Ridge

None of the “training” Ian had done before this trip could be considered preparing for this trip at all. The start of this path weaved through an unchanging backdrop of trees rising into the sky. Unlike the curated forests and nature spaces back home, the trees here were sparser, their foliage thinner. The constant cold wind and the sun that shone through the trees, had long dried out the path after night’s rain. Sand and pebbles on the trail crunched underfoot, while edges of larger rocks embedded in the ground pressed into the bottom of his shoes.

This trail was already labelled as one of the easier ones on the route. Based on some Googling that they – he, and his ex – had done together in the weeks leading up to this trip, he knew that the trail would gradually take him along a ridge 600 metres above sea level. His ankle bore the weight of each step on the uncertain, uneven terrain. Although, he didn’t feel the ache in them – for now. Unlike back at home. Back then, his feet, accustomed only to surfaced, manmade roads, pavements, and floorings of the central business district, had started aching after just ten minutes out in nature. It was small, and perhaps shouldn’t even be something that should have been deemed progress, but it was progress; an improvement.

The night before this hike, he had stood by the window for a little, hearing the faint patter of the drops on the window, and feeling the coldness of winter radiating from it. Hearing, not listening. He was not quite sure himself what he was listening out for, when he stood by the window, the empty bed behind him. In the Airbnb for two, it was just silence aside from the raindrops. He had asked to cancel the reservation here for a cheaper location, but the host had been quite flexible with the new arrangement. The reply Ian got was that could still have the place at a reduced cost since there were rooms to spare. It was, after all, located in an area that not many people came to in the first place. Its location, near the place he would go for a hike at tomorrow, was good. The room itself was small, but if he had company, he would be able to fit both their luggage bags, and still have space to walk around the room. Earlier in the day, he had thought about how he liked the flower bushes that grew along the cobblestone paths between the two tiny brick buildings. Despite it being winter, the flowers were still in bloom. Open fields sprawled out beyond the place. If it wasn’t so cold out at night, it might have been an amazing place for stargazing.

Or if it hadn’t been raining, even. Just his luck that on his night here, a shower descended upon the place. Ian watched the droplets of rain on the window grow until they got too big to stick to the glass surface, sliding down out of sight. He watched about three drops slide down before he decided it was time to sleep. He got into one side of the bed and thought that he should shift to the middle of it instead. He shifted himself over, moving away the two pillows to his right. Ian stared up at the pitch-blackness above him, still listening to the pitter-patter of raindrops outside.

Then he reached for his phone. In just a couple of flicks he had reached the bottom of his social media feed. A loading circle at the bottoms spun in circles as it waited for data from the wifi in the Airbnb.

Daybreak.

The ceiling. A faded cream white, a safe choice for colour matching, yet gave the room soothing vibes. He searched for his phone on the bedside table, only to find it was missing. Right. He had been on social media right before he dozed off. The phone was face down on the bed, beside his pillow. He scrolled his social media feed. Then out of bed for breakfast, and to hit the road.

Here he was, out in the wide, open world beyond the four walls of the leased space of a skyscraper in the midst of the city. The wind of the southern hemisphere on a cloudy winter morning blew through the trees. It was not a frigid one, unlike the winds up north which brought snow with it; the trees this part of the world largely kept their leaves. Whether it was because the environment was not harsh enough, or because they were already acclimatized, he did not have any knowledge of this.

Hikers, photographers, tourists; these people had all taken the trail that was sand, pebbles, and mud all at the same time, between these trees, on the trail. This part had been sloping upwards for some time already on a gentle incline. Ian took a deep breath as he stretched at one point. The winter air was mixed with a faint odour of compost, permeate his body. Overall, the smell of organic matter was not that strong here, as the air was dry and constantly moved, drying out the soil faster than in a tropical climate back home.

Ian knew that most difficult part of the trail coming later. Based on the information from the national park’s website, it would be 20 minutes more of hiking from a branch in the trail, which he had just passed. By then, the trail would be near the end. After the hardest part of the trail, a stretch that ran along the top of a ridge, before descending back down in a loop along an unsurfaced road that led to where he had come in from.

This trail was something his former flame had suggested when they planned this together. How strange. Back home, she never seemed to want to even go out into the hot equatorial sun, particularly in the middle of the day. She was one of those who would go around with an umbrella, though it had only started after about a month into her job. Ian had joked that she had aged drastically from her job, a statement that earned him a sharp tongue click and a fist bumping in his ribs. (Then again, the best jokes are grounded in fact).

Where did she get her energy – or the confidence from?

She had been on a table tennis team before, but this was a long time before she had become a working adult. Ian had tried table tennis once, at her behest. Right – they had been watching the online broadcast of a table tennis tournament, and he had commented that most of the “big movements” he had seen them doing, were all for show. That had sparked some kind of youthful competitiveness in her.

Now, with he and his then-flame at opposite ends of the table, he began to understand the finesse behind all that “flashiness”. The amount of skill it took to control the ball, which was so lightweight that a stroke that was just a little too hard would send the ball flying out of the court in the opponent’s favour. Even serving the ball across the miniature court was a struggle, let alone keeping up a rally. His ex, who took a while to get going. Rough around the edges, but her body more or less remembered what it had done a long time ago.

He also remembered the dull ache in his lower back afterwards that came from bending over and picking up the ball a lot, just from that one hour.

Somehow, a mundane thing like this could send the memories flooding back. You’re all I think about. As cheesy as it had sounded, he had expressed this then. It seems it still held true. The memories, like embers, continued to linger, to smoulder. The remains of a roaring, flame.

Ian was waiting for them to fizzle out.

He heard himself panting a little as he ascended the final part of this uphill gradient. It kept him from thinking more – no, looking back more. He felt the path level off underfoot. Now he could see the full length of the ridge that stretched out ahead of him, one side swallowed by the canopies of trees a long way down and mist on the other. These formations were created from the heaving of the earth’s surface a long time ago and further sculpted by epochs of seasons, but he knew none of the specifics as he made his way along on his own. Frequently he had to glance down at the ground to check where his next step would land, holding on to his surroundings just to keep his balance across the top of the rocks. He made a sharp inhaled hiss at one point as he grabbed on to a rock, only to feel his hand recoiling from the tip of a thorn piercing into his finger.

He looked around and noticed more of the same plants he had almost grabbed growing at the edges of the trail between the rocks. They had long tendrils from which tiny, rounded leaves akin to that of clovers and green flower buds grew out, thorns emerging from between them. They grew in abundance along the trail, reaching for the vast open spaces beyond the range. Ian stopped near one of the tendrils, wanting to take a photo of them. His hand went into his pocket. Out of it, with his phone. There was no danger of it slipping out of his grip, since he was not wearing gloves. He had brought a pair of gloves on this trip. They had been concerned about the weather, as well as environmental hazards when they had planned it together. But the wind here, even in the middle of winter, was not the biting kind that left fingertips red with frostbite. Even zipping up the front of his down jacket had felt excessive, particularly along the more strenuous part of the routes. He could feel the slight itch that comes on just as skin that is too dry prepares to sweat. So early on in his hike, he had already removed his gloves. It made snapping photos – and unlocking his phone with the fingerprint sensor – far more convenient.

Up on the ridge, Ian tapped on the screen, and the camera worked its AI smarts to focus on the thorns. Click. The screen flashed. One more photo into the camera roll.

He had taken many photos before this one of the thorned plant up on the ridge. The highway. The vast, sweeping plains beyond, the hills in the distance, and the bright blue skies above. The bus stop – just a pole with information on the bus that called at the stop. The plastic covering the board had yellowed, with streaks of green on it and a wet mass of algae pooling at the bottom. Then the trees, the path, the ridges up ahead. A kangaroo standing amongst the trees, the only wildlife he had seen thus far.

Ian had however, yet to take any photos with himself in it. There were many things that reminded him that this trip was initially for two. Such as the bed back at the Airbnb they had booked, with the two pillows on it. The empty seat beside him on the bus. The amount of empty space in the photo when he had tried to pose for a selfie early in the trek. He had closed the camera app without taking a photo, and continued walking. He didn’t open the camera again until he reached the entrance of the park, indicated by a green metal sign with park information printed onto it.

Back up on the ridge, Ian pocketed his phone and continued along the ridge. The terrain was unfamiliar, but he felt he was making good progress. If he had come with someone else, he thought that he would have spent a lot of the trip looking back, seeing if he needed to wait for them to catch up. He wondered how long the hike would have taken. Whether he would be the one holding the pair behind. As he watched his own feet move from rock to rock, Ian saw, coming in the opposite direction, another hiker. Dressed in nothing but a skin-tight white sporting top, tight-fitting pants contoured by the thighs they covered. On his back, nothing. In his hand, just a bottle of water, comfortably in his grip. He crossed, no, glided, above the rocks.

“Hello,” the other hiker called out.

Ian dipped his head, nodding in acknowledgement, before realizing in his head that he should probably say something in response also. That quick, subtle nod was something for the city, where connections were fleeting, intentionally so. With so much going on in everyone’s lives, the desire to disconnect was no surprise. Yet the need to keep up images remained, and so people began to find ways to show connection, just enough to keep images up, since there was a kind of understanding that the plug would be pulled immediately after. Up here, it was not so. In a world with just rocks, trees, and the two of them, the level of connection needed would be much stronger.

More heartfelt.

Ian stopped on a relatively flat part of the ridge trail he was on.

“You doing good?” The other hiker asked as he approached, stopping in front of Ian.

“Yeah.”

“Nice. Cheers and take care.” The hiker raised his hand up to around eye level, in a gesture that was somewhere between a wave and a salute, and they parted ways.

Ian wouldn’t remember this person’s face, but he thought he would likely remember how a complete stranger had stopped for that quick hi-bye conversation in the middle of the hills. The exchange was surface level, but it felt real. Was it because I stopped for him? Because I looked like I was struggling on this trail, while he hops over each rock like a mountain goat? Just because we were two of us, hiking in this same place in the middle of nowhere?

There were conversations, meetings back home, that lasted longer but somehow the words exchanged meant nothing to him at all. The questions conveyed intention, not interest.

What had that connection with his then-partner been? He was sure they had something going on – and yet, the exchanges they had, particularly towards the end, had made him realise that there was so much they didn’t know about each other. Made him realise there was so much he didn’t know? So much she didn’t know? Who did the blame fall on?

Answered questions couldn’t change every outcome.

Ian looked back at the trail behind him; the path he had come from. The top of the ridge loomed overhead. He was headed downhill, he realized. The other hiker had long since vanished, already having made significant progress along the trail. Ian suspected he could even be descending that steep uphill path to the ridge from much earlier, along the part where trail where the path got dry. He had seen a car in a clearing at the start. Perhaps it belonged to him.

First a couple of branches with some yellowed leaves. Then leaves that remained green. Just a couple of them. Then more. Thicker, denser. Faded, but definitely green, Ian noticed as he descended down along the trail.

From under him, his left foot slides forward on a loose patch of sand.

“Wa—”

A soft thud as he lands on his bottom as well as his backpack, followed by a dull pain radiating out from somewhere below his tailbone. Ian made a soft inhaled hissing sound as he pushed himself back up onto his own two feet.

If that top of the ridge was the heart of winter, over on this part of the trail, it seemed like springtime was arriving.

The road would not be smooth. Encounters could be fleeting, sometimes meaningless.

But there would be people along the way who would make the going just a little better.