Around Every Bend

He said his name was Tom. He was from Montana. I was unsure if he might be in the early stages of shock, or if it was hypothermia. Our temperature had dropped to 39 degrees and he was clad in a lightweight T-shirt and running shorts. Then I noticed his high-quality, muddy and scuffed hiking boots. He was no beginner. His disorientation seemed to be an overdose of adrenaline.
I was about an hour into a hike that felt more like a wrong way trip on an escalator. Wet leaves covered acorns. It was one step up and two slips back. Going down hill, it was one step down and—Yikes! More than once I had an earth-moving experience.
I dropped down off the ridge where I had been hiking in favor of the flat, less-challenging, multi-purpose trail known as the Towpath Trail. During the week it’s a pleasant experience. On weekends you take your life in your hands because if there’s a “purpose,” people will be doing it.
Tom was just standing there when I popped out of the bushes. Probably my clambering, along with the great conversation I was having with the Voices, alerted him to my presence. He looked at my pack and said, “Hi. You live here?”
Hmmm. Good question. I told him, not exactly. I just hike here, although I do live just over that ridge …
I guessed his age at early 20s. He told me this was his first visit to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. He lived in Montana and his parents had just moved to the area and this was the first time he’d even been in Ohio and he decided to walk the dog and he started out about three miles down the trail and …
Wow! This guy could talk. Then he started asking questions. He was amazed to learn about the Ohio-Erie canal that once stretched the length of the state.
“Did they dig it by hand?”
“In 1827 hands and shovels were all they had.”
“How did locks operate?”
“Well, they dam the water there, and …”
“Where did all these trees come from?”
Hmmm.
I asked him to back up to the part about walking the dog. He looked around like it was the first he’d heard about any dog. Then I spotted the dog coming out of the bushes. I never got the dog’s name. I called him Killer, which he didn’t seem to mind as he snarled at me. He was one of those white, puff-ball kinda creatures the coyotes in these parts have for starters—if they’re not too hungry. Killer had a little blue bow in his hair between his ears. I decided not to ask what that was about.
Tom went on and on about the trees and how green everything was. I answered his questions as best I could and was surprised at how much I do know about the park.
Then he said, “The best thing about this place, that we don’t have in Montana, is that there is something different around every bend in the trail. Our trails don’t bend.”
I wished him, and Killer, a pleasant hike. And told him to tell his friends in Montana how pretty Ohio can be.