Going Home

I turn over for what must be the tenth time in as many minutes. The ground here is uneven and greets every attempt at comfort with a new root, or a small rock, or a pebble, or a hollow. I cannot fall asleep; I cannot find the position that might allow me to. Or perhaps I have slept, perhaps I have stretched my legs a little on sleep’s surface, I don’t know, but I do know that now I am very much awake.

So, back to the drawing board. I ease my way around again, slowly, aware of Rick not quite snoring but definitely—and happily, I gather—asleep only a foot from me. He must be used to this mountainous treatment. Even so, I don’t want to wake him. The sleeping bag rustles as I maneuver onto my back only to find the ground true to its mission.

There’s no way. I give up and open my eyes onto dark, cold air.

We’re two to a tent and there are three tents in our little camp. Rick and I in this one. Linda and Jeff in another. Jim and Eva in a third. It is very still. The earlier winds asleep, too. I listen to this stillness. There is not a sound from either of the other tents. It seems they are all asleep, all but me used to these rugged.

I can hear the soft gurgle of a brook about twenty feet away, awake just like me. And a sigh through the pines and the tall grass surrounding the camp, barely strong enough to gently flap the side of the tent.

It’s cold this high up. I imagine I would see my breath were it a little lighter, but all I see even though I strain with eyes wide open is black tinged with only a suggestion of a light, black eased by whatever starlight seeps through canvas. Not enough to see my breath though, and now something hard has crept in and settled under my left shoulder and I ease over onto my side to escape it. Not successfully.

A question crosses my mind, or more like one of those shadows that questions cast. Have I dreamed this? Recently? I close my eyes to sink again in hope of finding out, but I am too awake to sink and I remain all aware on the surface, like a bobber, and a frustrated one at that. The ground is too hard, too hostile, too there, and I can find neither dream nor sleep. So I give up on sleep all the way and slowly unzip the bag and ease my way out of it. Out into the cold, into the very cold now.

I rummage around as silently as I can—keeping an eye Rick to make sure I’m not waking him—and I find my jeans and sweater and boots and parka, and I manage to dress and leave the tent reasonably quietly. Quietly enough, as it happens for Rick only stirs and mumbles something as I re-zip the entrance flap but he doesn’t wake up.

Once outside, I stand all the way up and stretch. Here I can see my breath. There’s no moon, but at nine thousand some feet the stars are bright and things are quite visible.

I look up. They are everywhere, the stars, and as palpable as the ground I stand on. Suns, I think, they’re every one of them a distant sun.

I’m not sure what I’m doing here, dead in the middle of the night, alone, awake. I listen again: just the brook now, the trees and grass all done sighing, or perhaps holding their breath wondering what I’m about.

I’m not sure what I’m about either, so I look around. Three tents, five sleeping humans. And up again at the stars, the brilliant, uncountable star.

At the edge of the camp, not far from the brook, I spot my walking stick leaning against a boulder. I walk over to it, pick it up, and then I know what I’m doing. I head out of camp. ...