Angels
Image courtesy of Josh Hild on Pexels.
“A Trail Angel is defined as someone who provides help, transportation, lodging, or food to a hiker. Many times these random acts of kindness are what it takes for a hiker to pull through and continue on their journey when they feel like they have reached their breaking point.”
Every evening, I walk out of my home and into the field which I cleared many years ago to greet all of the many people who come to camp outside my home. Sometimes there are ten people and sometimes there are a hundred. They sit outside their pitched tents in the twilight, casting long shadows around the small campfires they make from the logs in my woodpile. I serve them home-cooked meals, treat any minor injuries, and provide clean socks, iodine tablets, and canisters of fuel. My home is nothing remarkable: just one story with three rooms. The nearest true road is a ten-minute drive over an unpaved lane. The hikers make my home special. The walk they undertake is a series of trails linked together like hands holding one another, a walk of about two hundred miles. It is customary to take the hike along which my home is located from south to north. When the hikers come to me, they are usually about twenty days into their journey. I can often tell that they are on the brink of some profundity, to which I am not privy. But the mysterious understandings they contain shimmer softly and vaguely from them in the darkness, like so many fireflies.
As I feed and aid the hikers, I make a point of asking them for their stories. They tell me about their professions and their hometowns. They show me the yellowing, well-loved photographs of potlucks or days at the beach, which they carry in fireproof boxes despite the extra weight it adds to their packs. Through-hikers often call people like me angels, people who freely provide the things that they miss the most while on their pilgrimages. That is the title I officially hold, according to the hikers’ union which organizes rest stops like mine. But I am convinced that they are the true angels. The people that come to my home, nourish themselves with the food that I cook, and take the supplies and aid I offer, save me daily.
This is especially true of the few children I see. Even though they often accompany their parents or guardians, the children are my favorite people to speak to. Their eyes are large and full of wonder and they tell the truth without reservation. They remind me of my own little Gabriel. A boy passing through once told me on a spring evening that he didn't like the pasta sauce that I had made for the campers. His parents were embarrassed and reprimanded him quietly. But I didn’t mind. My own Gabriel was like him, too, full of questions and candid—he did not know how to be anything else. The hikers don't usually come into my home out of an understandable concern for their own safety and because usually they have elected to be autonomous for this journey. It isn’t my place to disrespect this choice. They keep their cards close to their chest and respect the rules of propriety.
But on this spring evening, this boy told me that his name was Liam and that he was nine years old. When he asked if I had anything else to eat, I opened my door, led him into my kitchen, and opened my cupboards. Immediately, he reached for the cookies and potato chips. I know how kids love these treats. He left behind crumbs all over the floor, which I could not stand to pick up, so I let the mice remove them in my stead. He was the second most beautiful child I have ever seen.
I don’t think of myself as an angel, but as a shepherd. I guide people from one place to another. I don't know who was there for Gabriel when he left this world in exchange for some other, deeper place, but I like to think that, whoever it was, they were gentle to him. I like to think that, to comfort him, they gave him the caramel candies he loved, the ones impossible to chew, and must be dissolved slowly on the tongue. He made them last for the longest time. Always, he knew just how delicate and how transitory everything was. His patience often surprised me for a child of his age. When I used to take him to the playground, I observed the other children, who wanted to play rough-and-tumble like puppies, and I observed how Gabriel preferred to swing on his own, oblivious to the world, flying as though gravity could not touch him. I wanted to tell him not to swing so high. As his father, I could not help but be afraid for him. But I caught myself. He was a sensitive boy. The moment I chastised him for anything, he became ashamed. The kick of his legs, which grew longer by the day, and the way his hair became tousled by the wind, just golden enough to catch the light—I'm sorry. I realize you don’t need to know this.
Before the home was mine, it was the waystation of a hunter. I am told that he shot and sold several dozen small woodland creatures each season. Their pelts brought good prices for purses and mittens. I have never killed any creature on this property. In the years since I have moved here, I have seen the groundhogs and marmots grow comfortable again with the hikers, snouting around tents with small and inquisitive faces, eating the unmown grass in the yard, innocent to the cruelty of which humans are capable. I am uncomfortable with the pain of other beings. It is a weakness of mine. Of course, I never let the injured hikers, of which I see a fair few, know this. They are shy enough about accepting my aid, even without my reaction to their pain, which I know they may perceive as a judgement passed on their strength.
Once a young man came to my porch, arriving later than all the other campers, with a sliver of pearly bone that had sliced through his skin. He had walked on the fracture for seven hours. When I opened my door he was weeping silently with his hands clasped in the glow of the porch light. I knew that I did not know enough to help him. I carried him to my bed and laid him down. I gave him chips of ice and oatmeal and child's ibuprofen from a spoon. His face was waxy and contorted with pain. He was silent until I picked up the satellite phone that I keep for such instances to call the nearest hospital, two hours away by car.
“Don't call. I’m okay. Please, I don't need help,” he whispered hoarsely from the bed, with his head tucked down into his sweat-soaked shirt. He was ashamed and growing delirious with the pain reliever. Of course I called anyway. As I did, I felt that I betrayed him, though I knew it was the right thing to do. I didn't ask what had made him push away help in his most desperate hour. Everybody must find a way to cope. Perhaps he knew that I would call anyway. Perhaps he had to say that he could do it all alone, if only for himself.
We cannot do it alone. I know it now. The hikers have taught me that much, and more. So I am selling this home. The lovely Ms. Marshall, with whom I trust you are well acquainted by now, told me that to put the home on the market, I would need to explain its unusual history to its future occupant, which I hope I have done sufficiently. For instance you may have strange visitors, despite that I am officially no longer an angel, and this place is no longer officially the home of one. Ms. Marshall has been in the real estate industry for a long time and helped me purchase the house all those years ago. I trust her judgement on these matters fully. I am not sure what your intention is for this home. I cannot mandate that you welcome the through-hikers. I can only, in all of my good faith, recommend that you do.