Simplicity

August 12, 2019

The nearly two weeks since we returned from Pennsylvania have been quiet. We’ve read all the paperwork the hospital gave us on follow-up care and watched, on the internet, as the bills rolled in, the insurance company bobbing and weaving, paying some, batting others away. We’re braced for the verdict on all that. We’ve stayed close to home, counting our blessings, which are abundant. The kids have been calling, we’ve talked to the grandsons. They all pick us up, give value to our lives.

We’ve gone as far as the supermarket, several supermarkets, trying to follow the doctors’ advice and shop “healthy,” avoiding processed foods and high-salt stuff. The other day I noticed an old guy—he looked old, with his “Retired Army” cap—in the checkout line in front of us, buying Canadian bacon, which is supposed to be better for you than regular bacon. He also bought two sixpacks of Coke, supposed to be bad for you.

He’s lasted this long, I’ll let him have the Coke. It then occurred to me that I may be older than him. I don’t wake up reminding myself how old I am, but I’m no young buck among the senior citizens sitting or dozing in doctors’ waiting rooms.  I’m one of them. A member of a non-exclusive club. I’m back to running with our local group, the THuGs, but not kidding myself. I hear and feel the wheezing with every breath as the rest of the pack gallops off ahead. It’s not the wheezing of a 60-something.

In spite of our creakiness and our prescriptions, the choking-hot August grind has us looking to escape northern Virginia again. We can follow, or try to follow, our healthy meal plan somewhere else. The urge to get out of town got me started on this weekly homily when we left on our “Route 66” road trip last summer. Medical stuff suddenly got in the way.

We’re looking to the end of that. The woman who leads the yoga class I’ve been attending, twisting her body in ways that hurt me just to watch, asked about Sandy’s recovery. She had a stroke when she was 21. She’s now 41. And here she is.

And here we are, in wonder at that. Meanwhile, we’re thinking about our next trick. We’re on tap to attend the wedding of one of Sandy’s nephews in a small town in northwest Georgia next month. The route also will allow a detour to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Something else on our list—to visit Springer, maybe hike a mile, and wonder whether someday I could stick with it to the other end, in northern Maine.

The wedding is the destination, but the pure certainty of a deep-forest mountain trail like the AT draws us powerfully now, when we need certainty. When I step onto a trail, my mind is full of the everyday program of our lives: money and bills, aches and pains, questions about the future—ours, our kids’ futures, the country’s future. Others wrestle with complicated questions of life, belief, what comes next.

The trail asserts itself quickly. Only the rocks and roots, the thorns, the steep climbs and switchbacks matter. That is the simplicity of nature, which is the simplicity of God: no ambiguity, no doubt, no lingering, nagging, tentative questions. The mental effluvia flushes away. If it doesn’t you may choose your next footfall badly and open a gash in your leg or your head.

When you leave the trail your mind is remarkably clear. The petty cares and the large ones you carried to it are gone, or in a good place. You may not remember them for a day or so. The forest trail doesn’t care about your problems, your big thoughts, your schedule for the rest of the week. It doesn’t care about your bloodied knee. It still will be waiting for runners and hikers in a thousand years.

Whoa—that was a digression, but for me unavoidable, defining a private, driven mission hidden in a family obligation. So on to the wedding. A long drive (airfares are too high), a chance for Sandy to see family, then a bonus stop to see friends in Atlanta and another visit with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons in South Carolina. The five-year-old will have started school. We’ll hear how it’s going.

That’s the looking ahead. We never think about the goodbyes and the drive home afterward, which will bring us sharply back to attention to all the important stuff we had left behind, the stuff I would leave behind if I were hiking the AT. Sandy is getting her blood pressure checked twice a week.  I have another appointment this week—the urologist this time, to talk about surgery. I’ve got the pulmonary guy the following week. Put it on my tab, I tell them.

The anticipation is happy right now. We’re OK. Prayer reminds us that despite a few course adjustments, we’re truly free. I still feel pretty good among the other oldsters in the waiting rooms. Meanwhile, the AT crosses I-66 at a trailhead near Markham, just 50 miles from the house. I’ve run it both north and south from there a bunch of times. May get out there again and get my brain cleared.