6.

The Appalachian Trail was a twenty-two-hundred-mile trek, spanning from Maine to Georgia. I was four miles into a section somewhere in its middle and my legs were already failing. Steph led, wearing my backpack and powering over steps made of stone and dirt running up the side of the mountain. The trail narrowed as we climbed, soon becoming a path no wider than an arm’s span, with a vertical rock face on one side and a fall on the other big enough you’d hope it’d kill you if you went over. People took turns moving across the section in opposite directions, all seeming to feign calmness when passing. Heights never scared me, but somehow the idea of falling always had.

We reached the end of the narrow path, where a leafy summit marked by brown rock jagged from its side to form a cliff. The trail made a swift turn and continued north from there. Hikers stood around eating packed lunches and taking photographs from the safety of the path and a small clearing. A few pointed to an eagle soaring above.

‘Come on,’ Steph said, moving towards the formidable brown rock.

‘What? Where?’

‘You can’t say you made it until you reach there.’

She pointed to its furthest point hanging out from the mountain.

‘Okay. I promise I won’t tell anyone I made it.’

‘Who cares about that? You won’t be able to say it to yourself.’

She hooked her fingers over an out-thrust of rock and began climbing. I didn’t move. After she’d scaled out of my reach, she stopped and looked back.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said.

‘Hey, Mark.’

‘What?’

‘You know how I offered to carry the backpack?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know how this morning, before we left, we put all the food into said backpack?’

‘Come back here.’

She smiled and resumed climbing, becoming obscured as she made her way across the rock. I couldn’t fathom her motivation. The fall only got larger as the rock stretched further out over the steepness of the mountain. Why did making it matter so much to her? Why had it always mattered so little to me? I lifted my arms and grabbed the same lip of rock she had, took a breath and hoisted myself up.

The terrain was formed like ocean waves frozen still, with the safety of the mountain as the beach. Each wave had a steep face of grooved rock which formed a sharp peak before descending on the other side. It would plunge into a trough too deep to see out from, full of loose stones and barely living plants silly enough to try to sustain life there. Another would begin right after. I scaled the first few by folding my body over their tops, rotating on my chest and walking my legs around. This meant when I reached a peak, I was lying face down, parallel to it. The manoeuvre wasn’t graceful, and I could hear comments and laughter from people back on the path, but I was making it. I would reverse the movement on the other side, walking my legs down, and leaving one hand on the previous formation’s peak before stretching my other out to the next.

On the next wave, I turned my head to trace my progress. The gap to Steph was even wider than when I’d started. I lunged for the next, pulling myself up. This time, instead of folding my body, I straightened my arms to place a foot atop the rock, passed my other leg through the gap, and brought it down the other side. It was a much faster technique and instilled some confidence in me. I was halfway now, with each wave becoming narrower than the one before as the cliff concentrated towards a fine point. Soon they’d be no wider than I was tall, and already I could see the mountain range and plunge on either side in my peripheral. I traversed the next few with increasing pace, catching Steph as she neared the end. It could be done even faster, I thought. I launched myself up the next with vigour, driving with my leg to get the momentum needed to swing the other through in one movement.

The theory was sound, but my execution poor. Passing through the gap, my foot snagged the rock. I lost my balance and fell forward, seeing only a blur of blue sky, brown rock and green forest somewhere below. In the chaos, one hand came away from the cliff, passing over my other as it too separated.

For a moment I was hovering in space, detached from the earth, the sky, from everyone and everything. I seemed to hang there for an eternity, unsure if I was falling to my death or had already arrived. I reached out and something filled my grip. I squeezed as tightly as I could – if I was gonna go, I was going out with clenched fists.

My body slammed into the rock face. I looked down as my feet swung across the trough and out over the edge of the cliff, launching a loose stone. It seemed to hang still in the air, its white texture contrasted against the green far below. I watched for a few seconds before the forest cover shivered as the stone was swallowed. ‘Oh my god!’ a woman screamed from the mountain.

‘Did that guy just fall?’ yelled a man. I rocked backwards and forwards a few times; the soles of my shoes grazing the dirt below, like a child dragging their feet through the bark under a swing set. I looked up at my outstretched arm; my hand clasped around the tip of the rock I’d attempted to clear, no more than a foot from where it abruptly became air.

‘Mark? Mark?’ came a voice from the other direction. ‘Are you okay?’

I hung for a second, swaying and looking over the mountain range that went on forever, hearing the familiar voice’s words but not knowing the answer myself. The sun was warm on my face and a breeze blew. How easy it would be to just let go, I thought. My grip began to weaken. The eagle passed by, turning its head for a moment to study this fool without wings.

Turning my body and gripping the rock with both hands, I shimmied back to its centre. ‘I’m alright!’ I yelled back to Steph. An echo of collective, relieved exhalation came from the mountainside as I popped my head up.

After the last formation, the land flattened before falling away. Steph and I sat with our backs against the rock, legs stretched so our feet dangled off the cliff’s edge. We looked over the range and ate peanut butter sandwiches in silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

I paused mid-bite then continued chewing.

‘I’m serious; I shouldn’t have made you feel like you had to do that.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘No, it isn’t. You could’ve died.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘But I made it.’

Back at the site, we wandered through foliage to the nearby river. The valley was grey – a dense fog blanketing the torrent, making it hard to see, though still churning with violence beneath the small, rickety bridge we trod across with careful steps. Trees grew from each bank to touch in the middle above, forming a tunnel. A small path took us beyond the extremities of the campsite to where the creek became wide and calm. Steph hung our towel over a tree branch.

I stood ankle-deep at the edge on a shallow ridge of pebbles. My body ached, but the place made me feel alright. That cliff hadn’t tried to harm me; it had merely presented itself as an unwavering challenge, and if I was to step up to it, it was my duty to overcome or die. The rock and the stone and the sky and the trees didn’t care if I’d let go – if their hardness had met my body with such a relentless force that my insides rattled and turned to dust.

There was something so unapologetic about nature that I felt no need to make excuses for myself. I was not the rock. I was human because I hurt, and I hurt because I was human. Small wonder this land was so contested: it affirmed life in such a way people were willing to kill and die for it.

I watched the icy current collide with Steph’s naked body as she submerged herself – her nipples upright and hard, water glistening as she shivered and parts of her jiggled. The shape of her, too, was whatever it had to be. She was as brazen as the land. One life-giver bathing in the waters of another. I stood at the bank and lit a cigarette, undeserving to join.