Part One: The Summary

What a trip what a year. In February, I climbed to the edge of the South Rim in Big Bend, with two friends. The trip, up and down, was 13 miles in total, and we climbed nearly 3,000 feet to stand on the edge. This past week, in the company of those same two friends, we climbed to the top of Gaudalupe Peak. The trip, up and down, was about 8.4 miles in total, and we climbed another 3,000 feet, to reach the top of Texas.

This morning, I sit here, a changed man, molted in a way. And perhaps that’s too sharp a phrase. I just know this. My wife died in August of 2020, a real low point. Then, in August of 2121, a friend took me into Big Bend and invited me to start hiking with him. Thus began my foot born odyssey that took me into the far reaches of Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains, the trails around Pagosa Springs and Beavers Bend, the Rio Grande Gorge in Taos, and finally the highest point in Texas.

I feel as though I’ve walked my way into a future and as I wrote in a song of mine a while back, I’m now standing at the edge of tomorrow, a place where I’ve stood a lot of times in my past, but now I’m anticipating what might come next and the chances it might offer to do better, to change. And over the next several days, I’ll explain in more detail how I came to these feelings and what I think it might mean. I’ll talk about the peak, the canyon, the cavern, the springs, and maybe throw in a word or two about angels and friends and music. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

John W Wilson

Gatewood Press is a small, family owned press located in the Hill Country of Texas.

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Part Two: The Peak

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I’m Off