It is my earliest shower since I have been in Georgia, 6:30
in the morning and water has already run over my entire body. Summer has
disappeared as quickly as the last of the sleep in my eyes, Georgians operating
on some sort of mentality that the seasons are capable of changing as quickly
as one might flip a calendar page. August is officially on its way out, and so
eschews in with it not only September, but the beginning of Fall. The rivers
are officially too cold to swim in, jeans have taken the place of shorts (or
less), and the excess dew that covers the windshield and slips into fog is only
temporary in the sense that it will soon be removed by a snow scraper, not just
the vent function in the air conditioning.
Either way, the morning brings with it the promise of
exploration, and soon I am standing outside Ollie’s host family’s house ready
to hike however many miles into the imposing mountains that serve as the
background of my daily landscape. Breakfast at Ollie’s house is a pleasant affair,
centered around the cereal version of rice pudding and Ollie’s 9 year old
sister, who is not any sort of shy. I thought Turkish tea was enough of a
beverage to prime my system and begin our 7:30 excursion, until Ollie’s host
father brings out the bottle of vodka and shots begin, the ironic decimation of
my coordination and reaction time bolstered by toasts of safe travel through
the mountains that have apparently claimed the lives of local travelers. My
concerned thoughts are not increased by the host father, who poured 6 shots (2
for Ollie, 2 for him, and the last 2 for me), and then the father opted not to
partake because he had to drive us to the beginning of the hike, meaning Ollie
and I are each allowed (forced to have) an extra drink to send us on our way.
It’s a bit like that scene in Horrible
Bosses when Jason Batemen is forced into a morning drink and accused of
alcoholism. Either way, the third shot hits uncomfortably, shooting down my
windpipe and flooding my lungs before being coughed back up through my nose and
into my eyes. The laughter from Georgians and Brits alike make me feel as
though I am not doing an adequate job representing my country.
The hike is not an easy one, but the view is incredible.
After 4 or 5 kilometers walking straight up into an endless mountaintop, my
legs are on fire; after repeatedly fooling myself into believing a break is
coming just over the next ledge, my body realizes that there will always be
another ridge hiding above the next tree line. I sit down for a splash of
water, and while I’m burping up the nauseating taste of vodka Ollie’s host
brother shows up in time to tell me that ridges will continue until I walked
out of Georgia and TLG’s jurisdiction and right into communist and oppressive
Russia. Luckily I have already ascended a few hundred (maybe thousand) meters
above the villages that have limited my view for the past two weeks, and the
sight before me remains uninterrupted as far as the horizon and the first
corner of the Black Sea. The world below
that I have just ventured out of does not even seem real, as though I had a
bird’s eye view of a landscape painting in a book laid across a library table.
The walk back down the mountain, as so many hikes go, is
hardly as eventful as the beginning. The hill has been vanquished, the real
challenge lay behind us. There is a mortality that descends upon us as the tree
tops and houses slowly return to eye level, the clouds that had just been
conscripted to serve as pillows under our heavy footsteps rise against the
thermals coming off the mountain and are soon an opaque ceiling hovering above
our heads and limiting the endless view we had just achieved. The straps of my
backpack begin to cut in a bit deeper, the books and rocks I loaded myself down
with to increase the feeling of a workout ride a bit lower on my back, and the
last 5 kilometers drag on longer, a dusty road, white and one dimensional, not
able to distract from the physicality of hiking like the ever improved view of
climbing into the sky. Luckily conversation has turned to our next move, and
plans for a swim and a cold beer offer the next goal, a glimmering view just as
enchanting as sitting above our own existence. In a welcome back into the
village, Georgia shows that it has something to offer at every altitude, and
two old strangers sitting outside a shop notice the American flag velcroed to
the outside of my pack, and invite us over for beers so they can chat with the
foreigners.
It is 5 hours later, and I have finally made it back to my
house. The fog of free beer and requisite shots of vodka has dimmed, long hours
of translated conversation serving as a cool down exercise, meaning that my
muscles have begun to groan in protest to a day’s worth of service. I totaled
somewhere around 28-30 kilometers as the 40 pound pack finally slides off my
shoulder for the first time, and even typing a conclusion to this entry is
becoming taxing near the impossible. A quick flip through the pictures of the
day qualify the excursion as a success, and the lights in my bedroom begin to
dim as I fight off sleep and try to fill the last few inches of the screen with
a flickering black scrawl. As the edges of this world begin to soften from
their 90 degree angles into the fluid realm of dreams and imagination, the words
run off the screen and spill onto the floor, and as the last words run from my
fingertips, I realize…
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