Our Coming of Age Adventure

One day, as we were being driven to Lori's house and going slow over the speed bumps, we were looking at the mountain that overshadowed the neighborhood in which Lori lived. Of course, it had always been there, but this time it really stuck out to me that it was so big, right next to Lori's flat neighborhood. "I wonder if anyone has ever been up there," I said."Like...it is right there, right close by...wouldn't it be cool to look out from the top?"

Veronica know where I was going with it, and I hardly had to begin stating my idea before she was already bouncing in her seat, ready for an adventure. "...think we could climb it?" I asked, looking up out of the window in the now parked car. Veronica looked thoughtfully at it, as if measuring something, but I could tell it wouldn't matter either way. Adventure was calling and she was ready to go on a backyard journey, with or without a goal. We were both excited. Lori thought we were just joking around, but as we began walking through the field of high grass, it was pretty obvious: We were going to hike the mountain!

We got to the edge of the field, and were surprised to find that, wouldn't you know it, Beaver Creek separated us from where the mountain began. "Aw man. How are we going to get passed that?" The water looked like it was going pretty fast, and was a little higher than I was comfortable with.

Without saying anything, Veronica stepped down into the creek bed and began trudging along through the water, like the leader she always was. Lori and I looked at each other, and she took off her shoes and went across. I was last, taking off my new sneakers, but keeping on my socks. Who knew what the purpose there was. Hey, at least I had sneakers: the other two wore flip flops and sandals!

When we finally conquered beaver creek, congratulating one another, we looked over and lost a little bit of the excitement. The mountain face was almost completely vertical. What we thought would be a steep hike, it turned out, was going to be more like climbing ladders that looked like trees. We hesitated, but when I say we I mean me and Lori; Veronica was already on her way up, leaving her shoes behind!

And so began our Lord-of-the-Rings-type journey. The mountainside was damp and mossy, covered with leaves that had fallen from years ago and had slowly been making there way down the mountain. In fact, there was a good 6-8 inches of this foliage before actually touching any soul, and subsequently we followed in suit of brilliant Veronica in leaving our shoes behind. This climb required the sort of digging and grasping that only toes could provide. It was also slippery, since the trees above had shaded the area from sunlight, thus kept it damp for many moons after snows and rainfalls. The topsoil was also so fragile that some small trees we tried to grab would simply come out from where they were growing, occasionally causing us to slide down the side of the mountain. Thankfully we'd either catch one another, or manage to grab on the a sturdier tree on the slide.

Finally we hit a summit...or so we thought. Being on the inside of the mountain made it look so huge, that when we saw a slope we couldn't see over we figured that was it. We finally reached an area we could stand at...for about 15 feet worth, and then the mountain shot up again with an even steeper incline. Wow was what we all thought as we walked it out for a little bit, breathing hard. We'd been climbing for about an hour and a half just on this one mountain! Lori and I considered the idea of going back, but Veronica quickly refuted it. "I didn't come all this way to not get to the top!" That phrase described her in so many ways, and we began our climb again.

About 3/4 through this final one, we looked up and didn't see Verny anymore. "Where'd Veronica go?" asked Lori. And then we saw her, perched calmly on this strange looking tree that grew sideways for about 6 feet, and then shot up towards the heavens. It was a big, sturdy tree with soft, peeling bark. We joined her on it, and looked out towards where she was looking, towards the sunset. We talked about things for a little while. Boys and ambitions and food. You know, 14 year old stuff. And without making a conscious, collective decision, we continued our climb, feeling a bit more serious about it.

My face was looking at the ground, carefully monitoring where I stepped. I looked back briefly, and knew that if I slipped now there was no way I could stop, let alone attempt to make it up here again. I started feeling a little scared, but then I heard Veronica, laughing and shouting triumphantly. I looked up and saw Lori getting up onto a flat surface, and a smile sneaked on to my face.

When we finally got to the top, Veronica was running back and forth with her hands in the air, as if she'd won a marathon. She had this big smile on her face. I looked down and saw, to my dismay, a trail: Yup, apparently people had been here before, so much so that there was a trail. I felt half of my accomplishment leave, knowing that we couldn't claim it as our own now. Veronica didn't seem to be affected. "But somebody's already been here!" I said.

"So! We made it!" She paced one more time, and then came to a stop and put her hands on her hips. I was behind her, about 20 feet away. She turned around. "I'm hungry...let's go get pizza now," she declared.

Lori and I looked at one another and then back to Vern. We only just got up here! It was, however, getting late, and after 4 hours on this mountain we were all really hungry. I looked out, and then back down. The bottom was really far away, in fact, I couldn't even see it. "So....how do we get down?"

Once again, Veronica schooled us without even meaning to. We were all, as you can imagine, very tired at this point. We sat down at the ledge. Bonzai! Verny began sliding down the mountain face on her tush, using her hands on each side for steering and feet as breaks, which as far as I could tell she wasn't using at all (go figure!). We all slid down on our behinds, and even though we were in shorts and there were twigs and sticks to bruise and cut our skin, at that point we didn't care. We couldn't feel any of it, whether it was from the exhaustion of climbing the thing or from the exhilaration of sliding for hundreds of feet. Thankfully we didn't run into any trees!

In the end, we all got down in one piece, except that Lori lost her shoes. We went back to Lori's place like soldiers coming back from battle. You can only imagine how filthy we all were by then. Without any questions asked, we got down to our skimpies and sat in the big jacuzzi-like tub Lori had, as if we were in a sauna, and the luke-warm water coming down like hard rain on a hot day couldn't have felt more relaxing. With tired eyes we sat there in the tub, relaxing and mostly reflecting instead of talking.

I can't testify for what everyone else's thoughts were that evening, but sitting there in the tub, with my two very best friends, all of us in our undies with cuts and bruises like war honors and not even thinking twice about it all...I could feel something inside changing, like our adventure had illustrated something, but I didn't know quite what. I thought about how all of this made me feel like we were the chicks from Now and Then, and how so much was changing in our worlds and one day we wouldn't be able to reach moments like this again. For now, I was glad and content to be living in this moment right then and there...and shortly after we ordered pizza, watched Moulin Rouge, and had a Cheerio fight.