June 28: Stopped Talking, This Land is Your Land, Sugarloaf

Arthur encounters a stranger . . .

He was standing with his back to Arthur watching the very last glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon.  He was tallish, elderly and dressed in a single long gray robe.  When he turned, his face was thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind, the sort of face you would happily bank with.  But he didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise.

Eventually the last rays of the sun vanished completely, and he turned.  His face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur looked for the source of the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small craft of some kind--a small Hovercraft, Arthur guessed.  It shed a dim pool of light around it.

The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed.

"You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said.

"Who . . . who are you?" stammered Arthur.

The man looked away.  Again a look of sadness seemed to cross his face.  

"My name is not important," he said.

He seemed to have something on his mind.  Conversation was clearly something he felt he didn't have to rush at.  Arthur felt awkward.

"I . . . er . . . you startled me . . ." he said, lamely.

The man looked round to him again and slightly raised his eyebrows.

"Hmmm?" he said.

"I said you startled me."

"Do no be alarmed.  I will not harm you."

Arthur frowned at him.  "But you shot at us!  There were missiles . . ." he said.

The man gazed into the pit of the crater.  The slight glow from Marvin's eyes cast very faint red shadows on the huge carcass of the whale.

The man chuckled slightly.

"An automatic system," he said and gave a small sigh.  "Ancient computers ranged in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark millennia, and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data banks.  I think they take the occasional potshot to relieve the monotony."

He looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science, you know."

"Oh . . .  er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to find the man's curious, kindly manner disconcerting.

"Oh yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again.

Some things leave you speechless in life.  The Grand Canyon.  Times Square.  The Pacific Ocean.  The Atlantic Ocean.  Yosemite.  The aurora borealis.  The first time you watch Star Wars:  A New Hope.  (Okay, that may just be me.)  And encountering a stranger on a supposedly dead planet.  All these things can rob you of the ability to speak.

This afternoon, my son and I went on an adventure.  I told him last night that we were going to climb a mountain together.  He was a little skeptical, but he went along with it.  After I was done with work, I picked him up, and, while my wife went grocery shopping, we hiked Sugarloaf Mountain in Marquette together.

This was not the first time the he'd climbed Sugarloaf.  Several years ago, when he was quite young, he climbed it.  However, he didn't remember the experience at all.  But when we first started up the trail, he said something like, "Oh, yeah, I think I remember this rock," looking at a huge boulder in the path.  It was my turn to be skeptical.

Now, climbing Sugarloaf does not require a Sherpa guide, crampons, or bottles of oxygen.  (Well, when we got to the top, I could have used a little jolt of O2, but that's just me.)  It's a fairly well-worn hike, with stairs and railings to help you up the steepest parts. 

When we started, right near the base, my son and I started singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land"--"This land is your land.  This land is my land,  From California, to the New York Island."  Again, we had just started, so we had plenty of air as we crooned--"From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream wa-a-a-a-ter.  This land was made for you and me!"  We were having a great time.

And then things got real.  The tree roots and rocks became a little harder to traverse, and the incline became steeper.  My son was sucking his water down like he was crossing the Gobi.  "You might want to save some of that for the top," I warned him.  He didn't listen.

Up and up we went, and the whining started.  "How much longer?" he huffed.  Eventually, he was saying things like, "Just go on ahead and leave me here for the bears" and "I hate all these bugs" and "My legs are attacking me" and "God, is that you?" and "I see a tunnel of light."  I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

When we finally reached the summit, he threw himself down on the closest bench and said, "I'm not going back down.  I'm going to sleep."  Eventually, he opened his eyes and looked around, at Lake Superior on one side, and the vast green of the forest on the other.  "What do you think," I asked him as he stared at the trees, "is Bigfoot down there?"

He thought for a moment and said, "It's too hot for Bigfoot to be out."

It was a wonderful adventure, even if my son was having near-death experiences on the way up and down.  And the view from the top of Sugarloaf always takes the words away from me.  I live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Next week, Saint Marty is going to take his son to see a waterfall.  Don't tell him, or he may run away from home.