Opposite The Mountain

Bob had gone rogue. Tramping awkwardly away from the relative security of Happy Valley toward the slope, he left half-cocked, too sure of himself for anyone’s comfort. Jim seemed frustrated, maybe offended… though it was hard to tell. I guess we were all a little shaken.

Brenda and I redoubled our efforts. A lapse in focus now could be disastrous.

Okay. So Bob was gone. So what.

It was later, after a slow, unsteady trip up the Magic Carpet that I saw him again… in his jeans and unstylish winter jacket… poles stabbing, chopping, slicing wildly around him as he tumbled off-balance through a pair of teenagers resting with their backs to him.

Later still, Jim would relay with great patience and little detail the final chapter of the saga, in which Bob, falling with tremendous momentum, sends them both flying to the ground, helmets clacking, halfway to the bottom. Jim, his knee injury re-aggravated in the accident. Jim, who said I was cheerful and made me realize I was smiling. Jim, whose guidance had been forsaken that day, but whose tenderness had never faltered.

And all the while, across the frozen river and the road, a thin, steady plume of fog moved over the hills opposite the mountain. Though in all the commotion, we barely noticed.