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"Damian Cucinell
Woodland Wonder
Unable to sleep well, I wake at 5am, muddle around my apartment and put on hiking pants and a t-shirt. Listless, I brood about God, the fucking world, philosophy, civilization and why people embody so much intrinsic evil. My tense shoulders and fisted palms feel as if they can never battle my inner turmoil alone. Trancelike, I bump against my counter tops and stove and cram my water bottle, gaters and jacket into my backpack. After rummaging around my fridge and devouring charred eggs, onions with marinara sauce, I hope time will pass. Bleary and agitated, I gulp down my psych meds, stare outside my front window for 10 minutes, grab my gear and exit sniffling to a cool hazy morning.
Karen, one of Bob’s Single’s Hikers drives a 2010 Nissan Murano, I swing side to side as the vehicle bends sharp along Boulder Canyon road. Wheeling and gliding over a few crests and rises we later dirt crunch onto Hall Ranch trailhead parking. Though I just want to hike and my legs already ache from the confined ride, Bob, an experienced hiker and trip leader demands that we circle together to introduce ourselves. Mumbling my name, telling where I’m from and making up my occupation, I relax when we finally break our huddle. Bob warns us not to trip along the way, get lost or ditch the group.
“Maybe that’s what we want to do,” mutters Jim a tall beaming scruffy friend of Bob’s.
“…a lot happens when you are in the woods,” he continued. “Bobbing about the broad backwoods besides Bob,” he sputters as we stride up from our nestled parking lot. From the trailhead we lumber into a verdant arboreal paradise. I gaze and dart my head as I peer up at the streaming bands of light and misty aura of the woody preserve. Cassin’s Finches and Western Tanagers fly and chirp about and Least Chipmunks and Pikas scurry near my feet. I swallow my throat, careen my head and eye’s everywhere and preen my ears to the sounds of the enchanted forest, then hear an unfamiliar but goose bumpy silence. Blinking his eyes and looking up, Jim blurts, “Wow, it looks like we’ve entered magical fairyland. Bob, what was in that soda you gave me?”
“Acid, no …carbonic or phosphoric…I forget ” Bob snickers.
Listening to them I halt, then hearing a swift whistle I follow the bantering cadre. Stepping after the boot heel of Karen, I stumble down form this timbered wonderland. Up onto a dry grassy sun beamed field we saunter heads bobbing, hair dancing and shoulder shrugging. We march footstep to footstep as my body gets familiar with and my senses enjoy the rhythm of our cadence.
“Check it out,” Bob points to an intimidating peak above us.
“Check who out,” Jim snides.
Lifting my head, I exhale a ‘shit’. I lean back, widen my eyes and gaze at the indominitable mountain. Hearing Jim holler “Hey Bob, aren’t we going to climb K-2,” and Bob respond, “No way, you won’t sherpa and you’re heavy breathing will suck all our oxygen,” I stop and laugh. Karen, grabbing my hips, twists me around and tosses her hand toward my new direction, “See silly.” My muscles twitch to grasp her while my thighs and knees steady me. Down there sat Denver, Boulder and all their subsidiaries, a cluster of texture horizon under a blue open sky. Never having seen that, I arch my head and stood there. Tugging my jacket, she reminds me to follow the others through a broad rift of tall golden wavy fescue grass. As we edge up to the other side of that vast meadow, I can feel the incline, the open air, the sun at my back and the thirst satiating patches of snow up ahead. We amble to a bouldered ridge and drop our packs. I sit sprawling amidst the others. With the flies flitting, the sun shining, my legs languishing, I gulp my water. I gaze up through my glassy eyes and I open my mouth but have nothing to say. Then feeling a soft kick in the hip from Jim to get me going, I spit, declaring “I could actually live with myself here.”
“Damn, I, myself, could actually eat shit and screw here,” Jim asserted. We continue climbing, zig zagging and huffing ourselves on top a round promontory. Scurrying over its northeastern side, Bob rambles our gabbing, gossiping cadre toward an unexpected Aspen grove.
Karen, Jim, Bob and I echo a wow and grin with others as we twirl, mingle and gambol amongst the huge gilded Aspen. We plod, poke, and lounge around the musty woodland while the shadow and light play down from the tree tops and the woody smell and shiny blond, the crimson, lavender further dizzying us. Some of the women collect brilliant leaves. Others pick Yellow Jack mushrooms and dig among the bushes for Purple Iris. I stand wide-eyed, blinking. Jim peers into me, “Yep, Damian, these trees came with the territory. Things just happen when you get out...”
“Out of your mind,” Bob responds.
“Out of my britches, “Jim returns.
“Out of her place,” Bob clinches.
Bob gazes about the entire forest, “Wow, have you ever seen anything so magnificent?”
Jim, “I wish I were that erect.” Bob photographs the largest trees with his cell phone, “you can even see them shimmer in the wind.”
“I shimmer when I wind,” Jim snorts.
Slaloming through four massive Aspen, Jim harks, “Argh, shiver me timbers, I think ‘Ah Spen’ too much on a Bob hike.” We heave ourselves up, brush off the leaves and dirt from our behinds and collect onto the trial again. Jim beams from behind. “Remember, Damian, attention to life, attention to detail, attention to the girls.”
As we skip along and out of the Aspen forest, Karen trips on a root spurning Bob to preach that we ‘focus on each step’, and yet my face squints and contorts at the simplicity of this statement. Over a wide ledge we trek left, with the sun now overhead and the short thatch and boulder strewn landscape growing more abundant. Before long, Karen and the women request a bathroom break and laughing tell Bob, Jim, and I to ‘take a hike,’ that they will catch up.
Bob, Jim and I stroll further until we approach a fork in the trial ahead of us. I stumble and stare at the emergence of three girls entering our trail from the right. “Focus on each step, Damian,” Bob requests. “Thanks,” I pout. “Yeah, but first he’s got to make it to first base,” Jim smirks. A brunette with two blonds resounds a cheerful ‘Hi’ before mixing with the three of us. She waves a smile that impresses me. My lips and eyes bend and my face hues. A few steps behind Jim I stammer a “hello,” while Bob sneaks a grin at Jim. We continue pacing forward until Bob slips, “we were earlier commenting how our hike was so beautiful, but now we are even more impressed.”
“Oh…
“Where you girls from?”
“We came from Sleepy Lion trailhead.”
“C.U.?”
“Yeah,” the brunette brightens. Watching her hop over a few boulders, I check my stagger.
“I’m Bob and this is my Single’s Hike –I do this every Sunday… I’ve climbed all the fourteeners.”
I fix my ears and twitch while she steadies herself over a few rocks and exhales a ‘cool’. Glancing back, Bob inquires whether they are heading for Bierstadt, a nearby fourteener.
“No, we don’t have all weekend to wander the woods like you guys.”
“We don’t hike the woods all the time…”
“Yeah,” jumps Jim, “and most of us, unlike Bob, do get civilized now and then.”
The brunette and a large blond eye each other and chuckle. Sauntering through thatch bushes, felled pines and thistles, Bob and Jim start, stop and struggle to keep the girls talking. A cool breeze brushes my sweaty forehead from behind and a trickling sound of an approaching creek fills my odd silence as I smile chest out at Bob’s and Jim’s repartee. The brunette and blonds wink and nod each other as Bob gesticulates, points and appears to move his lips bus lengths ahead of me. Amid a few forestalling seconds, as Bob stops us to peruse the scenery, the girls dart, pass and bounce down towards the little creek and bridge. After they sally across with a gigantic waveform the brunette, we look on, wave and slump. Kicking a stone with my boot, my arms fall free and my pack pulls me backward.
“Who can you ever pick up,” mumbles Bob. My eyes traverse form Bob to Jim. From distant trees we hear a giggle.
“Oh, they’re laughing at Bob,” Jim chides.
“Yeah, they want me to cross that bridge.” “What bridge?” interjects Karen with the women who have finally caught up.
“I should have been more liberal with them,” I rustle and cough behind Jim.
“You can always go more to the right,” he snips. To keep us ambling, Bob swings his arm forward and marches us further onto a rising brae, down through scrubby gullies and up monolithic crags. We stride upside a browned hill and down its boulder laden and thicketed backside. I almost sneer and wince at the throbbing heaviness in my legs. Jovial, Bob leads us to his hidden rocky perch overlooking a jumbled terrace of falls. Sore and sweaty we flop on top of Bob’s secret ledge. A little slump, I grumble and curse as droplets and sunlight pound my forehead. I feel as if some of the women are watching me through eye lit gaps and corners. Seeking refreshment, coolness and solace, I drag my pack to me and guzzle some water and admire the waterfall. The gushing cascade out-roars the troupe’s entire conversation. Bob, waving me close bellows, “Look upon those falls and peer into them and tell me what you see.” Receiving a tug from the cataract and a cool breeze from its wind, I bear my face and lean my torso into the monotonous echo. The swirling eddies, bubbling pools, laminar flows, shooting streams, trickling droplets mix to massage me. Gurgling, the terraces and turbulent plunges draw mw into their chaotic mesmerizing vortex. The heterogeneous bounce, bounce, hop-hopping mass of distributive shape’s, and movement’s play and dance, invites and soothes my schizophrenic angst. In feeling mirrored by this churning, I want to let go, and tell Bob I want to drink from this river and forget. He reminds of giardia. Frowning a bit, I feel my anger flush. Tantalizing and mellowing me, I find I cannot budge from this sympathetic cascade until Bob slaps me on the shoulder.
“You can’t take it with you,” he chuckles. I raise my head, turn it aside and look up at him and the group. They had all put on their packs and were staring at me with ineffable grins.
“Gotta go,” Bob thumbs, whereby I saddle my now weightless pack onto my shoulders. We leave the falls and veer into the stony brush and stride down an undulating and meandering trail. We enter a rich open field of fescue, cross it and grin at its familiarity. Within this saffron field, the ladies pull grain chaff from their seedheads and dump them on Bob’s cap. Curious and gaffing, I grab some, smell them and let them drop. We step onto a miniature bluff from the grassy pasture and wedge into a cluster of quaint dense welcoming trees. Charming with its vibrant greenery, we wander, reaching, touching, clasping, and then like a ship into easy docking, descend into our little parking lot.
With the settling sun shining in increments upon us, we kick and pat the mud and dirt off our pants and shoes.
Bob winks “How was that?” He turned to the hikers who gave each other a round of applause.
Jim sighs, “Why do people need drugs?”
“Why do people need God, philosophy, hate and civilization?,” I smile feeling the full weight of my pack and my brooding collapse. I laugh, drink deep from my water bottle and after looking up to feel the warm rays of the evening sun upon me, breathe easier, then see Bob salute with his calloused and wrinkly hand crop against his weathered forehead.
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