Katy Trail Hike: Day Three

September 4th, 2011

I woke up around 8:00 on the third day, after sleeping over twelve and a half hours, and blinked at the gray light shining through the window slats. A peek through the shade showed me that a front had moved in: leftover raindrops dripped from the trees, and gray clouds covered the sky. I stepped outside the door, and cool air washed over me— the temperature had dropped more than 25 degrees!

Now that I didn’t have to worry about the huge stretches of trail that would normally be in full sun, I took my time getting out the door, and was soon strolling along the trail with a familiar set of surroundings: bluffs to my left, fields to my right. The overcast light intensified all the colors. Distant trees appeared as dark olive, the soybean fields a metallic green, the cornfields orange. 

After a couple miles, the bluffs fell away when I crossed a road, and the trail delved into vine-trestled forest. Occasionally the woods on my left cleared to reveal a couple houses, and occasionally the woods opened to my right to show massive amounts of vines turning dead trees to fantastic topiaries.

A few miles more, and I found myself in territory as familiar to me as my own reflection. For most of my childhood, I lived within five blocks of the Katy Trail. When I got old enough, Mom took me on a walk down to it and back every evening. At first we’d walk to the entrance by the railroad ties and turn back. As I got older and my legs lengthened, we walked further. We turned at the border of the woods, then the old bridge, then the lone tree, then the bend in the trail. I passed all of these in turn, turning over details in my mind as I saw them. There, the white black-roofed house with the “Condemned” signs that had been there since I was a kid. There, the shed with a wooden goose picture nailed to the side. There, the row of cottonwoods, gray in this light, but familiar to me in every light. The best is mid-afternoon on a summer day, when the sky is creamy blue— then the leaves glitter in the sunshine, dancing on their long stems in every breath of wind with a clattering rustle.

I thought of the conversations that Mom and I had on this stretch of trail. At first I talked about names that rhymed, and made her listen to extensive genealogies of the story characters I had made up. I see myself growing up through those conversations on every topic imaginable: Star Trek theology, complaints about my siblings, finances, my crushes, ACT scores, my desire to write a novel and then the novel that I wrote, God, life, love. It was here that my sister wrecked her bike and had to be rushed to the hospital for plastic surgery, here that I walked in baby steps with Mom as she recovered from a grand mal seizure, here that I decided I wasn’t going to college. It was here that Mom and I walked under a gray sky and talked about the devastating news that we had to move from the house that had been home to us for sixteen years.

It all seemed far off now, like looking at another person’s life. I passed through this section of the trail in a fog of memory, and didn’t really wake up until I reached a place that I will always consider to be my home: Frontier Park. The Missouri River glimmered gray as I sat down on a bench, and I actually shivered as the breeze blew over me. I felt reluctant for my hike to come to an end, because that meant I’d have to return to reality. It didn’t bother me too much, though. I’d make pizza tonight to celebrate my return.

Mom walked the last mile or so with me, just like we’ve been doing since I was barely as tall as her waist, right in step with each other. It was a perfect way to end my hike.

~Lisa Shafter