Spreading Colden's Ashes

All the initial decisions we made were based on instinct rather than thoughtful determinition. Did we want to hold him? Yes. Did we want an autopsy? Yes. What did we want to do with his body? Cremation. We also immediately decided not to hold a service, not because we didn't want to honor him but due to my instinctual knowledge that I just couldn't handle it. Instead we agreed very early on that we would spread his ashes on his mountain--the mountain we named him after, just the two of us. I wanted to do it on Mother's Day because I found out I was pregnant last year on Mother's Day.

Despite our initial decision to do this, I was dreading this weekend coming. But once we actually started hiking, it almost felt okay, purposeful. On Friday we hiked in 3 miles with our backpacks on, carrying all of our stuff. We stopped at a lean-to for the night. Since it was early in the season we saw only a few people, mostly Canadians, and had the lean-to to ourselves. We got there pretty early and didn't have a lot to do. We should have brought scrabble or a book. I was restless, not wanting to do think about what we were going to do the next day. We had dinner, drank a couple of adult juice boxes, as Brendan calls the small boxes of wine we brought, and went to sleep early.

The next day we started hiking at about 8:30am. It was immediately tougher. We had left the big backpacks at the lean-to since the 7.5 mile loop we were about to do would bring us back to the morning's starting point, but the terrain was pretty steep. It gave me something to focus on. We walked for about an hour or so when we got to Lake Arnold where we got more water. Then it started raining on us and we hit the first patches of snow. At first the snow was really neat--snow in May, pretty cool. But there just kept being more and more snow. You had to walk right in the center to avoid breaking through and there was running water underneath so every once in a while you'd break through anyway. I fell in up to my upper thigh quite a few times. It was exausting going uphill so steeply on tricky terrain. Around 1pm we got to the top of Colden Mountain. The peak was all socked in, with no view at all

All of a sudden Brendan and I didn't really know what to do. This was what were here for, but how to do it? At least it had stopped raining.

I had carried him. It was really important to me to do it myself, to carry him as I had once carried him within me. So I took that awful little white box from the funeral home, and I opened it. Inside was a tragic little plastic bag of ashes wrapped with a twist tie. I opened that too. It was more material than I expected but how could this represent the sum total of his beautiful little body? We stood there together holding each other up for a few minutes. We said goodbye outloud between sobs and Brendan let the contents of the bag loose in the wind. Afterwards he landed in my arms so hard I almost fell over. We just held on to each other for several moments.

We had also carried three small rocks with us, one for each of us. We left them together on the top of a cairn.

We only had a few more minutes at the summit to ourselves before a family of three showed up. I thought about how we'd never get to do a hike with Colden alive and us a family together. Did they know how lucky they are?

We had a quick bite to eat and then started down. For just a few moments as we left the summit the sky cleared and we could see beautiful vistas in all directions. Directly below us was Lake Colden and we were heading that way. This side is much, much steeper. There were so many steep slabs of rock, running with water. Our progress really slowed and it took a ton of concentration to negotiate them. Hurting yourself out there could really cause trouble, especially since we didn't have a sleeping bag with us to ward off hypothermia. We really had to keep moving. As we continued downwards a thunderstorm blew in on top of us. Rain started pouring down. Thunder. Lightening. And so much rain.

We reached Lake Colden a little after 3pm. I thought the terrain would be much easier once we made it that far because we'd lost most of the elevation already even though we still had 3 miles left to get back where we started that morning. But the trail was still really rough, slinking over and under boulders, through mud pits and across streams. Some time during this section it hailed on us, wasabi bean-sized chunks that came down for about 10 minutes. My mood was at a major low point. I was so tired physically and emotionally but too wet to sit anywhere and rest. My boots were squishy around my achy feet. We just had to keep going.

Finally we got back to the starting point for the morning. Originally we had planned to stay at the lean-to another night but many forces combined to convince us to grab the heavier packs and hike the remaining 3 miles to the trail head right then. I could barely hold myself up the last mile or two. Momentum and my trekking poles were pretty much all that kept me upright. We got to the car at 8pm, having travelled only 10.5 miles in 10 or 11 hours of hiking, but it was a really tough hike in ways that I can't even begin to describe here.

The one on the left is Colden Mountain in the Adirondacks of NY. It's a good place for him to be given that he can't be with us. Soon I'll try to write about Mother's Day itself.