Figment Of The Hills: Part I

          Figures! The thought bristled in response to the barrage of words cast upon my ears from the three people ahead as they slogged down the forest trail. And the path’s too narrow to get around them, I surmised, ruling out an escape for my wife and myself. How terrible a sin did I commit to find myself trapped behind those…those –
          “Notice the perfect pyramidal distinction of that Tsuga Canadensis.”
          Botanists!
          “You mean by the moss covered protrusion with an underlying deflated layer?”
          And Geologists!
          “I bet the sporophyte is fully developed on the gametophyle of that moss.”
          And Biologists – oh my!
          To us common folk journeying to Hocking Hills Region of Ohio to pay homage to its awe-inspiring landscape, these people are known as scientists: beings who merely by spewing strange words possess the ability to draw the very color from the surrounding visage.
          I looked to my wife and watched her eyes shift skyward. My own eyes slipped from under the scientists’ spell, following her gaze to a red-tailed hawk with wings spread against the azure background as it descended over a field of orange, yellow, red, blue and violet wildflowers. Oh yes, my wife would be unaffected by the scientists’ enchantment. After all, she was one of them…
          Okay, one of them, but different – an aberration. In her youth she had been educated and indoctrinated into their medical ranks. But, like us common folk, she is able to appreciate the splendor of the regions of Hocking Hills separate from the scrutinizing obsessions the others remained fettered within.
          Catching my look, my wife crinkled her nose while rolling her eyes. Too often she can read my thoughts – a “married for a long time” thing and not having anything to do with being one of them, though I’m not altogether certain.
          “Look – a buteo jamaicensis!” one of them expulsed; the red-tailed hawk had circled back and caught his eye.
          “Great,” I grumbled, his invocation fading the color of the majestic bird before my very eyes. Is there no limit to their cruelty?
          “Let’s head over to that field of wildflowers,” suggested another of female gender and uncommonly short stature.
          “What do you think is growing in there?” queried the third, a large male, no doubt setting up the tiny female for an incantation of cacophonic terms designed with the purpose of sucking the very essence out of this breathtaking beauty nature had endeavored throughout the millenniums.
          “The plants here at Cantwell Cliffs are quite diverse. I expect we’ll discover…”
          Here we go. I considered covering my ears.
          “Catchfly, roundleaf, jack-in-the-pulpit, probably jewelweed…”
          Hello? I hardly believed what I was hearing. The little one is using common speech, but the dialect sounds strange; almost like she could be a…
          “Lady’s slipper orchids –”
          “Hobbit!” I blurted.
          “What?” my wife asked; the diminutive botanist spun around, proffering an offended glare.
          “It’s just that she sounds like a hobbit,” I explained, making sure the clarification was loud enough to assure the female the label was not based on her undersized stature…well, not solely. I diverted my focus to the branches overhead and briefly considered how hobbits would appreciate the ancient birch tree.
          And there’s the look, I recognized as I turned back to catch the crinkled nose and roll of my wife’s eyes, though a smile confused her disdaining façade.
          “You must mean Sam”, my wife suggested, the three scientists out of range of our conversation.
          “What?”
          “Sam, the hobbit – Samwise Gamgee. Tolkien depicted him as a gardener,” she clarified. “Her words sounded like something Sam would have said.”
          I smiled. One of them? Perhaps, but definitely an aberration.
          We continued our journey absent the scientists who had made course toward the field of wildflowers. Sorrow clung to my thought of the bleaching carnage undoubtedly being committed on those poor plants. Directly ahead a hemlock, with its thick trunk ornamented in cinnamon-red bark and with branches arrayed in perfect conical form, stood in regal watch over its domain – as it had done for centuries past – its rich green crown nearly reaching the top of the rim. The thought of how Tolkien’s elves would revere such nobleness entered my thoughts, and I conveyed this to my wife.
          “First hobbits, now elves…great,” and accompanied the response with her wonted nose crinkle and rolling eyes. 
          “We’re coming up on your favorite section, Elf.” My wife smiled amusedly.
          “Whatever,” I replied, dropping my gaze from the branches overhead to the passage before us. “Yes, Fat Woman’s Squeeze – but you mean your favorite section to tease me about.”
          “They should call it Fat Elf’s Squeeze,” she suggested, patting my midsection.
          “I didn’t have a problem last year,” I reminded her, though a frown belied an uncertainty for my chances this year as I surveyed the slim opening.
          “Another year, another inch,” my wife brought up a formula she claims to use when purchasing my slacks. Though there may have been some truth to this early in our marriage, the correlation after all these years would place my body, at death, in a piano box.
          Sticking to the terms of our agreement I maneuvered between the towering rock formations; albeit, I utilized some inventive body contortions, much to the amusement of my wife.
          “Yea, you made it!” she slashed.
          “Of course. We elves are very flexible,” I parried.
          “Wow! Even the fat ones?” she lunged, leaving me in frantic search of a counter eluding my much slower intellect. I found none and was forced to submit.
          Continuing much of the trail in silence (admittedly, the silence was owed to my mope of being down in score), we reached Lookout Point on the eastern rim.
          “From here we’ll be able to see if any trolls are following,” my wife offered, tiring of my juvenile pout.
          “Sure…if only trolls didn’t turn to stone in daylight.” I turned to hide my smile at evening the tally, and left my shoulder exposed.
          “You hit like a woman,” I ribbed. A woman who knows how to throw a punch, I kept to myself, avoiding the temptation to rub my shoulder.
          After taking in the splendor accorded our vantage of the multicolored vegetation inhabiting the reddish-brown cliffs and the underlying rock shelter, it was time to continue the day’s journey. Alas, time was already proving to be quite the task-master, caring not for the secluded tranquility Cantwell Cliffs had to offer our souls.
         
          A short trip by car brought us to Rock House State Park, where time spurred us on a direct course to the only true cave within the Hocking Hills complex. Situated midway up a one-hundred and fifty-foot Blackhand sandstone cliff, the main corridor of the cave extended two-hundred feet, with a breadth ranging from twenty to thirty feet.
          Hearing a woodpecker busy at work I searched out one of the seven arched windows nature had fashioned, but the woodpecker eluded me with aid from the deceiving echo of its knock. A wood thrush glided across the arch, chirping a quick tease at my ineptness. Ignoring the bird’s taunt I scanned the valley beneath, and was more than a little saddened that time forbade us from relishing the scenery up close.
          My wife’s interest was cuffed to the small recesses along the rear wall. She voiced a curiosity as to whether someone had resided within the cave.
          “They did,” I revealed, explaining how fire built within the holes of her focus would heat the sides, serving as ovens for baking. My wife shed a sideways glance, seemingly unsure whether a story was being fabricated from my “disturbing imagination” – her often used description for my obvious genius.
          “These troughs carved out along the front were made to catch water, serving as holding tanks for those artful people,” I continued, holding down a smile as I watched her eyes narrow.
          “But we know only a little of those mysterious inhabitants,” I lamented, staging an animate sigh. “They were a beautiful, proud people whose presence in an age nearly forgotten once complimented the aesthetics of this land, though with their mysterious skills they would remain unseen by commoners.”
          I returned my eyes to my wife. “In the common tongue, they’re known as –”
          Nose crinkling, eyes starting to roll…
          “Native Americans.” I beamed a smile.
          The subsequent pain inflicted on my shoulder did not lessen the satisfaction of now being up a point, though it was potent enough to drop my smile to a grimace.
          “It’s getting late,” my wife reminded me of our subservience to time and turned to the parking lot, allowing me to rub my shoulder without detection.

          Reaching Conkle’s Hollow, the last stop time would allow on our day’s journey, a dispute continued on whether to take the rim trail encircling the deep gorge (my wife’s suggestion), or to travel the safe and much shorter lower trail of my choice. Though the emphasis of my position was attuned to the safety factor, the “much shorter” part was of greater influence on my mind…which, of course, my wife acutely read.
          “You’re lazy,” my wife used an axiom usually reserved for my lack of doing chores. In this case it proved effective enough to end the debate to her advantage, and off we headed to the starting point.
          “Are you going to make it?” my wife asked after a short distance, feigning concern for my labored breathing as we reached the top step of the steep stairs. “Come on, it was only ninety steps.”
          “Ninety-two,” I stated, having counted each step for just such an opportunity to correct her. Still, with the nearness of her estimate I could not in good conscience (or even in questionable conscience, as is more often the case with me) count it as a point.
          I drew a deep breath – in part due to the steady pace my wife had set, but more so from the view of the stream meandering through a framework of dense wilderness within the valley below. Through the canopy of towering hemlock and birch I studied the dense cover of ferns and wildflowers blanketing the floor of the two-hundred-feet deep gorge.
          Other plants of varying colors were visible as well, and a lack of knowledge of what they were sparked a yen for the presence of the tiny botanist we had encountered earlier in the day. Shaking my head I quickly cleared the temporary insanity, and took a step back from the cliff edge per my wife’s high volume instruction. 
          “Don’t worry. We elves are very nimble,” I assured her, prompting a nose crinkle and…well, you know.
          “Idiot! You were so close, those people are staring at you!” she indicted, directing my attention down to the couple on the trail in the valley.
          “Maybe they’ve just never seen an elf before,” I jested, hoping to lessen her simmering demeanor lest it boil over and I find myself pushed off the cliff. (Though unlikely she would actually do this, at least not with witnesses, all the same I wasn’t willing to chance it.)
          “They’ve never seen a fat, bald elf before, you can be sure of that,” she returned, lifting herself from her angry mood at my expense. She smiled, adding “Now we’re even.”
          We continued along the trail, time allowing enough daylight for a more casual pace to further enjoy the beautiful scenery. I kept a safe distance from the edge of the cliffs as the witnesses hindering a possible push were no longer in sight. Lifting my gaze from the valley floor, my startled eyes met up with three figures blocking the trail twenty yards ahead. I froze, unable to advance any closer to…them!
          “Are you sure it’s him?” The small botanist disengaged her eyes from mine and turned to the larger of the male scientists, continuing a whispered conversation seemingly induced by my appearance.
          “Yes. I saw his picture on the back cover of one of my sister’s books,” he assured her.
          Directing a frown that kept my urge to smile in check, my wife visually relayed her belief that my already bloated ego did not need any further inflating.
          “Did you read it?” the little female asked.
          “I didn’t get through the first chapter. It was horrible,” he replied, inciting a giggle from my wife which she quickly masked with a series of coughs.
          “Nasty, twisted stuff,” he continued with a discernable shudder. “Mind warping! It’s no wonder my little sister turned out to be such a black sheep.”
          My wife flashed a stern look, knowing I had interpreted my responsibility for the warping of his sister’s mind as a compliment.
          “Let’s go before he says something,” the lesser of the males suggested, disdain in his whispered voice. “He’ll probably conjure up a monster to destroy all this splendor!”
          Me? Conjuring monsters…destroying this splendor? I thought, indignant.
          As the three turned around, the tiny botanist added a parting shot: “Those types are so trapped in their imaginations. He could never appreciate nature.”
          They started down the trail, leaving my pride without a response when a crashing dissonance resonated within the valley, bringing the three to a sudden halt. Though I had glimpsed the writhing branches of the fallen birch tree beyond view of the scientists, an alternate vision appeared in my mind and propelled itself from my mouth.
          “Did you see the size of that troll?” I shouted, startling my wife. I backed away from the cliff’s edge – partly for fright enhancement and partly because I was unsure what reaction from her my comment would incur, even with witnesses.
          Shifting my gaze to the trail I smiled, satisfied as I watched the three scientists scurry to outdistance me. I turned back to my wife, sighing as I readied myself to receive her crinkled nose and rolling eyes. But…but she was smiling!
          “You’d think they’d have known trolls turn to stone in daylight,” she mused.
          “You’d think,” I agreed.
          Oh yes – she’s definitely an aberration!