Rancocas

I went to Rancocas State Park last week. It’s a park 20 minutes away that’s an easy go-to hike for us. I’ll stop on the way to work and do a quick three-mile loop. Or Alex and I will hike there when we don’t have time to go somewhere more interesting.

Rancocas is nothing special. It’s at the edge of the pinelands, so it’s filled with thick beech trees and holly groves. Creeks wind through the red marl soil. It borders a mucky river that smells.

But it’s cool to hike there. I’m not wrapped up trying to take in the big sights, so I settle into an easy stride. I’ve hiked in every season and notice the little differences. Every time I’m there I notice some unique thing. It was frogs this time. They were across the river, thousands of them chirping and thwarping. It was like being in a gymnasium filled with 4^th graders bouncing basketballs.

It’s Alex’s senior year and it’s sliding away. Spring break is in a week. Then senior trip, prom, senior lunch, graduation, summer. We’ll hear from colleges soon and that will take on a momentum of its own. I feel like we’re at the clank-clank-clank part of the roller coaster when you’re almost at the top and then WOOSH! and the good part is over before you even know it and then you’re just knocking around thinking about the big hill.

He’s always out. At the lab, at work, at school, at Erin’s. Always rushing somewhere. We make conversation while he hurries by; we ask about friends and class, begging for crumbs of him.

We’ve got plans too. We’re taking a family trip to Arizona. The boys are taking a 3-week cross-country road trip this summer, and Shani and I are going to meet them in the Canadian Rockies. We’ll hike the Grand Canyon, Banff, Monument Valley, Jasper. We’ll make blazing memories in the time we have left.

But really it’s not the blazing memories that we’re losing. It’s the sound of him in the house. His optimism. His buoyancy. His hair. His height. The way he sits in the driveway on his phone for 15 minutes before he comes into the house. The way he’ll eat 15 cheese sticks in a single sitting. The 2/3-full cans of seltzer left around the house. 

I’ve counted and found that I’ve hiked Rancocas 107 times. And I figure half of those have been with Alex.

We’ve been hiking together since he could walk, so it’s second nature. We match and mediate our pace as a single unit without even thinking about it. I know the sound of his footsteps; I know his gait; I know his presence in relation to my own. Easy conversation and easy silences, both unremarkable, both mundane.

Moments that are nothing special.

But in reality

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for the last 18 years,

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those moments of nothing special

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have been forever unforgettable to me.

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