I left the house early yesterday morning, headed into the mountains for the annual retreat for the Children, Youth, and Family Team at my church. (Everyone else went on Friday night, but after joining them for dinner I came back home; I'm not quite ready to leave my nursling babe overnight.) It was at Buck Creek this year; I drove it in an hour, sipping coffee and listening to a biography of Thomas Hardy on CD, enjoying the quiet, the morning sunlight, the time to myself. I love these retreats -- I come away feeling refreshed, renewed, maybe a little more clear-headed, and definitely grateful to have the support and friendship of this church family. It's a recharge this mama needs every now and then.
I was also looking forward to a run. My friend Peggy asked if I'd like to go with her, and I wouldn't dream of turning down the opportunity to breathe mountain air, clear my head, and get in a good workout. So Peggy and I planned to go on a nice run before lunch; there are trails around the lodge where we were holding our retreat, and when we asked about good places to go we were given reasonable instructions for a loop that sounded like it would be right around two miles. We decided we'd do that twice and call it good.
What actually happened was that we took a wrong turn and couldn't really figure out where we were supposed to go, but by the time we realized we weren't on a two-mile loop, we'd run pretty far. We encountered more hikers and bikers who gave us well-meaning but inaccurate advice, and -- well, we got a little lost. All told, we went eight miles on the trail and another two along the highway before we were "rescued." At least, according to the people we managed to flag down for directions when we finally emerged from the trail onto a dirt road. At the time, I wasn't convinced we'd really gone that far, although today I feel appropriately sore for having run and hiked several miles of up and down mountain trails.
We saw the most beautiful waterfall on the mountain, through an opening in a canopy of trees, an opening filled with sunlight. We stopped there for a bit, just to look, to breathe, and to deeply appreciate the gift of that view. That moment made our little misadventure more than worth our sore muscles and parched throats. It was more than a beautiful view; it was somehow an unexpected gift of perfect peace, unexpected and undeserved. It reminded me a little of the weekend my college roommate came home with me for midsemester break during October of our senior year. I wrote this not long afterward:
I remember so clearly one golden afternoon of that long weekend; we climbed through the barbed wire fence at the edge of my parents' property and made our way down to the creek. We found a bridge consisting of wooden planks placed across two logs that stretch across the water and sprawled on our backs, our legs dangling over the side. I tipped my head back until I was upside down, gazing at the sky and water and inverted trees. A gust of wind shook the remaining golden leaves clinging to the branches, and they swirled above our heads in colorful flurries before drifting down to land gently on the water, the ground, in our hair. It was a moment of such still perfection it was hard to believe it was real. I watched one perfect leaf dip and twirl until it landed and the current carried it downstream. The beauty of it almost hurt with its simple intensity.
This was a bit like that. In fact, it might be my definition of upsilamba. I haven't put it into words as lovely as "the impossible joy of a suspended leap," but maybe it's something like "a moment of unutterable perfection."
The day was lovely and the weather was perfect -- sunny and warm, but not hot. We felt badly because we knew our group would be worrying about us, but we also knew that there was nothing we could do about that, and we knew we were perfectly fine. All we could do was keep moving, appreciate the adventure, be grateful it was a relatively safe adventure, and enjoy each other's company.
We came across a campground with a spigot for drinking water, and we stuck our heads underneath that for awhile. That was around mile 8, when we finally reached the highway. It was the best water I have ever tasted.
Maybe upsilamba is the sudden clear gush of cold water on a hot day.
Anyway, we had a really, really great time. The only downsides were a.) the fact that we hadn't brought any water (we were, after all, just going out for a quick run!) and b.) the fact that we knew our group would be massively freaking out. Which they were. Thankfully, the people who run the lodge had a pretty good idea where we'd gone, because this has happened to people before, and they picked us up. By then I was glad, because when we hit the highway and saw where we were we realized we were exactly four miles from the turnout to the lodge, at which point we'd have another mile of hiking in before we got there. I actually didn't expect to be found out on the highway at all. It was nowhere near where we'd started -- so I was pleasantly surprised to hear a honk behind us. We turned to see a truck from the camp pulling up alongside us. The driver waved cheerfully.
"Would you ladies like a lift?" he asked, smiling. He wasn't frantic, anyway. When we finally crept in the door of our cabin, Julia looked at us as though we were ghosts before grabbing me in a furious hug.
I ate about twelve brownies when we finally made it back to the lodge. I started fantasizing about those brownies by the time we reached the highway; our friend Bonnie brought a huge pan of them. That's all I wanted -- brownies and water. Neither have ever tasted so good.
Matt spent the day with the kids, and it sounds like they had an equally fabulous day. He was incredibly ambitious, taking them to the tot lot and the zoo and Owen Beach and to a coffee shop for treats. All of these things are fairly close together, but still, it's a lot to do in a single day. I came home to two very dirty, very tired, very happy children. It was well past ten by the time everyone in our house had managed to have a shower or a bath, but I feel like this is such a deliciously summer way to end a day: worn out, scrubbed clean, maybe a little sore, and satisfied.
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