The town came alive below me as the sun sank behind the ridge.
I’d followed the Pine–Strawberry Trail out of town without much thought, just climbing until the noise softened and the air cooled. Halfway up Strawberry Mountain, I found an alligator juniper and leaned back into its bark, patterned and solid, like it had been waiting longer than I had.
There wasn’t anywhere to camp. No flat ground. No reason to keep moving either.
So I stayed.
The lights in Strawberry flickered on one by one, small signals of people settling into their evenings. Down there, dinners being made, conversations unfolding, the faint noise of music from inside the tavern. Up here, just wind through the branches and the slow fade of color from the sky.
Mosquitoes came out after dark. I wrapped my windbreaker around my legs, pulled on my puffy as the temperature dropped, and kept watching. I didn’t feel pulled in any direction. Not forward. Not back. Just a stillness that didn’t ask for anything more.
People doing people things. Down there, up here. All of us the same, each one of us unique. Each of us different expressions of the same thing. Everyone building a life that makes sense to them, even if it looks nothing like mine.
The branches above stretched across the stars, black against the night, and I felt comfort in their dark tentacles.
Time passed without me needing to track it.
Morning came clean and cold. I walked into Pine, drank a half gallon of milk like it was the last one I’d ever taste, then stuck my thumb out toward Payson. New insoles. New socks. The trail continuing, exactly as it should.
Sometimes the best place to be isn’t somewhere you planned to stop.
It’s where you realize you don’t need to go anywhere else.
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