The fog was just loosening its hold on the craggy summit as Sarah and I reached the top of Monument Mountain. As forest thinned to clearing, rays of sunlight reached down to welcome us. A few other early-morning hikers were already there, talking quietly or just gazing out at the Berkshire panorama gradually revealing itself. Sarah walked ahead toward the ledges, while I stopped, caught my breath, and looked at the jumble of quartzite that had been thrust up from the valley millions of years before. Blocks, boulders, pocks, grooves, and jagged edges sat in front of me, evidence of the upheaval and erosion that had created this quiet place. I picked my way over it all to join her.
A decade earlier, Sarah had introduced me to this mountain shortly after we first met, sharing a sacred place with me. We walked it many times together, our friendship immediate and strong. But this hike was our first trip back to the mountain in more than a year. We now walked carefully on the rocks and trails we had come to know so well, heading to a familiar cliff-side seat just wide enough for two. The only way to reach it is to step down from the summit ridge onto the knuckles of rock below. Feet alone aren’t adequate here, but a sideways scramble with a deep breath and both hands allows access to the metamorphic slab that protrudes like a bench from the mountainside. With well-practiced movements, we were soon tucked below the ridge.
We settled in and shared our morning meal of dried fruit and granola. Belly full, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the rock behind me, feet dangling over the Housatonic River Valley. I tipped my head back, chin into the breeze, then opened my eyes to the now-blue sky. Raptors climbed and circled as we talked of everyday things like work and dreams and what we’d done last weekend. Laughter mixed with long moments of comfortable quiet, and we once again became friends sitting at the summit of a mountain.
Twenty minutes passed. Maybe more. It’s not the amount of time that I remember most. We floated into our old mountaintop ritual: Sarah took a well-worn book out of her pack to read out loud. The paper cover was torn slightly and bent at the corners. When she held the book with her left hand and began flipping through the pages with her right, I looked at the marks on her wrists. It had been a quick hike with just 720 feet of elevation gain, but her return followed a climb out of a murky place she thought she’d never leave. And, she had asked me to share this day with her. Every one of our footsteps was planted in homecoming.
Sarah found the section of the book that she had chosen, and she read Herman Melville’s words:
And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces…
I could hear her perfectly. There were no other hikers’ voices, no planes overhead, no dogs barking on the lower trails. There was just her voice, sometimes cracking, sometimes strong and clear. Her hair blew. She looked up and held my eyes for just a few seconds as she paused in the middle of one of the passages. Her mouth turned up at the corners, just enough to reveal a smile. Then she focused back on the page and continued reading beneath the warming sun.