Trail Knows Nothing

Five years since I’ve walked this path.
The trailhead sign still tilts the way Mom always said
made it look drunk.

My wife takes my hand at the first switchback
where we always stopped to let her catch her breath.

The cedar she called “the grandmother tree”
has lost a major limb. Storm damage, maybe winter’s weight.

But the roots she warned us about
still snake across the path in the same places.
I step over them hearing her voice.
“Careful there.”

The bench at the overlook holds three teenagers now,
laughing at something on a phone.

We walk past to the secondary viewpoint
she discovered our last summer together.
“Better view, no crowds,” she’d said, proud
as if she’d built it herself.
She was right then.
She’s right now.

Lake Superior spreads below,
that certain blue she tried to name.
“Not sapphire, not slate…”

My wife says nothing,
knowing this silence is conversation.

The trail loops back through the grove
where she always stopped for wild thimbleberries.
Too early in the season now,
just white flowers where fruit will be.
I touch one gently.
She taught us that too.
“Never pick the flowers if you want the berries.”

At the parking lot I turn back once.
The trail continues its mindless work of being a trail.
It holds no memory of her walking stick, her rain jacket,
her way of naming every wildflower like greeting old friends.

That work is mine now.

The trail knows nothing.

I know everything.

I walk here anyway.