How often do we get to say goodbye twice? First with sadness, then joy.

I had driven seven minutes before noticing an extra phone on the passenger seat, lit up silently with an unknown number. That would be Jenny calling from a stranger’s phone.

“Hello.”

Her voice wavered, unsure if I would be upset over 14 minutes lost.

“Turning around, be right there.”

The hug the second time was a joyful (if momentary) reunion, whereas the first just minutes ago had been anticipating the sadness of absence.

There was gratitude for an ex of many years ago. She taught me not to have so much expectation. I gradually lost the anger and sense of upset when things didn’t go my way.

What if we could always say goodbye twice? Once to acknowledge the sense of loss to come after. And once to appreciate what had come before. But alas we are too busy to create the conditions of a double farewell purposely. So a forgotten phone is a treasure – without which a special moment would not have been.

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That was the previous time Jenny and I came to the park. Then she had left me early to fly home – and forgotten the phone in my car. This year she was going up the mountain with me. And what a mountain it was. Longs Peak. First famously climbed by a one-armed Colonel John Wesley Powell in 1868. Powell whet his wanderlust here before becoming the first to float the Colorado through the Grand Canyon.

Jenny and I arrived at the trailhead early, before sunrise – with an intention to be off the massif before afternoon thunderstorms. Hiking through Goblin forest in darkness the conversation was minimal. The tree line gave way as the sky brightened.

Chasm Junction was behind us when clouds started rolling in – the peak was known for its microclimate. Rain came contrary to the forecast, and we pulled parkas from our packs. The air turned cold and the first pelts of hail hit us.

“I think our plan is stymied today.”

We turned around and headed back down as the hail grew in size and intensity. The trail became a stream, water coursing around our ankles in a race to beat us down the slope. The hail began to hurt.

“We have to find cover in the tree line.  Straight down, off trail.”

Our feet moved mechanically, stumbling yet somehow avoiding an injurious fall. Finally the vegetation enveloped us, but the scrub was low. We’d have to go further to find relief from the ice pellets. Some fir and spruce began to tower overhead. I was looking for a thicker stand when the ground disappeared underneath me.

Jenny peered down, face full of worry under the hood of her parka.

“I’m ok.” 

I was in an open pit with an embrasure directly in front. 

“It’s an old mine.”

Jenny clambered down. Together we examined the mine entrance more closely. The framing beams looked thick – made of old growth trees more substantial than the contemporary young forest now on the surrounding slope.

My trail partner stepped cautiously through the entrance, testing the footing. Pulling headlamps from our packs, we crawled over fallen logs and rock, and soon found ourselves several dozen feet inside.  Here our lights illuminated a small living area.

The air was damp and smelled of mildew.  Scattered tin plates and an oil lamp on its side were on the floor, near a broken table. Shelves still clung to beams serving as walls. Jenny lifted an object from one of these. It was a book – a diary, as it turned out. The bindings opened to a page marked with a quill.

My companion read aloud:

“October 1896.  

My dear Euterpe, how life has gone astray.  I sought fortune in this mountain and perhaps find my end instead.  The rain never ends, and the last of the dry wood is gone save for the timbers that line this forsaken chamber.  

Now I am too weak to remove some for the fire.  Beans are all that are left of my provisions and I fear they have made a wreck of my constitution.

Is it always that humans seek our fortune elsewhere and fail to see the treasure at our side until it is too late?  For Euterpe you and my little Eustice are indeed the treasures I would grant myself once again if only I could.”

“That is all that is legible. The other pages are fused together.”

On the broken table was another book – open, also with the other pages stuck together in decay.  Jenny again read:

“Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.” ¹

She flipped the manuscript and tried to read the cover, but said nothing. The years must have finally obscured the title. But it was a book I remembered reading long ago. In it the heroine Hester had learned to live with guilt more adroitly than her lover Dimmesdale.

“It is “The Scarlet Letter” – one of the first mass-produced books in America. It would have been popular then.”

My eyes searched the room, noticing a small fire pit with a pipe chimney which disappeared above the rafters. And then I spotted what appeared to be bones.

“The miner is still here.” I pointed next to the pit.

Suddenly our mood turned heavy. The sense of curiosity remained but with a somber tone.

“We must tell the rangers.”

The sound of the storm outside abated suddenly, as if a valve was turned off.

I stepped to a dark hole in the wall, the shaft from whence rock was once hewn with so much sweat and hope. It ended a dozen feet in, showing no glint or other hint of precious metal. “He worked the excavation hard, all by himself.”

Is this our fate? To search for a destiny, and then find it was a fool’s errand. To realize a treasure was with us all the time but to which we were oblivious?

The miner had been reading a story about how guilt can diminish a soul. He was survived by a young wife and child, and with his demise they were consigned to fend for themselves. I wondered if he felt guilt – knowing he left them alone in their fragility.

Or was his ravaged psyche too focused on his own misery – feeling purely the regret of his own loss? I suspect he felt guilt too.

It is hard to put such culpability behind us.  In the Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale could not, and its corrosiveness finally destroyed his health. In contrast Hester denied her shame, as when she stepped from the prison “marked with natural dignity and force of character…” ¹  By accepting that making mistakes is human, we can let go of a remorse which helps us not.

What about myself – was I free of guilt? I knew it was close, tugging at the edge of my happiness, awakening at inopportune times to remind me of my worst failures.

I considered a son who had made poor choices. How could I have changed his trajectory?  Added to the ledger were others I hurt.

Reflections were distracted by Jenny as she climbed up the rubble at the entrance. I pulled myself up after her. Gaining the edge, we looked up at the summit above, with Mills Glacier barely visible above (the unseen) Chasm lake.  

Isabella Bird, who climbed to the top in 1873, called the mountain both the Mont Blanc of Colorado and the American Matterhorn. I was more enamored of northern park summits in Grand Teton and Glacier. But there could be no denying the eminence of Longs Peak in this neighborhood.

Without a word we headed across the slope, weaving between the brush and trees until finding the trail again. The descent through Goblin forest was a blur. We took a break at the intersecting path to Eugenia mine. Here was another story of failed mineral enterprise – but in this pit only a fortune was lost and not a life.

Back at the trailhead we told the rangers our story, signed a statement, and walked to our car.

The parking lot was within range of a cell tower. My phone chimed and I pulled it out of my pack. There was a text notification from my son, and I was reminded of my poor parenting skills. But then I relaxed. The miner and I both had guilt – but it is a burden we don’t have to carry if it doesn’t serve us.

I looked at Jenny. She was smiling. I was suddenly happy we had not yet said goodbye. Not even once.

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© 2022-2025 by Dean Jen

¹ Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter,” Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston, 1850.