Rugged Ascent

After a difficult 2023, I have recommitted to the practice of gratitude.? As I’ve mentioned in another article about my mother’s passing, this is a challenging habit for me. I tend to think in negative terms, and, even if something good happens to me, within a very short timeframe I will have forgotten the positive event. To remedy this problem, a few years back I decided to set my alarm every 20 minutes, with the forced intent that each time it went off, I would think of something to be thankful for. This had a novelty effect which briefly lifted my mood but ultimately failed, because I found myself growing aggravated with the constant interruption.

One of the difficulties with this practice, aside from the fact that it disrupted my train of thought, was that after an initial boost it was plagued by a nearly immediate descent back into anxiety and depression—my baseline moods. I think it was just too rigorous a discipline for me to continue with, and interestingly enough one that I feel did more harm than good. Self-help gurus don’t advocate anything quite so intense, suggesting instead a less rigorous cultivation of thankfulness: write down at least three things one is grateful for every day. That suggestion has not been particularly helpful to me either, for the reason that I struggle to hold on to the memory of any good event in my life, especially so many hours after I’ve experienced it. At the end of the day, I am exhausted anyway and can hardly remember what I am supposed to be grateful for. The memory itself will have long since receded into the smothering clouds of my mood disorder, and strange as it might seem I actually feel pain in the attempt to excavate it, as if I’m clawing through granite. ?A remedy to this impasse, I’ve realized recently, is that I need a lot of detail to make an event real and therefore memorable to me. Given that I’m a writer, vividly and coherently narrating positive occurrences like stories might not only better carve them into my mind but also be inspiring to others. This is my theory, anyway.

With that, I thought I’d start with something easy, as a sort of warm up.

On New Year’s Day, I went for a hike at Julia Falls Overlook on Signal Mountain, Tennessee, which is in the Greater Chattanooga area. I relocated here while my mother was ill in 2023 and eventually passed away last August. For decades I had visited my parents in East Ridge, a suburb of Chattanooga, where they retired. I almost never strayed from their immediate neighborhood, unless I was accompanying them to a doctor’s appointment or going out to eat with them. Mostly I was in and out, on a mission and then I was gone back to Georgia or up north again, where I lived in the 2000’s. I knew in flashes the painted, still scenes of nature that Chattanooga had on offer, vistas written into the city itself, massifs looming over I-24 with its clash of freeway traffic. Once I made friends here, I started becoming more familiar with the area. Venturing further afield, I have been increasingly awed by the area’s pristine natural beauty. And in my love of all things free, nature here is the freest.

For that reason I was eager to see the falls. ?I was under the impression that the trail would be easy (according to the website anyway, which miscommunicated the level of difficulty). When I started my descent to the falls, however, it rapidly became evident that the trail was dangerous. As I continue to recover from a meniscal tear I developed last February, it was even more perilous because of my knee’s vulnerable state and the inadequacy of my footwear. But not to worry—I being a pessimist am also an inveterate optimist. ?As a result, I don’t give up, sometimes to the point of being mulish. Case in point: it was already around 3 when I started out on what was said to be a flat .9 mile hike.

Being my father’s daughter, I have discretion and I know how not to court disaster, as he termed it in his south Alabama way. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t take calculated risks, even as I also know when to stop. To climb down the gorge overlooking the forest-green, slow-roiling Tennessee River was a bracing event, and my spirits soared; I was at one. It was cloudy and raw, but that just made the experience all the more exhilirating. Turning from the river, I stopped and, agog, took in the huge boulders that surrounded my way. As I gazedupward with my neck thrown back, no one else seemed to exist--no chattering children, no reprimanding parents—and I felt as if I were standing in the 1700’s like a character in The Last of the Mohicans. It was a glimpse of the sublime, a term British romantic poets used to describe such dreams of wild and even deadly beauty. I didn’t linger too long, though, because in spite of the exquisite surroundings, it was turning darker and the waterfall didn’t seem to be getting any closer. It was as if the nine-tenth of a mile was actually 20. I was alone and without my cellphone, forgotten in the car. As I asked a couple of hikers--all in comfortable groups--how far away the falls was, they could only give vague answers. The second person I asked was a little more definite and said “maybe three-quarters of a mile.” From this I concluded that I’d only traveled .15 miles in 45 minutes! It was at that point I decided to do an aboutface and return up the mountain. Interestingly enough, in spite of my generally Eyoresque brain I didn’t consider this to be a failure at all—perhaps because it was such a breathtaking experience, one effortlessly joyous. As I climbed back up—a little disappointed, I’ll admit--I found gratitude in the following ways.

One, it was a very wise choice to turn around. To get caught on the trail unable to navigate the dark path with its thick roots and gaping erosions would been extremely hazardous—I can just hear my father bellowing “Cathryn Lynn Coone, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?!” (this from a man who climbed Amicalola Falls, the highest cascading waterfall east of the Mississippi). Also not having a phone and struggling in footwear inadequate to the task, I could readily have turned my ankle and slid down the steep, rocky terrain, resulting in severe injury. I also told myself that I would return, and when I did I would come much earlier in the day to complete the hike. Now I knew what I was up against, and that would mean better shoes as well.

As I started hiking back, I was immensely grateful that my knee was functioning so well. Now that didn’t mean I ran up the mountain, leaping from stone to stone. ?Both going down and up, I sat and crawled when I felt I needed to. Given that many of the hikers were much younger than I and far more vigorous, I was glad that I could do so alone. What impresses me most about myself in this instance, though, is that I would have played it safe anyway, audience or not. I mean who cares? ?I’d rather be alive than engage in extreme sports. My father would be proud, if begrudgingly so, though he probably would have said that, yet again, I’d dodged a bullet. And he’d be right.

There is a shining frame to this memory of New Year’s Day, one that cuts gold. On the way to the falls and later as I headed home, I drove past Alexian, the rehab unit where my mother had been a patient twice over the last five years of her life. Looking at the awe-inspiring sweep of mountains, I remembered that she had seen them, seemingly eternal, from her window, even as her body started to turn on her. I had once thought that she could go into assisted living up there on Signal Mountain, comforted by the deep blue view, the trees inscribed clearly on a day of winter sunshine. I knew that I myself would have been heartened by the glory of the perspective, anxious and saddened as I was by her decline, even as she obstinately clung to her independence and we argued frequently over her safety. As I teared up and then openly wept, my heart, crushed, exploded into the heavy roses of grief and love. Negotiating the hairpin curves back down to the valley, I left behind that wrenching memory like a cross of flowers by the road, knowing that even though my mother will never again see those mountains of her childhood, I will see them for her.

And the falls, too, crashing down from the rugged ascent.

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