Mountains don’t retire.
They wait for us. To remind us, as James Earl Jones said of baseball in the movie "Field of Dreams," “of all that was good, and could be again.’’ Mountains are timeless and resolute. They don’t change.
Occasionally in the dead of winter, my mind drifts to the Blue Ridge in summer. The meandering of the roads. The hills rolling like a woman’s shoulders. Thunder over Tennessee. Look! The sun broke through at Craggy!
Graveyard and Lookout and Crabtree and Looking Glass. And Montreat. Totems of my life.
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My son goes with me, every summer. (You might have heard.) He shares my passion for the shoulders. More than 20 years ago, I gave him this gift, this heirloom. He accepted it warily. He was 14, after all. That first year, we spent three days not speaking. I got home and told Kerry, my wife, “I’m not doing that again. We spoke five words combined. It was miserable.’’
“He loved it,’’ she said. Men don’t always communicate well.
Women speak in paragraphs, men in grunts. Kelly and I have accommodated this fact nicely over the years. One uh-huh is worth a thousand pictures.
We went the next year and the next and now, here we are. A couple decades along, a full generation into what we’ve come to know as The Montreat Trip. I can’t explain it. I wish I could, because people have asked.
It’s like explaining why sunsets matter and why you should always feed the birds. It’s the feel of your little girl’s hand in yours, as she walks to the school bus on her first day of kindergarten. Kelly is getting married this weekend. He really is. It’s like that.
Moments aren’t meant to be explained. This Montreat Trip has been one very long moment.
What does any of it have to do with a career in sports writing?
Not a thing. That’s why it works.
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I guess you could throw in a couple self-help words such as “perspective’’ or “balance.’’ Or “realizing what’s really important.’’ That’s a good one. But the fact is, existential stuff needs its space. Let it roam free from interpretation. The Montreat Trip means what it means.
I struggled sometimes with my relationship with my dad. There was this invisible wall between us that blocked too much truth and understanding. Our shade was partly but perpetually drawn. Big stuff? We didn’t talk about it. Stupid guy thing.
We didn’t have a Montreat Trip. It might have made a difference.
“Which hike we doing today?’’ Kelly might ask.
“I checked the weather,’’ I’ll say. “Today’s gonna be great, so maybe Looking Glass. Rain tomorrow, so Crabtree. Friday we’ll leave open.’’ And so it is, the seven miles to the top of Looking Glass Rock and back, the four miles or so to and from Crabtree Falls, where it’s entirely tree covered and perpetually misty, so a little rain is hardly noticed. Then a day to figure it all out, usually atop the waterfall at Graveyard Fields.
What we take: Boots, backpacks and beer. Ponchos. It never rains if you take a poncho. This is a fact. We take an extra T-shirt for after the hike. We take one album of tunes: "Highway Call," by Richard Betts, which we play at one specific spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We never play it again the rest of the year. It’s sacred.
What we don’t take: Anything else, physical or spiritual. In the three days to come, knees will ache, souls will expand. They don’t need help.
We don’t explore as much as we should. We like what we like. The time is so precious, we don’t want to chance spilling any of it on a hike we don’t know. Every year, we say we will adventure. Every year, we don’t. The heart wants what the heart wants.
Atop Graveyard Falls, I’ll stare into the middle distance and take in the permanence. “This’ll be here thousands of years after we’re gone,’’ I say. (False profundity is the unfortunate residue of time spent along the Blue Ridge.)
I wonder how many years I have left to roam these mountains. Planet Fitness has me now, because the time is coming when I’ll have to rage against Dylan Thomas’ dying light and I want to be ready. I wonder if Kelly and Ruby his bride will have kids of their own, and if Kelly will hand them the heirloom gift. My hope is I’ll watch that happen from some great faraway shoulder. And I will be happy.
“Nothing survives,’’ Jackson Browne mused, “but the way we live our lives.’’
“It’s the best three days of the year,’’ Kelly says every year.
Yes, it is.
I’m retiring. The mountains aren’t going anywhere. Such a gift.
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