I am betrayed. My boss changes the posted schedule without telling me. I am hyperventilating at work. It is Saturday. I write an email, leave a voice mail. Cancel the trip to Colorado two times? Put in one month's notice and work per diem in Seattle? What do I have to loose?
Being home each and every morning. Waking up to goats, dogs, cats, horses.
Tony is sleeping in the loft bed in the barn. Millionair daughter, Morgan, and her guy, Craig, are sleeping in our bed in the house. Only nobody's sleeping. I am waking Tony up. He climbs down the ladder. I wave my hands around my head telling him our trip might be cancalled. I shove my chair backwards and say I'm quitting and taking the winter off. We'll use our savings. Tony sits naked on the big tack box. Both border collies stare at one then the other of us from under the computer table.
We climb one after the other into our nest but I can not sleep and climb down again to talk to the computer. Finally I climb back up but the shouting inside my head startles me awake again and again. I spin on my perch just under the ceiling. This is my birthday.
In the light of day, I find out, Craig and Morgan did not sleep. The coyotes right outside the window. The Milky Way painting a stripe across the sky. The pugs barking and growling.
We all drink coffee and eat Danish Kringle from Larsons, the bakery where Morgan worked when she was eighteen. Where the woman backed right over her apple red, Honda scooter. I open the presents. Tony gives me the spoken word CD by Annie Gallup. There are twelve organic chocolate bars from Johanna. Cathryn has sent three books: Half the Sky, The Sharper Your Knife the Less you Cry and the Widowers Tale. I have seven artichokes blooming neon purple from Mary's garden. Morgan has bought me an etching from a well known artist living in prison. It is of a tall, lean horse dancing in place. There are also socks and a black, cotton belt stitched with pockets and grommets for riding tools or work keys. There are two chocolate bars from Morgan. I open my presents sitting on the wooden birthday bench. It is already hot and there is not a breath of breeze.
Craig is only here for my birthday. He flew up for the weekend. He does not own hiking shoes. He wears his Birkenstocks. Craig was born in Las Angeles.
Nothing bodes well.
Morgan resigns driving to Craig. He turns the air condioner on. It is nine o'clock in the morning. Eventually we pass through Cle Elum, we make our way to Roslyn. There''s a Sunday market. I would have stopped if this was not the sixty year old birthday hike. From the back seat I say nothing. We pass through Randal even though we don't really know that Randal exists. We find Cooper Lake. I do not tell anyone how lucky we are to still be on paved roads. I catch a glimpse of a straight river running out of mountains. Even though this is a first time hike, we find the trail head.
Two back packers are coming out. They say that it is still and stuffy in the forest. It is one hundred in Yakima I say. We all look stunned.
And that's pretty much it. We walk and we walk. The dust raises just from our footsteps but there are streams to cross, logs to balance. The river down below is crystal clear with the aqua marine carried from the melting glaciers. The evergreens tower. Tony and I have not seen so many Doug Firs since we moved over a year ago. We walk up gray knobs of bald heads and head back down searching bright green undergrowth for wild ginger.
We walk and we walk. The sound of running water up around the bend passes into the sound of water from behind us. Strings of back packers cross our path but in the opposite direction. Still we walk on with snatches of a glacier between two trees, no, now it's gone like it never was. Until, there is a taller rock knob and we go around and beside it, crossing behind it and there is the lake.
It looks like Goat Lake my daughter says. Well, all these Glacier Lakes look kind of similar. The water, my ankles are numb. Craig is yelling. I say we can do it Criag. Oh, you think so Penny? I change into my bathing suit. The boy border collie is already swimming loops in the water.
The bottom is silt. I sink up to my ankles. Every step sends a cloud of silt through the crystal water. I cut the bottom of my toe on sharp rocks I can not see. My ankles ache and I am pushing to rush up a rock, let my feet melt.
It takes five trips. A little deeper each time, lowering my entire body temperature. Then finally I fling myself along the skin of the lake, glacier water. The freezing temperature rips my breath into jagged bits and pieces. It is not until the next swim that I can get my head under, my hair soaked and baptized one more time at the age of sixty.
Tony and Morgan only make it up to their toes. The boy border collie, Craig and I are the only ones to make it in on my birthday.
When Morgan and Craig leave tonight, Tony and I will stand by the gate to close it after them. The sky will be gray and pink with sunset. Tony and I will be stiff and slow walking back to the house. I will stand on the porch watching the red tail lights moving away from me down the mountain until I can not see them any more. I do not know what is in store for me, perched between Table Mountain and the Ellensburg grasslands, and my millionair daughter. It will not become clear until we are both done walking.
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