Saturday morning, Alen and I went on a 10-mile hike essentially because I got FOMO for two seconds when I heard my friends were planning on going. We both approached the morning shrugging—we like walking, we like nature, we like friends, what could go wrong?
How many steps will this be? he asked that morning.
Liiiike 20,000? I said. Like a day at Disney?
Like two days on the desk treadmill, he said.
Perfectly doable. A cute challenge to spice up my regular monotony of rarely trying that hard at anything.
The trail was cute until it wasn’t, which unfortunately was about two miles in. I broke the walking stick Allie made me by hitting it against the ground to make some dumb point probably about reality tv. I’d been prepared for the miles, but as the miles racked up, the elevation climbed and dipped. Beyond the shade of trees, it was 95 degrees by mid-morning. I trailed behind my more athletic, prepared friends and focused on step after step after step over roots and rocks. I took deep breaths and tried to slooowly release them when going uphill. I pressed my palm to my chest on level ground, calming my spiking heart.
Alen and I had fresh tattoos on our arms covered in saniderm. Beneath mine, sweat mixed with plasma and ink in vulgar puddles as I walked, like some sick lava lamp.
We’d gotten matching flash tattoos from Carly the night before, grinning skulls in cowboy hats, kinda a yeehaw memento mori I’d said to a tipsy stranger who wandered in as we waited. Alen went first, cringed and said fuck! in the glow of Carly’s headlamp and then filmed me to see if I’d cringe and of course I didn’t cringe because he was filming me. In the video, I’m gazing at him from the table, starry-eyed as the machine needles my tender wrist. The tattoo took fifteen minutes, and in the last five, Alex walked in with a takeout box of treats, just off his own shift, wondering if Carly wanted a bite of cake before he went home.
Outside in the alley, plastic-wrapped and ignited with adrenaline, I realized we were under the full moon. I told Alen that it was a Sagittarius moon, his moon, and when we turned together to look, I saw my first lightning bug of the season. Life felt impossibly sweet and generous. We took selfies in front of a wall overgrown with ivy, in the glow of a streetlight and the strawberry full moon, freshly bleeding and reeling together.
On the hike, our single-file line stretched and shrank as we lagged and caught up and moved and rested. We chatted when we were together, grew quieter while climbing inclines. We bunched on bridges to share the same view, to share Gatorade and meat sticks, to throw pebbles into water blanketed in glowing algae.
We all stepped to the side of the trail to let some faster hikers through and one of them said “That’s poison ivy, by the way, in case you don’t know what it looks like,” gesturing to the leaves circling our shins.
Every step of the last five miles felt impossible, and on top of that annoyingly symbolic, the embodiment of the only way out is through, no way to skip to the end. Alen joked about calling an Uber helicopter.
Allie was near the front, she remembered the trail from walking it last summer and she kept saying that the end was near. She promised the end was near for several miles in a row, and I didn’t care if she was just being nice or if she was just misremembering. It helped to be delusional. Just up this hill, I told myself again and again.
I really feel like we’re getting closer! Allie would shout, which of course was true no matter how slowly we moved.
The last stretch of the trail was a quarter-mile down a paved park road, all 95 degrees of sun roasting the back of my neck. Finally, finally, we collapsed into BDub’s Civic with all the doors hanging open, waiting on the a/c to push out the heavy hot air. We checked our limbs for ticks and planned our dish soap showers to wash away the poison ivy.
At the Casey’s a few miles away, I sucked down enough cold fountain Dr. Pepper before we checked out that I revisited the machine to fill my styrofoam cup back up to the top. I examined my wrist where my tattoo wept. The dead cowboy grinned, reminding me that I’d wanted adventure.
The cashier was talking to her friend about how she’d gone out and gotten drunk the night before. She didn’t charge us for the fountain drinks or pizza. Back in the car, skin salty with sweat, we talked about how cool of her that was.
There is this transformative crackling energy in my friend groups, every person striding toward their next audacious want. Is this everywhere???
Bjork videos were some of my earliest internet treasures and that hasn’t changed one bit, this entire substack could be Bjork videos and me talking about them, if this song were a tarot card it would have fallen out of the deck every morning last month
IF YOU ARE TAKING BIG STEPPY STRIDES TOWARD YOUR NEXT THING I SEE YOU, I’M CHEERING FOR YOU, I CALLED THE LOCAL RADIO STATION TO DEDICATE THIS TO YOU AND YOU’RE CURLED UP NEXT TO THE SPEAKER LISTENING TO IT IN YOUR CHILDHOOD BEDROOM
The band mimed playing while Bjork sang live for this video so it’s essentially her singing karaoke of her own song <3
I can sense it
Something important
Is about to happen
It's coming upIt takes courage to enjoy it
The hardcore and the gentle
Big time sensualityWe just met
And I know i'm a bit too intimate
But something huge is coming up
And we're both includedIt takes courage to enjoy it
The hardcore and the gentle
Big time sensualityI don't know my future after this weekend
And I don't want to
If you’re new: hi, I’m Lindsey and this is Better Still, a multimedia newsletter about creative growth and staying tender. I write personal essays and share playlists and paper zines.
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Struck dumb by "audacious wants" and "crackling energy".
yeehaw memento mori would be the most epic band name.
also i love this, love getting to read your writing on the regular again. it's always been my favorite, since ye olden days. <3