There is not a drop of grace in my body. My shoulders are hunched. I'm hot, I'm panting, my heart is beating much faster than my normal 65 to 70 beats per minutes.
If the top of this climb isn't around the next bend I'm turning around.
The top isn't around the next bend. There's more climbing. I stop to breathe and feel my heart beat in my ears. I'm sweating buckets. I gulp water. But I don't turn around.
I think about why I'm here, climbing. I come for peace. I come for the peace of the mountains. I come for the peace of getting as far as I can from the sound of cars and the nuisance of dogs barking for no reason. But to get that peace I have to climb, slowly around another bend, and then another.
I cheer myself up by telling myself I am doing really well. I am gaining 600 feet of elevation per mile. I'll be there soon.
'There' refers to a spring hidden under the shade of scrub oaks and the native plants of the chaparral.
This is my first time visiting the spring. I seek to solve a riddle. I want to know how hundreds of years passed and people went beyond survival to flourishing without plumbing. I want to know how they found peace without borrowing, buying, and stealing water from other places.
I don't turn around.
I find the determination to take more steps, and round yet another turn. The sound of my breath, fast, shallow, labored, a sharp contrast to the sound of my feet, slow, heavy, plodding. Both a reminder that the peace I seek is possible, less because of my hiking skills, and more because of the lyrical beauty of the trail urging me along.
I am climbing for peace, I'm climbing for water.
I imagine the hidden movement of water deep beneath my feet even though the aquifers winding slowly, sinuously, are tapped so the water can be channeled here and there to houses in the city. I'm not sure I will find water in these drought conditions but I seek it nevertheless.
I reach the top, and let my tired eyes sweep over the view of the valleys. A long moment of pleasure and satisfaction. I have about another half mile to go, but thankfully it's downhill till I reach the ribbon of thick, green oaks. There is the promise of water there.
I do not hurry.
The closer I get the more gently expressive the presence of peace. Birds chirp in the trees and nothing more. Then a breeze ruffles through the oaks and only crisp, biscuit-colored leaves fall. I move closer to the place where water would be, would flow. Three plump mushrooms in various stages of fertile rot decay in the dusky shade.
The light of the sun is dimmed by the large canopy of oaks, but, where it filters through the spaces between leaves, I catch a glimpse of water. It's a puddle where insects thrive and, making lazy swirls around my head, question my intrusion. I keep a respectful distance from two small black hooded birds that are bathing.
I walk up along the side of the dry creek bed and see a second puddle, and walk a little more and see a third. Slow, dark, silent waters with bright spots of light reflecting here and there.
I can't continue to the source because the oaks, now crowded together like a church choir, are bedecked with bright colorful poison oak. Sigh.
Downtempo...slow down, down, down...no more seeking. Lento. Largo. Adagio.
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