thoughts on trails and love, naturally

Hiking to Skakavac Waterfall yesterday - at 98 meters the tallest in Bosnia and the second tallest in Europe - I had this moment on the trek out of the forest when I really wanted to quit. The trail had been gradually inclining for a while, and the slow but steady elevation gain was taking a toll on me. The hike to the waterfall included a mile straight uphill on a mountain road, then two hours or two and a half to reach the waterfall itself. I'd hit that fatigued point when things - climbs - that were relatively easy a few hours ago felt overwhelmingly difficult. Ryan and Ana - my partners in crime and coworkers - were waiting 25 yards ahead of me. I called out to them to go ahead. I'd catch up after catching my breath and hydrating.

I stood in the center of the three-foot wide trail, trees lining my path, moss covered fallen logs in the woods to my right, and a jagged rock face to my left. The sun shone bright and hot above, but the wooded trail provided shade. Rays of sunshine caught on the leaves and limbs and danced on the earthen path. A slow breeze shuffled through the forest every few minutes. I took it all in, trying to mentally get back in the game, and I found myself thinking of Zander.

Two of my favorite memories with Zan are on trails. I half-laughed out loud as that thought occurred to me. His relationship with hiking is lukewarm, at best. But forests and mountains have played a central role in our story, the path (so to pun) of our relationship. The first of these memories is climbing Cotopaxi in Ecuador to the base camp. I spent all morning - and the night before - consumed with nervous anticipation. I couldn't wait for that challenge, the view, the experience, the photos, the story - but I was terrified of the altitude. And then we were there, drinking that pretty gross tasting tea that may or may not have been legal in our country, keeping our fingers crossed that local folklore of the tea's power to rapidly adjust the body to extreme altitudes was true. Believing in it all. And then after all that waiting and preparing, the bus stopped, and we hopped out, spotting the base camp high above us, and we started walking.

Within minutes most of our group had passed us, and my steps were only slowing. I felt like I couldn't breathe, and every step felt like running up a few dozen stairs, at least. Zan paused when I paused. He told me we could go back, but I so didn't want to. We had a goal. So he encouraged me. One step or two steps at a time was just fine. It started to snow, then really snow. In hindsight it's romantic, that image of us creeping six inches or a foot at a time through a snow storm on the tallest volcano in Ecuador. And that's how we walked - in slow motion - to the base camp. Zan got me there. And we made it up there together.

The other memory is our now legendary (to us) ridge hike in the Andes - on that same trip, just days after the volcano. Our guesthouse owner found the hike when we was 8 years old, and so we thought it would be a perfect hike to introduce us to the region. We turned left at the cows and right at the hollowed out tree and went straight into the field where sheep graze on the towering hillside pastures. We followed a hand-drawn map - one of which hangs in our living room now. That map said we'd come out onto a ridge, but we didn't expect the foot-wide, death-taunting-us-from-either-side ledge on which we actually found ourselves.

Zan was terrified, for good reason, and I was high on adrenaline. We talked about going back the way we came, but that felt just as precarious as going forward. I said let me go ahead, a few feet at a time, to test the path, to find sure footing, to figure out some safe points to rest. And Zan trusted me - despite his total and complete fear of heights, he said okay. When I called back with updates and encouragements, he trusted me and stepped where I stepped.

A half mile later, we nearly collapsed on a wide, flat plateau, the sheer cliffs quickly becoming a memory. The view blew us away, peaks for as far as the eye could see, the sky seemingly just beyond our fingertips. We made it across. And we did it together.

I can only hope our shared life is always like the memories of those hikes in Ecuador. There will be moments - big and small, some seemingly beatable and others that feel insurmountable - when one or both of us will feel as though we can't breathe or that we're stuck, unable to move forward and incapable of going back. I hope we allow ourselves time to breathe, unconcerned of who's passing us by, careless if we're the last to reach the next place. I hope we sink into those moments, giving ourselves a few moments of rest, time to take deep breaths deep enough to quiet the fear and calm the uncertainty. I hope that we're always there for each other, trusting and knowing that something stunning, something unexpectedly wonderful is ahead - that it's worth the fight to get to the other side. Together.

Standing on that trail near Skakavac, I finally started hiking again, taking it one or two steps at a time.