Catherine. The girl I met when backpacking. I've never told anybody this story before, and I'm just drunk enough to share it on a throwaway with some strangers.
I needed a weekend away. Not away from my wife, per se, but away from everything. Away from my house in the suburbs, away from the kids, away from my job, away from all the choices I've made along the way that led me here. We agreed in August that I could take a long weekend before it got too cold, and she agreed that I needed it. I hadn't been myself lately. Life had been hectic, to say the least. And so in the middle of September, I drove from DC out to West Virginia with a loaded backpack and spent several days hiking through mountain meadows and forests. It was beautiful. There may have been 6 people on the mountainside that weekend. It was backcountry, not the kind of hiking done by normal people. Cell signal stopped 30 minutes before I parked, and I never had a bar the whole time I was out there.
On the second night, I had pitched my tent atop a small waterfall that was fed by a creek that was the culmination of all the mountainside trickles that had muddied the trails I'd spent the day navigating. I had feeding sticks to my barely started fire when she walked up, scaring me. I hadn't said a word aloud in over 48 hours, and hearing her cheerful "Hi there!" made me jump. She was smiling at me, her red hair up in a ponytail, her thumbs stuck in the shoulder straps of her backpack, her half-cocked smiled ready to steal my heart. She'd had her mind set on spending the night over a waterfall, and she was jealous that I'd taken the best campsite for miles. I told her there was room for another tent. It takes a special kind of woman to solo hike in the middle of nowhere. I looked less scary that the bears around us, so she accepted and pitched her tend next to mine.
We watched as the sun fell beyond the spruce-lined horizon. We shared stories and a flask of bourbon I had brought with me. She shooed a bear like a mother does a kitten when it came into our camp, and once it had gone she embraced me and said, "Wasn't she beautiful?" We stayed up late into the night getting to know each other. We asked each other questions, and we answered honestly. We shared stories and confessions, the way teenagers do when they fall in love. When we were sufficiently drunk we rinsed the day's sweat off in the pool beneath the waterfall, shivering in the frigid mountain creek. We dried ourselves by the fire, naked and grinning. Her nipples were puckered and twisted from our chilly dip, and I didn't bother hiding that I had an erection most of the time. She was covered in tattoos. She had a flat stomach, big legs, and kind of a weird shaped butt. But I thought she was beautiful. She produced a joint from her pack, and I got high with her for the first time in over a decade. I asked her about her tattoos, and she had a story for each one. She walked me through them, stages of her life inked on her body. She said tattoos were scars that you got to choose.
She asked me if I was single. I told her I was married. She asked, "Even out here?" I paused a little too long before I said, "Yeah." I gave her my name, but she wouldn't give me hers. She wanted me to guess her name, and I said she looked like a Catherine. She told me she wanted to be my Catherine, in that case. We slept in separate tents, but not before she took my hand and asked me in a whisper if I was sure. If you're going to have a secret, this would be the place to make it. But I told her in some other universe, I'd have a very different answer. She put her hand on my cheek and told me I was a good man. I took her hand and kissed her fingers. She told me sometimes the planets line up at just the wrong time.
We hiked out together the next day, and we stood hugging beside her Honda in the little parking area at the trailhead. I wanted to kiss her, and I know she would have let me, but I didn't. I should be proud of that, I guess. I should be proud of the fact that despite getting drunk and high with this amazing woman that I didn't do anything awful. But I shared with her more honestly than I've ever shared with anybody since I was a teenager, and although my behavior was mostly acceptable, I think I feel guilty for the connection we shared more than anything. It's not something I've had before or since. Maybe it was the time and the place, maybe it was her. But she struck me, and she was beautiful in every way.