June 2024
Kam Zarrabi

It was a couple of weeks after my partner of 25 years, Linda Gray, had succumbed to a sudden massive brain hemorrhage exactly a month ago. To help cope with that heart-wrenching loss, I decided to hit the hiking trails in the Boston Hill area.

I had done the same thing once before, right after falling victim to a devastating bout with a serious sinus infection that had led to what I can best describe as a debilitating brain fog and a bout of depression back in 2017. I wasn't young then, either; at 82 the thought of having to stay on psychotherapeutic medications, perhaps for the rest of my life as I was told, whatever was left of it, was too much to accept. After a few weeks, I dumped the pills in the trash and said to Linda: "Honey, I want your approval of what I intend to do. I am going to put my hiking shoes on and push myself to the limits of what my body can take hiking up the Boston Hill trails for as long as I can. If I die of a heart failure or a stroke, so be it; I have already lived a long enough life anyway." Her response was exactly as I expected: "You do what you want to do, anyway; but I do think you know what is best for you; you have my approval, as long as you call me that you are OK."

Spending between three and five hours on the trails almost every other day did what I expected; I recovered completely and have continued my hiking routine ever since.

Now there is no Linda for me to call that I am OK, or to ask for her approval or advice on anything; just memories and recollections of what she'd say or how she'd react to my impulsive decisions.

On the trails again, I headed up the hill from the Cheyenne trailhead, taking the longer route, which passes by those white tuffaceous sandstones crisscrossed by black iron/manganese lines as though sketched by an abstract artist. I had taken photographs of these interesting rocks and had attempted to impress Linda with the geologic history of their formation. But to her these were just rocks, which as she said come in all kinds of shapes and colors; no big deal! No, she wasn't trying to discourage me, just that she didn't want me to bring back more rocks to add to our vast collection of rocks and minerals covering the entire wall of our dining room.

I continued on. Those rocks were just there, totally unaware of what had transpired to me since the last time I was there. So were the juniper trees, the scrub oak, the little lizards and the roadrunner running ahead of me. I reminded myself that nature is indifferent; it doesn't care what you or I feel, believe or think.

It was getting hot, and I was sweating. I bent over to examine a speckled rock. A few drops of sweat from my face fell on the stone illuminated the texture of the fine-grained breccia revealing its intricate composition. I remembered that about a year earlier, I had tried to unravel the mystery of the formation of a similar rock specimen I had brought to the house, that examining it was like opening a book to read about the geological history of the area. She stopped me before I could go on by saying, "It is a pretty rock, especially when you wet it to bring out all its various colors and details; but why not just leave it at that without breaking it apart into its tiny fragments? You do have the habit of unweaving the rainbow, as John Keats said, taking its simple beauty away!"

A few years earlier, while reading a book on archeology, one of my favorite subjects, I was fascinated by the fact that 25,000 years-old porcelain and baked clay figurines found at a site in Eastern Siberia were almost identical to those found in a Western European site over five-thousand miles away. I mentioned that to Linda and was gearing up to enter my dissertation about the archeological history of pre-historic civilizations separated by vast distances, when she stopped me in her usual lovingly abrupt way: "Simple: A fast-traveling salesman!" I was speechless.

As those thoughts were parading in my mind, I bent down again to examine that piece of breccia. I wasn't sweating anymore, but a few drops of moisture fell on the rock and illuminated its details again. No, those were not my sweat drops.

I miss her so much.

Kam