The Trailhead Simone Named

November twentieth. The plan had been no plan. Simone had named the trailhead three weeks ago, at the end of a Tuesday session, the way she always names things, as a footnote she clearly expected to land, and I had looked it up that night and found it was about an hour out and that parking was free on weekdays and had said nothing more about it. Then last weekend we actually went.

The trees were bare in that November way that feels definitive rather than sad, like the landscape has finally made up its mind. The ground was all damp compressed leaf-litter that shifted color depending on the light, which was flat and pale and came from everywhere at once through the open canopy. I had packed an extra layer I didn't need. Simone brought a crossbody bag that seemed impractical for a trail and was actually fine, which I want noted. We talked the whole way in the way you can only talk when you're both looking in the same direction and nobody is required to hold eye contact.

Simone mid-sentence, which is her natural state.

There was a clearing we came to that we hadn't expected, the trail bent and then just opened up, and we both stopped without discussing it. I have three sentences in my draft folder from October about the light on the kitchen windowsill, which I still haven't finished. Standing at the edge of that clearing I thought about them, which doesn't quite make sense and is maybe exactly why I haven't finished them. The clearing did something similar to what the windowsill light does, made the familiar logic of an arrangement feel briefly unfamiliar, like the light had a different opinion about it.

The clearing we didn't expect.

We drove back in the early dark, which in November arrives before you've agreed to it. Simone named it a good day in the way she names things, matter-of-fact, slightly before I'd arrived at the conclusion myself. She wasn't wrong. She is, as a rule, not wrong.