Wandering Feet Anonymous

It’s been three years. The edges of the photo are soft now, and the colors have dimmed. It has been worn thin and fragile, and there is a deepening crease down its center from the years it spent folded between my fingers. I don't usually keep photos. But there’s something which lies beneath the scratches of this one that has settled into a spot in my soul. There’s something about the fading horizon that reminds me of what was ignited in me the day I stood with my face against the wind, hand in hand with a person who would come to reveal my own horizon.

The two of us stood tall, leaning heavily into the shoulders of each other as we combated exhaustion. She was blind. I was slowly emerging from my own darkness after eleven months of concussive recovery. And there we stood, on the summit of Mount Katahdin, having completed the most infamously grueling hike of the Appalachian Trail. Alongside us lay a red-tipped cane, and some Advil. But below us lay all of Maine, from the rivers which soared with an echoing vitality to the valleys which tumbled into spacious green expanses. The fall colors created a mosaic of orange, yellow, and red: a fire on the hills which leaked into our souls. We were a couple of deficient madmen with a...