Kindness

Such a bland word, and I haven’t always appreciated its value, assuming that kindness is just one of our many gifts as human beings. I’ve learned to appreciate it recently after a fall on an icy and rocky trail “reduced me”—what a phrase!—to depending on strangers.

As my readers will recognize from that seldom-used phrase, I am one of those stubbornly and proudly independent women who has always assumed that I can handle anything, traffic jams to heartbreak, without any external help other than the sometimes-evaporating love of God—or perhaps only appearing to evaporate!

When I fell down in the woods ten days ago, my independence sprung a leak. It was a cold morning, the temperature in the lower twenties after an overnight below-zero reading, and I’d only seen one other hiker out that morning. Later I would learn from friends that this particular beloved trail which I’ve been hiking for thirty years, at the base of the soaring, snow-covered Sangre de Cristo mountains, was avoided by most because the Tesuque Creek has overflowed the trail and frozen, making it necessary to climb up the side of the mountain to avoid it.

Our trails are maintained as far as I can see by a devoted group of volunteers, the Forest Service staff having been stripped with the budget cuts installed by the former president who probably never saw a trail he could love. But volunteers in these bitter winters tend to disappear and anyway, what could they have done about a sheet of ice? Brought kettles of boing water from home?

So I went up the hill to avoid the ice, slipped and fell on a stone, which would never have happened if one of cleats hadn’t dropped off, unknown to me.

Back to kindness. Pip and I staggered toward the trail head—well, he doesn’t stagger—and saw the other lone hiker, a man with a dog.

I said those words which are so hard for me to speak: “Can you help me?” And he did with the strength of a smile and a hand on Pip’s leash. Afterward he helped Pip into my car.

I couldn’t help noticing that he was very good-looking.

I wonder if good-looking people can afford to be kind while the ugly and disgruntled are too busy feeling sorry for themselves.

There followed the usual procession of doctors’ appointments, x-rays—nothing was broken—as well as the best acupuncture I’ve ever had, which helped more than all the heavy-duty painkillers—and through it all, I remember that stranger’s smiling kindness, and his parting remark, “I’ll see you on the trails again.”

Which he will, in about a week.

 

---

For those of affected by addiction, you may enjoy this short talk by Johann Hari, “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong”:

In New Mexico Black Pip Hiking Favorites of 2023