The Trail Didn't Care That We Were Tired

March first. We were both already tired when we got on the bus. That should have been the signal. Instead it was just the starting condition, and we went anyway, and the trail did not adjust itself to account for us.

The park is maybe an hour out, one of those places that is technically accessible by transit if you are willing to make three transfers and stand on a platform in the wind for twelve minutes. We were. The trees were still bare, most of them, with old snow caught in the root hollows like it had given up trying to melt. The sky was the particular flat pale gray that promises nothing and delivers nothing and somehow still makes the light look honest. I took photographs. Simone walked slightly ahead of me for most of the first half, the way she does when she is thinking, and I let her, and at some point she said something I no longer remember but I laughed hard enough that I had to stop walking.

She was already three steps ahead. Standard.

We found a flat rock about two-thirds of the way in and sat on it for longer than was strictly necessary. It was cold. We stayed anyway. I kept thinking about the cord on the windowsill, about the Carol box still on the shelf with most of its contents unnamed, the way certain things just sit in the apartment quietly, not asking anything of me yet. Out here the trees were doing the same thing, just present, bare, not waiting for permission to be the subject. Simone looked at the tree line and didn't say anything and I didn't either and that was the whole rest portion of the hike.

The rock was cold. We stayed anyway.

We were more tired on the way back than on the way out, which is how it always goes. On the last transfer Simone fell almost asleep against the window and I looked at the three photographs I'd taken on the rock and thought: the flat light was right after all. I didn't post them that evening. Some things earn a few days in the lag before they become anything. This one waited until March.