April 30th - "The Kokoda Track"

When’s the last time you walked five miles in a single day? Ten? Fifteen?

Up on the mountainside, Lucille nimbly stepped over a fallen tree trunk, the dirt crunching below her shoes as she arrived on the other side. A canopy of bare trees surrounded her - higher up on the mountain, the pine trees would already be displaying their muted green colors, but all the wonders of spring hadn’t reached the bottom of the mountain yet. Well, it did in one area - nearby, a stream powered by melted snow rushed downwards, the susurration providing background music for Lucille’s trek.

The trail wound around the side of the mountain, and through the bare trees, Lucille could see all the way down into the parking lot. Her old beater was parked all by its lonesome - Lucille had the entire mountain to herself. Her last class of the semester - and of college itself - concluded earlier in the week, and Lucille decided to take a break before finals by journeying up north for some hiking. She asked her friends if they wanted to come, but Jackie was playing shooty-hoops with her roommates and Regina didn’t like to move.

Not that Lucille minded being alone. There were too many distractions nowadays, both self-inflicted and societal. Lucille possessed a vague collection of going out for dinner with her friends a few nights ago - vague because she just kept scrolling on her phone the entire time. And she spent all of last night frowning at how much she would have to spend on gas to make it to the Green Mountains.

If the White Mountains were the golden child of New England, the Green Mountains were the overshadowed red-headed stepchild. The White Mountains boasted the highest peaks, gorgeous scenery, and the northern terminus of the famed Appalachians. When Lucille drove on the highway (which wasn’t very often) she played a game by counting how many “This Car Climbed Mount Washington” bumper stickers she saw. Usually, there were quite a few.

Since there were dozens of peaks in the White Mountains, a person could spend years trying to climb them all. With all that to do, the Green Mountains fell by the wayside. Nobody ever remembers the revolutionary pipes and flutes of the Green Mountain Boys, nor do people seem to remember Vermont in general (outside of that one senator).

Not that Lucille minded that either. Seeing people while hiking wasn’t a bad thing since saying “hi” to everyone she passed by on the trails made her feel like a playable character in a video game. But mountains are ancient things, ecosystems formed long ago in primordial ages. For millennia they stood silently, basking in the sun, feeling the spring-run off, watching the changing of the seasons and the colors on the trees, engaging in a never-ending cycle that Lucille liked to experience alone. The weight of it all was made more apparent when you’re the only person experiencing it (and when nobody hiked alongside her while playing music out of a speaker. Looking at you, Jackie).

The trail continued to climb upwards. Lucille stepped from stone to stone, all of them worn down by the years. Overhead, a cloudless blue sky stretched in all directions. The stream continued to rustle; water continued to flow. Going back to distractions - it’s good to let the mind think for a while and just soak it all in. First, when she started her ascent, every aspect of the scenery, right down to the perched bluebirds and green moss on tree bark, popped out to her. But as she continued, all the scenery blended together into a seamless kaleidoscope, and her mind started to wander while her body went on autopilot.

And sometimes, rather than forcing herself to think in a certain direction, Lucille ruminated on whatever thought came her way. There’s not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to thinking - it comes as it does. On one hike, she came up with an outline for a hypothetical K-On season 3 that she unfortunately could not yet manifest into existence. On another hike, she ran through a list of regrets. The time she made her mother cry. Only making acquaintances, not friends, in college. And poor Fran.

Francesca Silvestri. Even the name alone could make a wave of nostalgia wash through Lucille. Fran’s auburn hair shone like a midsummer sunset, but life can pivot when certain things are said (or not said). They hadn’t spoken in years.

The sharp crack of a twig below her shoe sent Lucille’s mind in a different direction for this hike. She took a moment to finish her first bottle of water and reflected on just how many people did this very same action over the years, all over the world. Today’s hike would only be about five miles (the metric system was for countries that didn’t land on the Moon, thank you very much) round trip; the Kokoda Track (plus the trail to coastal Buna), all the way over in Papua New Guinea, was one hundred-sixty miles. And in contrast to the fully-rested Lucille, malnourished soldiers had to make that same trek.

World War II was very much like a car crash; for all the horror and destruction it sowed, Lucille couldn’t look away. Through college classes and her grandfather’s library, Lucille’s area of expertise was the Pacific, and not just because Japan was involved (except who are we kidding, it was because Japan was involved). The European theater was no cakewalk, but it lent itself to being romanticized - landing on the beaches, watching tricolors wave in the summer sky as Paris was liberated, surviving the onslaught of the Bulge, freeing a continent from the modern definition of evil. Of course, it was nowhere near that simple, and the Soviet experience was much, much, much different, but it had as much of a feel-good story as a war could have.

Much like the Green Mountains, the Pacific also got overshadowed. In Europe, a soldier could drive through scenic Belgian villages; the Pacific consisted of mainly uninhabited islands featuring soil and sand too hard to bury excrement in, let alone corpses. As if to emphasize her point, Lucille inadvertently stepped in a mound of mud; she eyed the brown dripping from her shoe with dismay. On the Kokoda Track, the Japanese soldiers wore hobnailed boots and were sent out with little food since the plan was to steal from the Allies as they went. That was a common theme across the Pacific - on Guadalcanal, the majority of Japanese survivors went home on the brink of death from starvation. And that’s after making a trek of their own through the hills and mountains and jungles, five days in total, just to conclude it with a charge into the lines of hardened Marines. If they survived the defeat, they had another five day trek back to base ahead of them with little food or water. Many dropped like flies, and Lucille couldn’t help but wonder about it all as she sat on a boulder and munched on a ham sandwich (with mustard).

In the grand scheme of things, life was an amazing thing. Only luck and circumstances prevented Lucille from being born as a man in the Soviet Union in the year 1923. Only twenty percent of them survived the war. A stroke of bad fate kept Lucille from living as a schoolgirl in modern Japan with LINE and bento and functioning public transportation. Or, to look at it another way, a stroke of good fate kept Lucille from living as a schoolgirl in 1940s Okinawa, where she would’ve traversed the muddy fields as a conscript. Or kept her from the Saipan Suicide Cliff, or any occupied area.

Isn’t it amazing that the same country that produced those horrors could also produce something like Yuru Camp? Another vast oversimplification as well, and she probably could apply the same analysis to any country. Not even her own country was immune. Had she lived as a schoolgirl in 1940s Japan, there was a good chance she would’ve been scorched by American firebombs. On that mountain, she looked up at the blue sky - not a cloud in sight. She couldn’t even see a single plane - in another life, she would’ve seen over five hundred Super Fortresses dropping their payloads in a single night. The same country that produced the Super Fortress produced SpongeBob.

Too often, people say things like, “Think about how much worse others have had it.” A line like that won’t cure your current problems. But it does help to keep things in perspective. It might help you go from feeling 100% lousy to just 90% lousy. And 90% lousy means 10% okay, and you can work with that-

“Ah, shit,” Lucille mumbled. “I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”

Lost in her thoughts, she had been hiking for nearly four hours now. When she started the hike, she saw a sign at the trailhead - the trail to her mountain in particular took a sharp right turn away from the main trail, and she must’ve missed it. That meant she was still somewhere deep on the main trail, but fortunately, there was another mountain at the end of it. She could turn back now and look for the original mountain, or…

Lucille finished another bottle of water, wiped her mouth, and kept going. She had plenty of sunlight, food, and water (and pepper spray) left. If this trail was there to be hiked, then why not hike it until the end? Pulled from her stream of consciousness, Lucille once again noticed the scenery around her. She stepped through mud to get around a creek; she ascended higher and found herself surrounded by pine trees. Orange needles crunched underneath her as she slipped under a long branch.

Upon arriving even higher, a new sight made Lucille chuckle. This high up, snow still covered the trail. The sun worked its magic best it could, so while some parts of the snow melted away, others still remained packed tightly together. Footsteps, not necessarily from today, covered the snow - perhaps Lucille wasn’t the only one who had gotten lost. She stepped into her predecessor’s footsteps and laughed - the snow went all the way up to her ankles. Out west, there were those ten-thousand-footers that required snowshoes and poles and other hiking equipment Lucille didn’t know the names of; out in the northeast, with a few exceptions, all you needed to do was to step carefully and confidently in your sneakers.

But hiking in snow is a lot slower. She had to raise her feet higher and take bigger steps. Despite the ham sandwich, she grew lethargic; she had to stop and catch her breath while resting against a tree trunk. And that’s when other thoughts start creeping in. Is this bear country? Fortunately, bears respected size, so to keep one at bay, all Lucille needed to do was stretch her arms wide and make herself look bigger. If all went well, a bear would take a look at this big creature (who, in reality, was just a scrawny woman) and decide he didn’t want all that smoke.

After catching her breath (and telling herself she could definitely take on a bear), Lucille resumed the hike. She had been hiking for so long, she must’ve been close to reaching the top. Right? Her mind started playing tricks on her. Every ascent, every turning the corner, that would be the last one. But then when she finished said ascent or turned said corner, more of the trail awaited her. However, in a life that offered few opportunities to prove herself, especially in something physical, Lucille kept going. One more ascent, one more corner, one more ascent, one more corner-

And there it was. The trail reached the mountain summit. Well, close enough to call it a summit. She arrived pretty close to it, right on the side of the mountain used for skiing. Above her, a ski platform where the lifts came in and out sat quietly, waiting for the winter to return. And down below, all the trees had been cleared, revealing a vast expanse that reminded Lucille of a mountain meadow.

It wasn’t a meadow, of course - just grass as far as the eye could see. But the sunlight poured into it, the blades of grass swayed in the breeze, and beyond the edge, Lucille could see the rest of the Green Mountains. Pine trees covered them all, creating a green blanket stretching toward the horizon. It’s one thing to read the phrase ‘rolling hills’ in a book - it’s another to see it in person. All the mountains and hills covered in that singular color reminded Lucille of a green-shaded ocean.

And to think - she had this view entirely to herself. Out of a planet filled with billions of people, she was the only one at this very moment on that very mountain seeing that very view. Perhaps she should’ve felt lonely and small, but instead, she felt like another part of the mountain, possessing a connection to something far more vast and intangible than just herself.

Finally able to relax her weary legs, Lucille found a nice spot in the grass and laid down on it. When’s the last time you laid in the grass on a mountainside? Lucille couldn’t answer that herself. Perhaps she never had until today.

A breeze rustled through the grass; Lucille took off her shoes and socks to let them dry. In that moment, Lucille understood what peace and tranquility and all that meant. It’s not something you can put words to.

Before she fully immersed herself in the scenery, before her mind drifted elsewhere, she looked up in the sky and had a new thought.

Ah, shit. I gotta hike the five hours back too, don’t I?

But that could wait a little bit.