The Third Morning

I have not hiked in Arizona in a long time, which I did not fully reckon with until I was three steps up a small slope next to our hotel and my lungs staged a formal protest.

It was supposed to be a morning walk to catch the sunrise. Something gentle and restorative. Instead I was wheezing my way up what was, objectively, a very modest incline, and the embarrassment was almost worse than the burning in my calves. I admit, once I made my way up, rested on a rock for a bit, and saw the sunrise, I knew it was worth it.

On the second morning my husband wanted to join me. The kiddo was with grandma, we had a window of actual time, and he was enthusiastic, which meant I spent the entire climb acting like I was fine. I controlled my breathing like a woman defusing a bomb. I did not let on, and I thought I did pretty well. In retrospect, I think he knew.

On the third morning he offered me a quiet walk alone, in that kind way partners do when they are giving you something without making you ask for it. I wandered the paved road around the hotel for a bit without a plan. And then I looked up at the mountain and thought, one more time.

I made it up. Not gracefully. But I made it. My calves didn't burn the way they had two days before. I wasn't counting my breaths or bargaining with my body. I just went up, and my body went with me, because somewhere underneath all the years of desk chairs, it still remembered how to do this. It had just been waiting for me to start.

We talk about getting back into things like it's an act of will. Like the body is a reluctant participant we have to drag along. But the body doesn't forget. And more than that, it comes back faster than we think we deserve. Two days on a mountain and my lungs had already expanded, my calves had already strengthened, my stride had already found something that felt more like ease.

The body is not holding a grudge for how long we're gone. There's no punishment period, no earned suffering before the strength comes back. No guilt trip. Just a quiet willingness to help us do what we ask of it.

We're the ones who drift; into routines that don't include it, into lives that get full of everything except the things that made us feel like ourselves. And then one morning we try again, and the strength starts building the moment we show up.

The body doesn't need an apology for how long we were gone. It just needs us to show up and let it do what it knows how to do. Mine spent three mornings reminding me that I love mountains. That I am someone who climbs mountains. All it needed was a little space to prove it.