New Year's Eve 2017

            Maybe 2017 was full of downers, politically. Maybe it had its ups and downs for me, personally. Maybe it had tearful days and disappointments among happy days and triumphs, but whatever else I can say about it, I can definitely say that it ended with a great day.

            I had suggested to Mike that he and I hike up Kerby Peak on the last day of the year, since there would be no snow (not in this lousy winter!) and the rattlesnakes that abound there would be asleep in their dens. My son, visiting for the holidays from Washington, said he would like to join us, so early on the morning of January 31 the three of us set off on the trail.

            Mike and I hike together a lot. We know each other's rhythms and habits. I usually hike in front. I hike less often with Ela. He was in the lead on the New Year's Eve hike. I could tell that he was holding back, containing his energy and his strength so we could all hike together. I was reminded of hiking the Horse Camp trail with him, years ago, when he was twenty and I was forty-seven. I was working hard to climb that steepest trail in the Applegate. Ela hiked ahead of me, so much at his leisure that he was talking, walking backwards, juggling pine cones. Now he is the age I was then, and I'm still twenty-seven years older, and the walking ratio has remained as constant as the age ratio. About a mile before the top, Ela let go of companionable hiking and strode on his long, strong legs to the top of the mountain, where he waited for Mike and me to catch up. I wondered if, were today's Ela to hike with the Ela of his younger years, his two-decade-different selves would have the difficulty-to-age ratio of his and mine. Or if, were my forty-seven-year-old self to hike with me now, it would be waiting for me on top of the mountain, as Ela was.

           The Kerby Peak trail is one of the steepest trails along the Highway 199 corridor, with an elevation gain of 2600 feet in the six and a half miles it takes to get to the top (at 5,545 feet). We hiked through beautiful Douglas fir forests, rock outcroppings (where the rattlesnakes, abundant on Kerby Peak, were sleeping!), low-lying manzanita, and some of the best stands of Brewers spruce I know of in the Siskiyous.

            The top of Kerby Peak rewards the hiker with a spectacular 360-degree view. On January 31, 2017, the peak poked above dense white fog, lying thick and unmoving over the circular landscape below us. 

Rounded green peaks humped here and there above the fog-sea. Snow-streaked mountains of the Siskiyou Wilderness rose in the distance. A strong cold wind pushed all around us. We ate lunch

 and admired the view 

until we were ready to escape the wind and head down the trail again.

            After the hike we stopped for coffee at my favorite coffee shop in Grants Pass. Then we all went back to my house for a good New Year's Eve dinner: chili, sauteed portobellos, chocolate eclairs, and champagne. We weren't sure we wanted to stay awake till midnight, but we played a game of Scrabble after dinner, then another. Then it was close enough to the new year that we entertained each other with more games of wit and words until finally it was midnight. We rang in the new year, Ela did a video chat with his daughter, and we went to bed.

            I stretched my well worked body horizontal in my bed and drowsed into sleep without thinking about the goods and the bads of the past year. I didn't need to. It felt at the moment that it had been a good year indeed and that the new year, with such a good start, would be a good one, too.