The Sentence at the End

May eighth. It started as one sentence. I had written it at the bottom of a post about something else entirely, the way Simone mentioned, just mentioned, that she had been looking at trail maps for the area near the outdoor skills workshop. One sentence. Practically a footnote. I closed the laptop and did not think about it again for approximately forty-eight hours, at which point I opened my phone during a very uneventful Tuesday evening and found myself looking at topographic lines I had not planned to look at.

The thing about a sentence at the end of a post is that it usually knows something the rest of the post hasn't admitted yet. I've been writing this blog long enough to notice that the throwaway line, the thing I add in the last thirty seconds before I hit publish because it feels incomplete without it, is often the real subject. The lag motif, the number on a piece of paper, the borrowed shoes, all of them started as one sentence at the end of something else. So I'm trying to pay attention to what it means that I'm now the one looking at the maps. Simone mentioned them once. I said nothing. Three weeks later I have a rough sense of the elevation gain and a vague, uncommitted awareness of which trailheads have the most accessible parking.

the look of someone who is definitely not making a plan

We finished our Tuesday session and sat on the floor mats for the usual ten minutes of not quite leaving. Simone pulled on her sneaker and said something about the drive time from the city to the workshop site, and I said something that was technically a response, and neither of us made any kind of plan. This is how it always goes. The outdoor bouldering date was named on a specific Saturday before either of us officially agreed to it. The pottery registration happened over the course of one four-minute conversation. The borrowed shoes came before any formal decision. I know how this works by now. I'm just watching it happen from the inside, which is the closest I get to honesty around here.

end of session. the question was already in the room.

For now it's still a sentence at the end of a post. That's probably the most accurate thing I can say about it. I looked at the trail maps. I know the elevation. I closed the app and went to bed. I'm not calling that a plan yet.