Becca’s Hike

We arrived at the trailhead at 10 a.m. We were all wearing hiking boots, backpacks, and carrying illegal quantities of granola.

“Who’s ready to go hiking!?” said my wife in a chipper voice.

Becca and I replied with a weak, almost tragic “Yay.”

My wife, Jamie, affected the same tone as Tony Robbins at a middle-management seminar. “I said ‘WHO’S READY FOR HIKING!’”

“Yay,” came the whispers.

“Are there bugs on this trail?” Becca asked. Becca is 12, and a hiking rookie.

“No,” I said. “There are no bugs because the spiders ate them all.”

“Spiders? But who eats all the spiders?”

“My wife.”

Consequently, my wife, Jamie, was the first person on the trail, leading our three-person group, hiking hundreds of yards ahead of us. The brave leader.

My wife is a highly motivated, type-A person who holds three college degrees and a math teaching certification and yet does not work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jamie enjoys hiking long distances since this is the only place where she can do things like connect with nature, find a spiritual center, or perform CPR on her husband.

Becca and I were bringing up the rear, slowly. Becca used her white cane as a hiking stick. She followed close behind me, grasping a guideline affixed to my backpack so that, as a person who is blind, Becca could receive the thrill of hiking independently.

I turned around every few moments to check on how thrilled she was.

“How’re you doing back there?” I’d ask her.

“Yay,” Becca would mumble.

The trail was extremely remote, with arresting views of the lake. I think my wife had an especially nice time, although I couldn’t tell because she was roughly 16 miles ahead of us.

Our first few hours of hiking mostly consisted of Becca saying, “There’s something crawling on me!” and then me emphatically replying “No there’s not,” as I brushed various black widows from her shoulders.

Also, Becca did a lot of singing on the trail. She mostly sang made-up songs. Here are the lyrics to one:

“Hiking on the trail hiking on the trail hiking on the trail hiking on the trail hiking...”

You can tell by these fun lyrics that this is the kind of melody which you, as an adult, could listen to for hours without hurling yourself off a mountainside.

Then it was time for lunch. There were no boulders around for sitting, so we all sat directly on the ground.

“I’m scared to sit on the bug-infested ground,” Becca said.

“Relax,” my wife said. “The ground isn’t bug infested, it’s snake infested.”

“Do you think the snakes will bite us and kill us?”

“No, sweetie. The snakes would only paralyze us. The bears would be the ones who actually kill us.”

We ate sandwiches while my wife cross checked our route using three separate maps and a GPS. I was mostly too exhausted to speak. Becca, was working on a new song:

“Eating lunch eating lunch eating lunch eating…”

Then Becca had to go to the bathroom. I hiked ahead to give the ladies privacy. But I could hear their conversation reverberating throughout the forest.

“I can’t do this,” I heard the kid say.

My wife responded with—I swear—“Sweetie, you have to believe in yourself. ”

After a few minutes of silence I heard the sound of my wife’s lone applause, echoing in the woods.

“Let’s get moving,” my wife said. “We have four more hours left.”

Yay.