THE PATHWAY OF LIFE

by Bob Rose

(Shared with permission)

I took off my mitten to peek at the tuft of white hair cupped in my hand and feel its feathery softness beside the hard metal of the gold ring.

I spoke to myself. “Hard cold”

This is what Walter would have muttered, if he had been standing beside me instead of lying buried in ground at the edge of a city. None of us can know where our journey will end or what place we will be left to sleep in. Our last resting place is more likely to be settled through convenience than poetry. But if Walter could have chosen a place this might be it.

At Ragged Falls the ground is quiet. All of its secrets are buried under the freshly fallen white snow in stark contrast to the roaring of the river down below me. That is where I’m going; down the steep slope towards the main section of the falls, to say a prayer for my old friend. I want to give the river what I had been saving, to leave his hair and ring in the kind of place which reminds me of him.

At the brink of the falls, I put my arm out over the rushing icy water and slowly open my hand to the updraft above the river’s wake. It sweeps away his hair, swiftly blowing it up into the sky. I have to stand carefully to keep my balance. I close my hand on his ring and shut my eyes to remember him. Then I throw the ring hard and fast, so it flies far to its rightful place in the falls beneath me.

. . . .

The story of how I came to know an old prospector named Walter began far away from Ragged Falls on a hot August day with clear blue skies.

Walter was 78 years old and living in a tiny room inside a large, decrepit rooming house. His building was on the verge of collapse; held together with patch work repairs and heart break. He had been living in that dump for 6 years.

I had heard Walter was being evicted from the place. The landlord confirmed this was true. He said he liked Walter but had to do this, then to justify his reasoning, he took me down a dimly lit hallway to an apartment door. As it opened, I saw a mountain of goods piled high to the ceiling. The last remaining space in the room provided the faint hope for a sideways maneuver from the door’s entrance to the mountain’s edge. What lay beyond was chaos.

The landlord told me Walter had lived here until it was no longer possible, then moved into another smaller room in exchange for the promise he would clean out his old apartment, so it could be rented. Two months had passed but nothing had changed. Walter was continuing to bring things home and now his new and smaller room was also filling up.

I left the landlord in his office and went down another hallway to find Walter’s new room. At his door I knocked and waited. There was no sound. I knocked again and called out his name, “Walter?” The door slowly cracked open. A slight, white haired man peered out at me. “Who are you and what do you want? “

I started to introduce myself wanting to explain why I was at his door. Glancing above his head I could see one of the walls in his place with stuff stacked to the ceiling. Then the door slowly closed.

I went for a walk to think about this brief encounter. I was sensing his fear mixed up with my own anxiety about being old and living in a place like this. I wondered what these two rooms filled to overflowing meant to this old man and why he had barricaded himself inside each of them in succession. My heart told me it might be important to surround yourself with objects if you felt alone in the world. The things we find and keep can provide us with comfort. Whether this lasts or fades or has to be retrieved again and again, is a deeper mystery. But when all of this is tossed aside, what we gather may have another very practical purpose. It can fill up empty space and protect us from strangers who might try to come through our door.

I remembered the stained sport coat Walter was wearing when he opened the door. This image kept coming back to me. It seemed important. So when I went back to visit three days later, I took a brown pin stripe suit with me. It was a peace offering, a gift to message my respect for the values of his age and generation. I suppose I was in a symbolic frame of mind at the time, wanting to send a message to Walter that he would see. Entering an isolated world can be very difficult. Words have to be used carefully. Words can be misunderstood. I hoped that the suit represented a simple way of showing him … I want to know you.

The second visit was a better one. When the door opened, I held up the brown suit between us and I spoke through it, telling him I had brought him this present. Then I lowered it and smiled at him. The door opened wider. He reached out his hand to take the suit and smiled back with spontaneous pleasure, distracted from me towards what I was giving him.

“I saw this suit and I thought of you.” He looked at me in a way that was different from my first visit.

He breathed heavily. Oh this is… very kind of you… thank you. What’s your name again?

With that introduction our friendship began. I explained again who I was, and why I had come with an offer to help solve his landlord problems. I told him about PARC, what it did and what it believed to be important. As I spoke, I noticed Walter was looking at me with intent, listening closely to everything. At various points he asked a question which I did my best to answer as clearly as I could.

I was looking at him with just as much intent. He was a small man with a slender, strikingly athletic build for someone of his advanced age. He was wearing a soiled white shirt and using tattered suspenders to hold up his trousers. Around his throat he had wrapped a wide red bandanna, tied in the style of an old bandit who has just pulled his mask down. His face was striking: with large, blue green eyes, a large arrow head nose and enormous protruding ears. His hands were small, their skin translucent with age. But this only increased the strength of his overall presence. It did not take long to feel his big spirit and his energy drawing me towards him.

After about 20 minutes Walter said. “Why don’t you come in……….this would be better than talking in the hall.”

I stepped through the doorway and he sat down on the edge of his over- crowded bed. I scanned his sleeping area. There was a big stack of brown paper bags piled at one end, a stack of blankets in various colors and a pile of magazines, books and newspapers. Beside the bed there was a large glass jar filled with urine. Six feet away from the bed, almost within touching distance was the room’s south wall. Jutting out from this was a massive green metal file cabinet with drawers so packed they could not be closed. It was filled with newspapers magazines and packages. On its top was another stack of books and papers, boxed dishes, shoes and clothes of various types piled high to the ceiling.

Further along the wall of this cell-like space was a balanced stack of packed card board and plastic boxes, containing an array of filled plastic bags. They were filled with cans of food, scraps of cloth, nails and screws and tools. Sitting on top of all of this was an old axe and above that hanging from the ceiling, an old kerosene lantern. For some reason there were thin sheets of cheap and broken ply wood covering the floor of the room. I thought it odd until I saw cockroaches moving in and out from under it whenever I shifted my weight and disturbed the wood’s arrangement.

I stood wedged into the space. The one window in the room looked as if it had never been opened. But Walter did not seem too concerned with his claustrophobic home or its crowded and obvious discomforts. He simply looked at me with interest.

He looked at me steadily and said very carefully. “Can you get a truck to move my things? I said yes. Then he asked a second question. This one impressed me as very confidential and important. “Is it a prospector’s truck?”

Sometimes we promise to solve problems without having any recourse or time to form a realistic judgment on how to proceed. We act on instinct, committing ourselves to outlandish schemes, trusting that fate, luck and awareness will take care of the details. This was one of those moments. I thought about a prospector’s truck and what it would look like. It had to be an open pick- up truck. It had to be old, battered and something I could get my hands on without too much trouble, ready for use when I needed it. Then I remembered my carpenter friend’s red Toyota flat bed and its rust ridden sides.

“Yes, I can get a prospector’s truck. Why don’t we go over to PARC? We can have a cup of coffee and something to eat. We can talk about the truck when we get there.”

The next few weeks were busy ones. I focused on making a relationship with Walter and building his trust in me. I noticed how his mood could change. He would be distracted, erratic and irritable on some days, more relaxed and clear headed on other days. I discovered he was using the brown paper bags to help alleviate on and off problems with incontinence. So, I got him some diapers and with some diplomacy persuaded him to try them out. I noticed he was more comfortable when he used them. At this early stage I was visiting him every day, encouraging him to come over to PARC with me. We used these visits to meet the other staff and members of the drop-in. I walked him over for the lunch service and helped him to get into the habit of using this. We ate together and talked. Soon other PARC members became curious about this old man, new to PARC. They dropped by our table to say hello.

It didn’t take long for the social, food and diaper support to encourage a change in his apprehensive mood. As the days went by and his visits to PARC increased, his natural ability as a story teller began to show itself. He had an opinion on everything and he loved discussion. He had an ongoing interest in reading the newspapers and commenting on the news of day or big political events, but the stories of his adventures and his spiritual perspective were the most important part of our conversations together. Walter loved to share the unusual, supernatural or spiritual discoveries he was having. He soon revealed that he was a religious man who listened closely to his inner spiritual voice for guidance and direction.

This was how he explained his residence in Toronto. Walter had come down to the City from his home in Ontario’s northern woods to get some medical care. He had taken the place because it was affordable and conveniently close to the local hospital where he could get surgery to help with his failing bladder. After this, he retreated back to the rooming house so he could complete his recovery. But his plan for a short term stay in the city changed after his surgery. He delayed his return home because a visit from his guardian angels told him to do this. Walter believed in guardian angels and was very forthright about their visits with him and how they guided him. His guardian angels had convinced him to remain in the rooming house. They told him to keep an eye on things and watch over the safety of the place. His guardian angels told him they would let him know when it was time to leave.

His life before coming to the City had been unusual. He had worked in the mines on and off, but only as long as he had to. Most of his life had been spent alone, prospecting in the bush. He had done this for over 40 years. Walter had made money and lost money. He was by nature a treasure seeker, but having looked for gold all his life he had also learned to notice and recover many other things along the way. He was interested in what could be found through close attention to the ground over which he walked. He shook his head as he recalled the young prospectors who had never been able to see anything other than the gold they were looking for.

He mused. “They missed so much because they never looked for anything else. They couldn’t see there are lots of other important things of value under their feet. They didn’t pay attention.”

Then, as if to illustrate his point, he told me how make an edible porcupine stew (seasoned with spruce buds), and how to live safely in the woods without becoming a victim of the forest spirits that haunted them (listen for their voices in the wind). He said that to be a good prospector a man should hunt to live and live to hunt.

The more Walter talked the more of a contradiction he seemed to be. A big part of him was a grand, old, competent frontier gentleman. But the rest of him was in great danger, given to hoarding things and ignoring the misery and isolation it was bringing into his life.

While all of this was taking place the risk he would be evicted had not changed. At first I thought this might be the best way to move him out of the rooming house. Then I considered what would occur if this happened without his consent and changed my mind. There would be no quick fixes to the situation he was caught up in. I had seen those before with people forcibly moved to institutional care and public guardianship. They lost their rights and, in some cases, quickly lost their lives as they went through the trauma of this. I thought that I knew Walter well enough to believe this might happen to him.

He was living a life full of risks at the end of life that had posed plenty of risks. I had to ask myself which was better. Living a life you owned or living a life you that you were forced to live by somebody else because it was safer. It seemed to me that I had to be very careful, but find a way to help Walter sort out how to live more safely. And do this before it was too late for him to make decisions about those changes himself. So I told the landlord I was planning an intervention, was making progress and needed more time. He accepted this.

Walter had gradually come to depend on me. The promise of the prospector’s truck had not been forgotten. It was arranged and waiting for the moment we would use it. In the meantime Walter was continuing to take his meals at PARC, getting out for social support and becoming stronger.

The end of summer was upon us when I arranged a date to borrow the little red truck, to begin moving some things from his living space and a clean- up of his old room. I learned Walter had a rented storage locker just south of his rooming house. I proposed using this to help with the clean-up but I wanted to see it first. I suggested we take some things for storage and choose some other things for disposal. Walter did not want to let anything go but I was hoping he would gradually change his mind as we went forward. In fact, I was hoping the real outcome of this work would eventually be his transition from the rooming house to a better place to live. Helping him release his hoarded things seemed to be a way of preparing Walter for letting go of the rooming house he believed he had to live in.

I made a short visit to the storage facility on my own, to confirm the kind of rental arrangements Walter had there and see what else I could discover about him. The manager was sympathetic. She knew Walter and was more than willing to talk with me about the extent of her business dealings with him, because she worried about him. She told me he was renting 4 storage lockers: two large ones and two smaller ones. In her words, he was a very dedicated customer, and yes, had been continually increasing the scope of his rental space since his first contract was set up 6 years ago. She didn’t think what was going on was right. He was old and should be using his money in other ways than this. She didn’t really know what he was putting into his lockers and even if she did there was nothing she could do about it. I stood there in stunned silence.

A week later I arrived with the prospector’s truck. Walter was in great spirits while I was tense with expectation. What was I going to see in all these storage lockers? How was I ever going resolve this problem? I kept my thoughts to myself and concentrated on Walter’s eagerness to take a drive in my borrowed prospector’s truck.

I was struggling with the question of how to sort out what could and should be done. So I told Walter we needed to inspect the storage facility to support the best possible pack up and relocation of his things. This became the working purpose of our day. I was the worried young man feeling older than my age. Walter was youthful and full of energy. Our check of the storage units was completed over the next couple of hours. But at the end of this everything had changed.

The first storage unit was filled top to bottom with old beds. The second locker had construction tools, floor tiles, paint, and scrap wood of various lengths and types. The third locker was filled with shoes for men, women and children, used clothes, tattered furniture, radios, televisions, a fitness workout treadmill, dolls, toys, games and magazines. The last unit was only partially filled and looked like Walter’s original room, a mish mash of found odds and ends. This was the one he wanted to use. The others would remain untouched.

Walter unlocked and inspected each locker carefully as if he was looking for something he could not find. He explained this storage depot and what it was for. Everything he had found and brought here was to be transported back to his old mining home near Red Lake. The goods he had purchased or rescued from garbage disposal would be given out to the people living up there. They were poor and had little. He was saving everything for them because he knew they were needed. He was going to make their life better.

Walter wasn’t concerned that so many of his things were old, tattered and possibly broken. Repairs could be made to them when he got them back home. He knew everything would be appreciated and used. It was quite a vision. How this old man had managed to gather up and move all of these things was incredible but something else was pulling on me now. When I drove him back home that day, I realized that I was confronting an issue that was deeper than I had bargained for.

I knew I wasn’t going to solve this hoarding problem with a tiny prospector’s truck but I was beginning to understand more about how he lived. Within his collection of objects lay the story of what they represented, the people who would use them one day and the life he had lived. He was still out there prospecting, but with a purpose adapted to the circumstances he found himself in. He was holding on to what had been the principle direction of his life and true to his philosophy he was finding all kinds of valuable things in his travels. But he had not found the gold he was looking for. I thought to myself. People are gold. Relationships are gold. Then I decided to take him camping.

PARC had a fall tradition of providing a wilderness camp experience for up to 50 people at a place called Camp Kandalore. Our host camp had a long and storied history. It had been established as a canoe tripping camp back in the 1950s and was one of the first places to seriously train young people in the art of the canoe. On it back property there was an old log building with a priceless collection of canoe craft, the original Kanawa Canoe Museum. PARC discovered the camp when it was going through a period of hard times. Camp attendance was down. They had no money and we had no money, so we improvised. We traded our labor to the camp to help them renovate. In exchange they provided a camping experience for PARC members that turned out to be so powerful it created a shared tradition for both parties.

This was where I wanted to take Walter. I began to talk to him about it and show him pictures. It was coming up in a couple of weeks. It would be a big deal for him to leave the rooming house for any amount of time. He was still new to PARC and this too was a challenge. To help this along I adjusted how we would get there. We would avoid the long bus ride and the first settling in night of camp. I would make a special trip to take him up in my car. We would visit and stay as long or as short as he liked. We would have the chance to walk in the woods together and paddle a canoe together. It would be kind of like returning home. He would see the forest again.

Walter was nervous about leaving his room and storage lockers untended but I could see he was being drawn towards this adventure. I noticed how his contact with other excited drop-in members was helping this along. Eventually he agreed; he wanted to go to camp, if I could drive him there as offered. I prepared his bags. Then I made sure everything at the camp would be set up to help him feel safe and welcome when he got there.

We arrived at the camp a couple of hours before its second day supper service. We had taken our time driving north; stopping for rest breaks, having a big lunch en route and taking time to reassure him that everything back in the City would remain just as he had left it. By the time we got to the camp his anxiety had faded and he was in great spirits. When we walked into the main lodge a cheer was raised by other PARC members. They came rushing over to greet him. Walter was surrounded by smiles and hand shake greetings. He was beaming in the glow of all of this attention. It is a beautiful thing to be noticed and welcomed.

Walter loved the camp and it fell in love with him. We hiked alone together and with groups of other members. He was still very agile and he wanted to walk every trail. But sometimes the distances or the rough ground tired him. I offered him my arm if he became unsteady on his feet and he took it. The camp staff and camp group were fascinated by him. He was old, but strong and he knew so much that he just naturally took on the role of camp guide. He named the trees he saw and told everyone what was useful or unique about them. He pointed out various plants and how they could be used for food or healing. And he told stories.

The most lasting memory of that first camp took place while we were out on the water in the canoe. He was still a skilled paddler so we took turns in the bow and stern. While we rested he talked and I listened. He described his chance meeting with Grey Owl, his grand encounters with the northern lights and snow shoeing in the winter woods. I was convinced that I was sitting with a man who had lived a special life, a life that should be honored with as much love as I could bring to him. I knew at that moment I was going to bring Walter home to meet my wife and children.

A week after we got back to the city I invited Walter to my home. He looked quite dashing. He was wearing a red bandanna around his throat, his fedora hat and a suit and tie. I remember how gracious and gentle he was as he met and shook hands with my wife and son and daughter. He had three helpings of dinner and just as many rounds of dessert. Afterwards we went out to the front porch to linger for a while before I took him back to his place. I remember him there beside me. We didn’t say anything. We just sat together, smelling the fall air and looking at the tree and garden at the front of the house.

A couple of days later I asked Walter if he was ready to tackle his overcrowded rooms. I told him that I could arrange to get a few of the men he had met at camp to help us out. I was going to rent a van to use with this crew. Many hands would make it easier to get his things out of the rooming house. He said he was ready.

On the morning of that day, I wasn’t really sure how what would happen but I had a plan that I hoped would work. I had explained to a hired six-man crew that we were going to be moving a lot of stuff out of the rooming house next door to PARC and into a storage space. And that it belonged to the old prospector who had shared the recent camp with them. I would pay an hourly rate but they had to agree to keep one condition. They had to promise to make no comment about what they were moving or where it was going. They just had to do the work and trust that everything would work out as it was supposed to.

Our helper crew was directed to clear Walter’s first room. Walter was free to watch over what was taking place. He was a bit anxious but I stayed by his side and helped him along through this. Periodically I took him away for a bit of a private break, so we could retrieve some things from the room he was now living in. He was able to do this and we set these things aside, so they could be placed in the truck last. That way they would be the first things moved into the storage locker once we arrived there.

It took a full four hours to get a load together. Walter did surprisingly well. He was edgy but in good humor. The crew I had hired made the big difference. They liked Walter and he liked them. They were very respectful and they worked carefully and hard. As promised, they kept their thoughts to themselves, except for the occasional eye rolling in my direction. When we finished, I put the crew in a taxi and sent them down to the storage space. Walter climbed up into the van with me and we started south. I looked over at him. He looked very tired.

When we got to the storage facility we began the unloading process. This was harder because the walk into the locker was much further than it was from his rooms to the truck. So we used hand carts. I set up a chair for Walter at the locker so he could watch what was coming in. We brought the things from his room in first and put them near the locker entrance door. Then I began to send selected items from the old room. I tried to pick what looked important and left the rest. We did this for hour. Every 20 minutes I stopped the unloading and slipped back to the locker to see how Walter was holding up.

At the end of an hour Walter looked up at me with very tired eyes and asked,

Are we finished yet?

I said,

Yes, we have just a few more things to come. You wait here for me and I will bring them in for you.

I went back to truck. It was still more than half full of full of goods. I picked the best things I could find and loaded up the dolly truck to take it back to him. Then I closed and locked the truck back door. We were done. I paid everyone in the crew. I explained that Walter had moved what he wanted and we were now finished. Then I thanked everyone for their patience and their support and sent them home. Then I grabbed the last dolly load and wheeled it into the locker. Walter had fallen asleep in his chair outside the locker space. I let him sleep on for a few minutes and then I wheeled the dolly past him and into the locker to unload. The sound of my movements woke him up. I told him that we were finished, that he had done a great job and now I could take him home. Walter gave me another tired smile as I unloaded the last of his goods and locked the door. As we walked back to the truck I wondered what would happen. I was holding my breath. I was gambling that he would not ask to look inside the truck to see if it was empty.

When we arrived at the truck, I knew that it was over. I knew that he wanted it to be over. He climbed into the truck without a word and I drove him home. He thanked me for my help and we said goodbye. I waved as I drove off. I was torn between turmoil and peace as I headed north to deliver the last of this load to a city dumping station. I had to tell myself that I was doing what Walter wanted me to do and what had to be done before he could go forward to a happier place. But I also asked myself if I could do this in my own life? Could I hang on to only the best things and let everything else go?

We never said anything more about that day because we got busy doing other things. I was encouraging Walter to let me move him to a safer home. But this was difficult. He had lived in that old building for a long time and even though it was a dreadful place it felt safe and familiar for him. We were talking and looking but it was taking time to get him ready to leave. Still, we were doing other important work together. We had cleaned up his room to make it a bit more livable. And he had stopped paying his rent on his storage lockers. He gave me written permission to look after his affairs there. Now communications on the rent owing and the future of the lockers were going through me. One month of arrears had turned into two which turned into three. I knew that we were headed towards a notice that would say the lockers would be confiscated for unpaid rent and that this was coming soon. Walter knew it too but it did not concern him. He didn’t want to talk about that place anymore. He was walking away from his storage depot and letting me help him do that.

Halloween arrived. I invited Walter over to have supper, to help give out candies to the children coming to the door. We sat together on the porch again and he put the treats in their bags. He had a comment for every costume. I remember that he smiled a lot that night and I thought about how we all put on different disguises to make our way through life.

Then, as chance would have it, there was big trouble in his rooming house. In early January its heating system began breaking down. I was very busy with some other work that kept me away from the building for 3 cold days. I discovered what was going when I found Walter lying ill in his bed. I was so angry with the landlord for concealing the problem I wanted to kill him.

The hospital told me Walter had pneumonia. When you are old pneumonia can make you very ill. But fortunately, Walter was a tough old boy. He was able to bounce back from this crisis. As he recovered, he told me his guardian angels had visited him and told him he must not go back to his old room. I nodded and smiled and said I agreed with them. His stay in the rooming house was finally over. It was time to move on.

When Walter was well enough we left the hospital and chose a small retirement home together. It provided him with a room and a meal service. It was a nice-looking place although it lacked the kind of characters appealing to his social interests. But he still had PARC for this. So, he adjusted. He asked me to manage his financial affairs and I took discreet steps to change my relationship with him. I resigned as his worker and fully took on the role I had been really having with him, family.

We still had some years to go before our time together ended. He continued to gather or purchase objects of interest from time to time, but he was more selective now. Since I was looking after his money, I could support him whenever he found something he was compelled to acquire. He liked to collect old kerosene lanterns. Whenever he picked these up, he gave them to me so I could hang them from the ceiling in my office. He found old cross cut saws which he insisted I store for him. He loved old books. One of them was called Pathway to Life, published in 1888. It was filled with pictures and strange chapters like: the importance of taking aim or the bravery that confronts steel and the bullet. Walter loved that book. One night he brought it with him to dinner. He knew my wife was a book binder and he wanted to arrange for her to repair and rebind it for him. She did a lovely job and Walter was delighted, but after he looked at it he handed it back to me so I could keep it for him.

Walter was 83 when he made his last trip to Camp Kandalore. He was still determined to walk its trails like we had done at every camp since the first one together. We made our last hike on the day before camp ended, walking arm in arm down the now familiar trail to the river and on to the back quarter of the camp where the cliffs lay. Walter relied on me to steady his balance all the time now. I am not sure he really noticed this because it was familiar and he was so happy to be there. I was happy too. But I had to stop more to rest. Supporting him was hard work. When we turned around to make our return trip to the lodge the afternoon was waning. The trip back was slow going because we were tiring. When we got back to the river, we headed up the slight incline to where the trail broke off in two directions. The right trail went back to the main lodge and supper. The left trail went up a steep hill through a series of switch backs leading to a look-out site. I stopped so we could both rest. We found a big log and sat down together. After a 10-minute break I helped Walter back up to his feet and started us on towards the main lodge trail.

Suddenly Walter pulled on my arm and stopped walking. He shouted at me.

No. I don’t want to go to the lodge. I want to go to the top of the mountain.

He pulled away from me and started up steep hill trail. I called after him

Walter, stop. It is too far and too hard a trail. We can’t get up there and back before dark.

He continued on, waving his arms back at me to show he wasn’t having what I was saying. He shouted at me again.

No, I am going up the mountain. I don’t care what you do.

I stood still watching him go. I waited, hoping he would stop. But he continued on, even though he was beginning to stagger with exhaustion during the ascent. I waited another minute but still he kept on going. I ran after him. As I closed on him I asked him to stop. He ignored me. Then I took hold of his arm and pulled him to a stop. I let go and wheeled in front of him.

This is wrong Walter. I know you feel strong but I am tired. And it is not safe to go alone. We have to go back.

Then Walter hit me, with a blow to my chest that hit me directly over my heart. I staggered back in shock. He staggered back too. We both were dancing with the same struggle to hold steady on our feet while turning away from each other. I was struggling. Walter was shaking. But there we stood, facing each other and holding our ground. I wasn’t going to give way and neither was he. Nothing was said. I only recall how we stared at each other, as if we were trying to exchange places.

A crow flew over, its call breaking the silence between us. We looked up at the same time, watching it fly by, and maybe wanting to fly with it. When it had passed our eyes looked back down at the ground around our feet. I glanced up at Walter and knew we were both thinking. In that moment I saw Walter beginning to turn around, away from that part of the trail headed toward the top of the hill. He turned slowly, like an old dancer, and then he took a few steps back down the hill and stopped.

He was waiting for me to come down to him. He was waiting and holding out his left arm for me to grab on to. When I reached to take his arm, I felt a great wave of relief sweep over me. But this was not created by our restored physical connection, or whatever responsibility for his safety I held in trust. It was what he said, as he spoke to me over his shoulder, that changed everything.

It can wait on another day. Come on.

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