Summer Hike - Part 3

With Vivie taking the trail by storm up ahead, even in the wilting heat, Bonnie and I have our bar set high.  We both push ourselves harder because Vivie does that to us.  For her, moving is something you do quickly and without hesitation.  She checks back on us with quick glances, eyes that assess and gauge our pace and movements.  She's like having a trail dog with us but one with a quick mind and wit.

Vivie reaches the crest of the ridge and whoops down to us, gives a big window-washer wave with both hands above her head.  She's five feet tall and carries a 30 lb pack that seems just as big as she is.  We're both taller and also carry about 30 lb.  I'm already looking forward to taking it off at the crest, letting my back dry off again.  I sweat heroically under any hint of strain or even modest heat.  Today, midday at the height of summer, the sweat is beading up on body parts I had no idea could sweat.  Bonnie's looking comfortable still, with her Mona Lisa smile.  

Bonnie grew up wrestling with five brothers who jostled and fought for everything, even things that didn't need fighting over.  She learned how to throw a ball hard overhand and spit with deadly accuracy.  She was the youngest, kind of an afterthought, and an oddity in a home where girls were an unknown element in the universe. That is, until later when girls became fascinating to her brothers.  Until their hormones began to color their vision, Bonnie was both teased mercilessly and shielded from harm with an intensity only five older brothers can muster.  If anyone at school even looked at her sideways, they were dead meat.  Then, they'd shove her around at home, call her a sissy and mock her dolls, put frogs in her shoes to make her scream.

Bonnie learned to roll with the male energy because she has a natural patience to her.  She learned that if she waited long enough at the bottom of the scrum of brothers, eventually they'd let her up and she could get away and find a quiet place to be still and calm, sing to herself, dream of beautiful things.

One day when Bonnie was six and she's being stuffed in an old fridge whether she wants to be there or not she says, "Betcha two bucks you can't climb that tree," to her brother Samuel to get him distracted so he'll stop cramming her into the tight space.  She says it out of habit as if it were the first words she could speak as a baby.  He takes the bait and disappears up the tree and screams from the top of it, "Pay up, Toobie!"  But, she's gone.

Nicknames are all she and her brothers go by.  She's Two Bucks or Toobie.  Samuel is Whammy.  She made up my name Charm, and Vivianne is Vivie.

The three of us formed a bond a long time ago in grade school when we were free and young and happy, before we knew about trouble in the world and how men could break your heart so bad.  Something in each of us made us tough and soft at the same time, the toughness a shield for the softness at our core.  I worried about Bonnie's core when the toughness had to be so thick, but she knew how to hang onto it.  It was a cool spring within her.  She was very patient, had a quizzical way of looking at a situation and figuring out what was safe and when to get the heck out of a tight squeeze.

"Charm, this is the exact thing I need to be doing at this very minute, right now.  I could hike forever," Toobie says, "Look at Vivie up there.  Aw, look, she's waving at us.  I think that girl needs a full moon, don't you?"

We whip around, yank our shorts down and shine two moons at her.

"You girls are blinding me with your pale asses down there," Vivie yells.  We laugh and scream just for the sake of screaming, blowing off a few months of pent-up energy.  "What a sight to see." She moons us back.  

Twobie and I finally reach Vivie and we take a look at the valley below us, which stretches to the northeast.  It's about 1:30 and we figure we've got about six hours to get to our camp and get set up before dark really settles in.

Vivie takes off again, striding downhill, her boots stirring up little explosions of soft dirt.  On this side of the ridge, we feel a small breeze coming from the north, and far off to the east clouds are gathering in the cornflower blue sky.