Horizontal Hopes

I’d been climbing that damned hill nearly every day for two years. Sometimes I found things to eat along the way, but usually getting to the top was the best I could do. I had tried to climb in the morning in order to avoid the rain, but not too early else all I would see would be mist.

Once on top, I would sit down on a rock. And look. I would scan all the way around the horizon. Flat as it was, there was never anything there but a band of blue. But I needed to check, mostly for my own sanity. Holding a bit of hope in my hands was most often all I carried back down that damned hill.

I suppose you might say that that hill was the closest thing I had to a friend those two years. I usually thought of it as my enemy. I didn’t want to get near it because of the exhaustion and pain it always caused me. But it did lift me up and out of the sand and soil where I had attempted to make a life. That drudgery was punctuated midday by putting down my primitive tools and walking away, into the jungle and then up the path. I’d worn that path in the dirt and rock with my own two feet. No one else’s had touched it. Yes, this was an exclusive relationship – this hill and me.

As I said, wrapping my arms around one boulder after another, one tree limb after another, one tuft of grass after another, I got down to the intimate level with that hill every day. I knew the crevices where it was wet and the stones where it stiffened my resolve. That small ember of hope was blown into a redness with my heavy breathing as I got to the summit.

Then that hill would let me down.

It was unfair to blame the hill for the lack of anything sighted out at sea. After all, it had nothing to do with it, but there was no one else there to yell at, to kick, to punch in frustration. Tears would fall, and, winded, I would apologize for my behavior. Then I would climb back down, through the same slits in the rock and soil, the same heavy, moss-laden branches.

Then, yesterday, everything changed!

In the north, as I was facing away from the midday glare of the sun, I saw a blip on the horizon! That horizon was about 30 miles away so what I saw must be big. Something was sticking out of the sea and it would move. I hoped it would move toward me.

Of course I did not have binoculars or a spyglass. One does not grab binoculars when one’s own sailing vessel is going down in a storm. So I had to depend on my own eyesight, which – for my age – was pretty good. I couldn’t make out details. I couldn’t distinguish smokestacks from masts, but there would be nothing other than a large ship to appear out at sea at this distance.

So, I waited.

By evening, the blip had not changed. I squinted and I rubbed and I gazed as forcefully as I could out at the horizon, but the blip remained the same size. And its heading did not change. As night began, I was ready to touch torch to timber, and light a bonfire to signal them to come to me. But it was in vanity. Unless I saw it moving, I had to assume that they were moored there, fishing perhaps, or grounded on some hidden reef. The ember ready for the torch became an ember burning in my gut, a painful fire of worry.

I climbed back down. I had not prepared any kind of camp or shelter up there, so there was only one safe place to sleep the night. As if I could sleep. But I ate, drank, refilled my canteen snd coconut containers, and tried to rest.

As soon as light touched the eastern sky, I was up again. I carried extra food and water, and a blanket for warmth. I might have to stay the next night up there, I reasoned.

The climb was not arduous at all. I seemed to fairly fly over the stones and between the trees. Such are the effects of anticipation, angst and adrenaline. As soon as I crested the first ridge, I gazed out to sea, beginning on the north bearing from the day before. Most of me hoped that the blip was not there, but closer by on a different bearing, east or west.

My hopes were dashed. There is was, the same blip as had been revealed almost twenty-four hours earlier. I reached out my arm and measured with finger and thumb the height of the blip. I compared in my mind the separation of digits today with what there’d been on first sighting.

The height had doubled! I measured again. Yes, it was taller. Now began the watching, waiting and worrying all over again. I tried to pray that ship to my shore. I imagined a heavy line, extending from the hilltop, out across the beach, into the water, snd to its bow. A heavy line which I could pull on to bring it through the waves.

Noontime came, judging from the sun. I was glad for the blanket to protect me. I had resisted the urge to measure over and over again. Now, deciding that the time was right and that maybe six hours had passed, I stood and extended my arm again.

It was hard to say. Maybe it was a little larger, but I could not be sure. I would have to wait longer.

Evening came. Another eight hours had passed and I was pressed to go back down the hill. Before making that decision, I needed to measure and then decide again about the bonfire. I stuck out my arm.

Nothing. Nothing had changed. Well, nothing had changed in its height, but in the evening sun I could see – finally! - that it held masts with furled sails, not smokestacks. A change had come, at least, and I could process this. I could analyze this. In as many ways as I could imagine, masts were to be preferred to stacks anyway. An engine-powered ship would be a cargo ship or an immense cruise liner. Either way it would not have been looking to abeam or ahead for any signs of land. It would rely on its charts and stay away from any known islands. A sailing ship, though, might be looking for a quiet place to drop anchor, to spend a few romantic days in an isolated location, swimming in the sea, enjoying freshly caught fish with a fire on the beach. And it would be carefully watching for reefs.

I knew that there were reefs hereabouts. I’d seen them on my own charts, long before the storm took me down. But not knowing what island I occupied, I had no idea where this land’s edges were and what hidden traps it may have laid in the waters roundabout. So I worried all the more.

The ship with its masts was still probably twenty miles to sea. That would be a long way to swim, and even a long way for a raft to traverse. And a raft’s occupant would be unable to see my island except perhaps a mirage or mountain against its horizon view. If the ship were stuck would its crew abandon it and row off in the wrong direction?

I climbed back down, got into my bed, and tried again to sleep.

The next morning, on the third day, I packed more food and water and began climbing. The island had long ago begun to seem like a grave to me, a tomb, a place where I would die and eventually rot into the ground. These thoughts weighed on me as I climbed carefully to the summit again.

The previous day I had watched that blip for probably fourteen or fifteen hours. Other than the slight movement at the beginning of the day, it had not changed. I was thinking about all sorts of paths into the future as I pushed from rock to rock, wishing some of these damned obstacles would roll away to make my climb easier.

I came out on top again, winded and worried. I forced myself to wait to look to sea until I’d come to my sitting place and set down my burdens on the rock. Then I turned to look out over the waters.

The blip was not there. Shit! Where have they taken it, I thought? Those demons, where have they taken my only hope? I rotated my gaze, first down to the beach, still seeing nothing. No, no life boat there, no footprints in the sand, no chests full of fresh food. Agh!

And so, dejected beyond any point of dejection over the preceding two years, I slumped onto my seat. I put my head in my hands. I wondered silently what I would do next: return to my daily hopeful climb, build my own raft, retreat into eating and drinking until there was no more food?

After a few minutes I rallied my strength, just as I had had to do to get to this summit every day. I stood back up and gazed out to the north. Maybe my eyes had played tricks on me. Maybe there would be a ship there after all. No, still nothing.

I turned slowly around to the right, first northeast, then east, then continued on. It was hard to see in those directions because of the brilliance of the morning sun on the waves. I continued on toward the south.

Then I stopped. In the bay’s water below me, hiding in the calm lee of the island, was the ship! On the beach was the raft. On the sand were footprints.

And then there were two men, one on the right and one on the left, standing on either side of the life raft. They gazed to their left and right, then put binoculars to their eyes and gazed up to the hill – my hill. Then they waved!

I was saved.