BWCA Wilderness Trails Essay Contest 2007
Second place
copyright 2007 BWA Committee
Walking with my Mother
Monica Steele
In the wide wilderness we need a path. It is too easy to wander aimlessly, forgetting beauty, forgetting radiance and most importantly for me, forgetting patience. Caught up in day to day demands, bombardments from within and out, we need the reassurance, that others have come before us and left a trail. Some other had the courage and grace to guide us, to move us forward. They have passed through and left us a path, a way of life. Light or dark, steep, narrow or rocky the trail says breathe, slow down and walk. The trail challenges us to live life at nature’s speed. Nature says, “Well, you are going to have to wade through some heavy muck and water here” or “surprise, get ready to climb” or “stop, just stop for a moment, listen – hear that? See that?” I have walked the trails giddy with joy and heavy with sorrow. Lost in thought, daydreaming of what might have been two spotted fawn have leapt across the path directly in front of me as if to say, “WAKE UP WILD FLOWERS ARE BLOOMING!” White pines, arms outstretched whisper, “you there, turn your face to the sky.”
Walking with my mother in her last year of life, I held her hand as her body trembled with Parkinson’s disease. Our walking was really more one slow step at a time to stay balanced. I would say, “Do you want to turn back now?” She would reply, “Let’s just go a little further.” I would remind her that the journey out would also mean the same distance to return. She’d take a moment to consider and then say, “I can keep going.” She seemed to know when to stop, rest and also with a small lopsided smile say, “I’m ready to go back now.”
My mother on the wilderness trail reminds me that I was born here and that one day I too will be heading back. If we are lucky the trail enters us and we recognize the path within and without are one in the same. The forest says, “Do you remember me? I remember you. We belong to each other.” My mother’s favorite morning prayer began with the words, “Heavenly father walk with me today…” I hope she doesn’t mind that in hiking I have adopted her prayer but begin with “Heavenly mother walk with me today…” I oftentimes meet my mother on the trail she is just ahead of me. I see her head of white hair, her sweatshirt embroidered with hummingbirds and blueberries, unafraid to take it slow, to rest and know when the time has come to return home.
