Looking up on Katahdin

A few years ago, I was on Katahdin, somewhere a bit above the middle of the Dudley Trail. My body suddenly did something unusual, but not for the first time—just the first time on a mountain. My eyes kept pulling upward. My neck wanted to tilt in their direction. I’d fight it for a moment, force my gaze down at the trail just long enough, then my eyes would bounce back up to the sky again. It wasn’t dramatic in the way people imagine medical things to be. No music swelling, no heroic moment. Just me, quietly negotiating with my own nervous system while descending a mountain. I took my time on the Dudley Trail, feeling out the placements and angles of the smaller rocks while using the larger ones to simply guide my whole body down, as if hugging it or making it my own version of a safe, slow-motion slide. As much as you’d probably like to disagree, it’s the Chimney Pond Trail that made me trip. In front of others, but no damage was to come. Truly the slowest hike of my life, but the turtle survives as usual. I’m realizing resilience isn’t always loud or inspiring. Sometimes it’s just quiet persistence in weird circumstances.