn her dispassion, her solidity, her humor. Like her I have my seasons. Like her I will come to an end. Until then, I am warm and green in the sun. -2007-