past predictors

It started with a sweaty run on a day I promised not to.  It moved to cold feet and a headache far in the back of my head.  “You’re getting sick.” A friend told me sitting side-by-side on the group W bench watching me check the time wishing gym would end and I could take my child and flee.

Which I did an incredibly miserable half-hour later pausing in the parking lot engulfed in the post 8PM darkness only long enough to ask the right man, a man with current practical knowledge, my chances for Thursday hiking Elbow fork, a narrow gulch a few miles past the winter gate rising from Millcreek canyon summiting and dropping into Lambs. He had just come from the canyon but admitted he wasn't familiar with the specific trail in question.  His answers:  1) No.  2) If you don’t believe me call the avalanche forecast. 3) No. 4) Something about large numbers of snowshoeing women buried by snow at the bottom of narrow canyons. And then he turned back once more to say over the hood of my car: 5) Misty, NO.

I went home faked my way through dinner and for the first time in a week slept all night.  I meant to dream about mountains, about steep trails, burning thighs, biting cold, and deep powder.  Instead I dreamt a nightmare in which I left my X husband to move far away and get back together with my X husband.  Every detail of moving was there, all the work and stress, easing kids into new bedrooms, strange smells, new sounds, the new town.  It was exhausting.  

The dream was deep and miles long but we didn’t do well back together. The first night he drank slowly, the second he left to the bar and didn’t come back, and the third night all hell broke loose.  So I fled back home with intentions of getting back with the X husband I had left... and none of that "X" part is a typo.  He was Everyman. The only thing that kicked me free was a frantic phone call I was trying to place to my X husband to save me because my X husband was pounding on the door threatening to break it down: the number was a glitch it triggered something deep in my mind to push back.  The number was BC’s cell.  And I woke up not knowing where I was. BC sound asleep beside me. 

As I turned down morning coffee, slipped into the next size down jeans I asked BC what he thought about me hiking the canyon.  I told him about the advice I had gotten.  

"The trail we hiked?"  He asked. 

 I told him it was.  He eyed me sideways then said I would be fine.  “It’s not a slide zone.  You know how you know?"    

We spoke in tandem, "The mountain has no scars.”

I can feel the pressure in my head.  The heat crawling up my skin.  I can hear BC hauling extra wood to keep me warm today.  I wonder what my chances are...