(HOST) Hiking, particularly alone, offers plenty of time for thinking and daydreaming. As Commentator and Vermont Humanities Council executive director Peter Gilbert hiked last summer, he solved a mystery and day dreamt unlikely endings to a modern-day Cinderella glass slipper story.
(GILBERT) I was hiking alone in California’s high Sierra Mountains last summer, and I came across a white ribbon with the remains of a balloon. I picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket. That’s interesting, I thought, as I plodded uphill. Perhaps it was from honeymooning hikers, their backpacks festooned with balloons from the wedding reception. Or maybe a hiker’s birthday.
Several days later, I saw another balloon and ribbon, and later another. One afternoon, as I made my way through the woods – without the benefit of a trail – to a beautiful lake, I saw a red object in the distance. Surely a sign that others were near by! I clambered over to see what it was – a backpack, perhaps. Wrong. It was one of those party balloons made of thin, shiny foil, still largely inflated.
By then I’d figured it out. Balloons released intentionally or unintentionally in California’s Central Valley are blown east; they bump into the Sierra mountain range; and, as we know, what goes up must come down.
I happened upon a back-country ranger, who confirmed my theory. He thanked me for picking up the litter and added that, when the National Park Service does a search for a missing person, they can tell how careful the rangers’ search had been by how many balloon scraps they bring back.
The day after I found the metallic balloon, I came across a Croc – not the reptile, but one of those odd-looking sandals that are now all the rage. Lots of hikers clip them to the outside of their packs to wear around camp. They may be ugly, but they’re much lighter than sneakers.
What a Croc it was! By coincidence, it was my size – and black, which would’ve been my choice. Now, in New England, I thought, if you find a moose antler while you’re show-shoeing or cross-country skiing in late winter, it’s worth looking for the second antler because it’s usually not far away. But this wasn’t a moose antler, and there was no sign of the second shoe. Apparently, it hadn’t dropped.
The Croc may have been there a day or weeks. I strapped it to my pack and kept hiking, day dreaming of three staggeringly unlikely but wonderful Cinderella-story endings for my glass slipper story: I’d bump into its owner, and he’d rejoice at recovering his lost Croc and hug me like a brother. Or I’d leave it at the trailhead when I got back to my car; its owner would, by a miracle, leave the mountains by the same trail, do so after me, and thus at the very end of his trek be reunited with his missing shoe. Or maybe I’d come across the other Croc but not the owner, and I’d enjoy my new sandals. I knew none of these would happen, but, as Hemingway wrote in the last sentence of his novel The Sun Also Rises, "Isn’t it lovely to think so." Particularly as you’re hiking along.