Sara and the Trail God

One hour into the hike up Camel’s Hump and Sara wasn’t sure she’d make it another ten minutes, never mind the three or more hours it took to reach the summit.

 “You have to hike it,” her new Vermont friends insisted. “Everyone loves Camel’s Hump,” they exclaimed, even as one by one they bailed on joining her.

But Sara was on a mission to try new things. Hiking, getting dirty, being out in nature—these were all a far cry from the cosseted life she ran away from. And, today, that meant tackling this mountain on her own.

Her lungs gulped air, but she continued to put one foot in front of the other. And despite her physical distress, her spirits soared. How could they not? It was a gorgeous summer day filled with promise. The early-morning sky deepened to dark blue and wisps of friendly clouds were visible through the breaks in the trees that flanked the trail. This early in the day, the heat didn’t pose a problem, though the growing crowds might. It seemed lots of others shared Sara’s idea that today would be a good day for a hike. A grandfather and his grandson, a group of high schoolers, and a young family with a toddler in the dad’s carry pack and a newborn strapped to the mother’s chest had already passed her. Everyone offered a greeting of some sort: a simple “hello,” a comment on the weather, or an editorial on the hike itself. “It gets a bit easier around the bend,” one older man offered as he noted Sara’s labored breathing. She could only nod in acknowledgement.

Sara allowed herself a rest on a boulder that seemed as though it had been placed alongside the trail for just that purpose. Gingerly, she eased off her new hiking boot and inspected the beginnings of an angry blister. She sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to the innkeepers at the B&B where she was staying. “Trust us. If this is your first hike, you’ll need these,” Paul had said as he pressed a few moleskin bandages into her hand.  His wife Susan nodded the nod of someone who knew the truth in Paul’s words and handed her two oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in a cloth napkin. “These are easily as important as the bandages,” Susan said with a wink. “They’ll taste best on the summit.”

“Gandolph, no!” a voice shouted. An oversized golden lab bounded up the path and went straight for Sara like a long-lost mate. He stood in front of her, panting and wagging and daring her not to pet him. He needn’t have worried. Sara had a soft spot for dogs, and this one was a delight. She was scratching him behind the ears and telling him what a good boy he was when a man who looked sculpted by Michelangelo came up the path. Sara couldn’t help but gape at the tall, tan, and broad-shouldered God. Muscles rippled up his bare legs and, judging by the way he filled out his worn t-shirt, continued up through his chest. Curly brown tendrils escaped from the faded blue bandana he’d tied around his head and his wide smile revealed a front tooth with a tiny chip. To Sara, he was perfectly imperfect, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“I hope he wasn’t bothering you,” Trail God said. “He broke the leash and ran away like a dog possessed.”

 Sara continued to pet the dog while looking into the man’s face. His eyes were brown and kind. Her pulse quickened.

 “Um. No. I’m fine. He’s fine. We’re fine,” she stammered.

 Trail God cocked his head, amused.

“Do you need help?”

“No. Just taking a little break,” Sara said, struggling to appear nonchalant and pretending she didn’t have one hiking boot off and three inches of moleskin plastered to her heel.

 “You sure?” He bent over and looked skeptically at the assortment of paraphernalia at her feet.

 Sara nodded. She couldn’t exactly ask a complete stranger for help with band aids, could she?

“OK. Well, enjoy the hike. Gandolph, come!”

Gandolph rose slowly and trotted after his owner, leaving Sara to calm her still racing heart and lace up her boot and hoist her backpack. For the next few hours, she kept up a slow but steady pace, stopping for snacks of almonds and apples to keep her energy up and leaning against trees to stretch out her calves. Achy as she was, she liked the way her legs and quads tightened with every uphill step. She took comfort in knowing that with each stride she was getting stronger, getting closer to the summit and farther away from the events that had led her to this trail.

For the first time in days, she found the courage to reflect on her wedding day one week ago. Or, more precisely, the ten minutes immediately before she was due to say her vows.

The images focused uncomfortably in her mind. Sara, her mother and attendants standing in the presidential suite of the ultra-lux Mattamoisett House, a venue that until that day had not allowed weddings as such events brought in too many outsiders. The only parties thrown in those hallowed halls were quiet, dignified affairs celebrating the elevation of their members to judgeships or honoring them for their Nobel Prizes in the more serious sciences. As the aristocratic house manager had long ago sniffed to her mother, “We do not host parties; we host celebrations. And only for our members.” But her mother had begun a charm offensive long before Sara had even begun dating, and eventually he had relented.

Standing behind Sara in the suite, her mother adjusted her bridal veil. Sara’s maid of honor made a show of tucking an errant strand of hair back into the construction of blond curls that perched atop her head. As they fussed, Sara stared at herself in the mirror. All she could think was, “Oh, this is what people must mean when they use the word ‘statuesque.’” She looked made of marble—tall to begin with and made taller still by her heels and piled hair. Her porcelain skin was so close to the color of her bridal gown it wasn’t readily apparent where one stopped and the other began. She looked flawless—exactly as she was supposed to look. And that was the problem.

Her mom caught her eye and recognized her daughter’s distress. “Let’s give Sara a moment to herself,” she said before giving Sara’s arm a squeeze and hustling the maid of honor and attendants out into the hallway.

And that moment was all Sara needed and all it took for her to know to her core that she didn’t want a life so perfectly cast in marble. Please God, let there be some dirt and messiness in my future.

Here she was, about to commit to a lifetime with Trevor Hollingsworth, Junior. They met at a holiday ball, introduced by a close friend of her parents. Trevor was exactly who she was supposed to marry, from her same social set, with a pedigree that her parents and friends understood and credentials that assured him a swift, upward trajectory in the white-shoe law firm founded by his grandfather.

It wasn’t that Trevor was a bad person, or mean, or dismissive. It wasn’t his fault, but he represented a life that, if she chose it, would keep her in the world of country clubs and cocktail parties with the people she’d known all her life. She’d be doomed to repeat conversations she could script in her head before even walking into a party. Fated to wear the right clothes, the right expensive tasteful jewelry, and once the kids came along, send them to the right schools so they could get the right jobs and join the right clubs and have the same scripted conversations.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t allowed herself to see any of this until ten minutes before she was due to walk down the aisle with Trevor. Inconvenient timing, to be sure.

She acted on deep instinct, flinging off the kitten heels custom dyed to match her gown, ripping open the row of tiny pearl buttons that ran up the body of the dress and threatened to cut off all flow of oxygen, and then throwing on the jeans and hoodie her maid of honor had left in a heap on a satin-covered slipper chair. She grabbed her handbag and topsiders and quietly opened the side door that led to the parking lot, praying that all the guests had been seated inside and no one would stop her. But two steps out the door she stopped and did an about face, sprinting back into the room, where she pulled off her chunky engagement ring and placed it in a porcelain dish on the dressing table. She scribbled a quick note: “Sorry. Couldn’t.” in a loopy cursive. She hoped her fiancée, family and friends would understand someday.

She turned the car out of the parking lot and headed north. She had vague childhood memories of an idyllic, quiet family vacation in Vermont, with gentle mountains and dozy cows and a wooden covered bridge that spanned a river that sparkled in the sun and beckoned kayakers and tubers and kids and grandmothers to play in its waters. The town was north somewhere. For now, she just needed to get away.

Well after the sun set, she pulled off at a roadside motel that looked as though it hadn’t been renovated since the 1960s. Once settled in the room, she ignored all the texts and voicemails on her phone but sent quick texts to her parents, her maid of honor, and Trevor, apologizing and telling them she was alive. She turned off the phone and snuggled deep into the threadbare sheets, and slept more soundly than she had in months. 

She awoke in the morning with the sun streaming through the curtains. She immediately reached for her phone, pulled up a Vermont map and scanned the Vermont towns, hoping a name would jog her memory. And then, bingo! The towns of Warren and Waitsfield brought the jolt of recognition she’d been hoping for. With a whoop she threw on her clothes, grabbed a couple of the packaged muffins laid out for guests and continued her drive north. She ignored the incessant pings of her iPhone and allowed herself to adjust to the first day in forever, where she didn’t have any obligations to anyone but herself. She was positively giddy.

That giddiness built as the car crested rise after rise that revealed Vermont’s gentle Green Mountains. Sara couldn’t resist rolling down the window and breathing deeply. The air felt lighter in her lungs, somehow, with a touch of coolness that made her hungry for more.

Her wedding-that-should-have been was a week behind her now. A week of blissful and somewhat guilty solitude. But here on this trail, as she hiked ever higher, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

A stumble on a tree root pulled Sara out of her reverie and back to the present. Her calves cramped and her quads ached and just when she felt she couldn’t take another step, the summit came into view, re-energizing her for the final push over the steep, rocky incline that made up that section of the Long Trail. She crested the top, feeling all the world like she’d summited Mt. Everest. All muscle aches fell away as she reveled in the sweep of the Champlain Valley and Adirondack mountains laid out before her. A hawk rode the air currents and directly above a sailplane circled, so close she could see the pilot in the cockpit.

She wanted to hold on to this moment, to wrap herself in the sights and smells and the profound satisfaction she felt for making it to the summit. The accomplishment was about more than overcoming the physical challenge of the hike; it was about having the courage to leave behind the life so predictably laid out for her and taking a chance on the unknown. She hadn’t a clue what the future held for her, how she would make a living or where she would ultimately settle down. But for now, in this moment, she knew that Vermont was precisely the place she was meant to be.

The sailplane pilot toggled the plane’s wings in farewell and sped off, the long fiberglass wings flexing and slicing through the air with a whoosh. Sara took herself off the main path and found a large flat rock tucked behind a tree and lodged firmly in the mountainside. She sat down, stretched her tired legs, and unwrapped the oatmeal cookies. She took a bite, and then another. The innkeeper had been correct. No cookie had ever tasted this good. She took a closer look: cranberries, walnuts, and white chocolate chunks mixed with the raisins, oatmeal, and cinnamon to create a confection that was as much a meal as it was a cookie.

Lost in savory delight, she didn’t notice company approaching and yelped when a cold nose nudged her arm.

 “Gandolph!” she exclaimed, reaching out to hug the dog’s neck and pull him close. He wagged his tail and eyed the cookie.

Sara laughed and broke off a small piece. “OK, sport. Here you go, but don’t get me in trouble.” The pup consumed it in a flash and stood wagging for more.

“Not so fast,” Trail God said as he emerged from behind her. “No cookies before dinner, Gandolph.” He leaned down and reattached Gandolph’s leash for the second time that morning.

“I swear, he never breaks his leash. I honestly don’t know what’s gotten into him today.” He offered Sara that same lopsided grin that had sent tremors to parts of her body that hadn’t felt tremors in a long time. Once again, not trusting herself to speak, she smiled and offered her second cookie.

“Thanks so much! Glad to see you made it,” Trail God said. “I’m Brandon, named after the Brandon Gap. Just farther south from here.” He offered one hand for her to shake while taking the cookie with the other.

Sara found her breath and her words. “I’m Sara, a recent transplant or maybe runaway.”

“Intriguing. May I?” he asked, indicating the empty space on the rock next to her.

“I can recommend it as a very comfortable ledge,” she said.

“Complete with cookies.” He grinned as he settled.

The two sat in companionable silence, with Gandolph prone at their feet and the sweep of mountains before them.

“Well, runaway transplant Sara, is this your first time on Camel’s Hump?” Brandon asked.

Sara laughed. “First time on the mountain and, if memory serves, first time on any mountain. I think it’s love at first sight,” she said, sweeping her arm over the vista.

“Glad to hear it. If there’s one thing Vermont has, its mountains, and I think I’ve climbed most of them.”

As he turned to look at Sara, a part of her heart that had been closed off for years cracked open. 

“Care to climb another one of those mountains with me? With us?” He corrected himself, nodding at Gandolph.

Sara looked at him and then into him, connecting her green eyes with his brown ones and in a heartbeat seeing and understanding everything she needed to know.

“I would very much like that,” she said.

And with those words began a love affair with a man, a dog, and the entire state of Vermont that continues to this day.

***