Day 86: Love and Hiking

It's hiking season and I don't like to hike.  I mean, I would rather do almost anything else on a warm Spring day.  I would rather clean the window sills with a toothbrush.  I would rather vacumn all the crevices in our small automobile and sift through the contents for lost earrings and coins.  Gross.  But Rich loves hiking with a fascination that is growing at a rapid speed, so today I find myself crisscrossing down the back of a New Hampshire trail.  We've lost the path but have found a dirt road and are headed in what we hope is the right direction.   Seriously, I don't like to hike.

What I should do is just tell him I'm not into mountains.  That my legs scream and my face is puffy and red and I can't catch enough air to do more than grunt.  It's torture, and I'm swearing up a storm in my head everytime we're faked out by a false summit.  But the outdoors is part of who we are together.  Rich and I met in the Adirondacks.  Our dates were long drives by still lakes and campfires.  We fell in love to the sound of loons and the smell of pines.  If I tell him I don't like to hike, I'm telling him that I've changed.  That I'm not the same person that he chose four summers ago.  It's risky.  Like the private property that we've wandered into- an empty house with a confederate flag and a dozen keep-out signs.

I know that everyone changes.   Change is energy and energy is life.  And my hope is that when you're with someone you love- with them so tightly that you are bound together, the change that happens is a reflection of growing together.  Maybe change can be a healthy shedding of the parts of us that have died, so that our new parts can grow.  It's spring and I want to grow.  I want to watch the mountains out the back window of a house that is our own.  I want to walk along the sands, next to the sea.  I don't want to spend my every Saturday on a trail that became a road that became a backyard and is now a state route- four (uphill) miles from where we've parked the car.  I'm not a hiker anymore and it's time I say so.