"More Than a Pleasant Surprise"

MORE THAN A PLEASANT SURPRISE

The possibilities are endless: A splash of unexpected color in autumn foliage. An architectural improbability in nature or a cityscape. A nearly perfect blend of clothing style and human form. An evocative odor that forms a link to some distant past. A stretch of sudden syncopation that defines a musical sensation. A person whose personal vision alters our perception of the everyday world.

Occasionally in our travels through life we stumble upon something or someone special.

Sometimes the impact of that discovery lasts mere moments, other times a day or a week, a month or a year, or perhaps even forever.

We may notice the beauty in a mountain ridge that we’ve taken for granted before.

We may hearken to the silence of a calm winter morning.

We may detect an arresting aroma, relish a new taste, heed an unfamiliar texture, feel an unaccustomed warmth upon our flesh.

Or we may notice the difference that a kindness makes, the uplift we feel at helping someone else.

We may also sense a void left by people we have lost and more fully appreciate the good fortune we had when they were present in our lives.

Sometimes the significance of our discovery dawns upon us slowly, while other times the importance registers with lightning speed.

And sometimes the best discoveries are the ones we were never looking for. They may knock us temporarily off our stride, but on occasion our strides may require disruption.

For me, the best discovery I have made in a long, long while caught me unawares, and it took a few months for its significance to fully sink in. Now, however, it is difficult for me to imagine my life any other way.

About a year ago, I took my golden retriever and met up with a woman named Yvonne for a bushwhacking snowshoe trip along a series of lakes in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Yvonne and I had hiked before—once previously in roughly the same area, once up a mountain in Seward, once to an old mining area near Hope. We’d also performed chainsaw-powered trail maintenance together on a little-known trail. But on this particular excursion, I noticed something different. What I noticed was the way I was beginning to feel.

I had insulated myself socially in recent years—after my father’s death, my retirement from teaching high school, my failing marriage which ended in divorce—and I was only beginning to find my way back into some sort of social mainstream as a single father who was beyond middle age and just starting to rebuild himself into some semblance of physical fitness after too long a sedentary spell.

Truthfully, I barely knew Yvonne at the time. She was somewhat reticent and protective of her past, while on the other hand I was nervous and acting like a virtual Chatty Kathy. But as I calmed down, I began to see what I had in this new friend and outdoor companion. I began to appreciate her determination and her toughness, her creativity and her perspective on life, her enthusiasm and her smile. I began to really like it when she smiled at me, and I loved the peal of her laughter.

At the end of that trek, I stayed behind with my dog and our snowshoes while she hitchhiked in the semi-darkness back to retrieve my Jeep, but she was undeterred. In later outings I annoyed her by taking dozens of photographs, but still she seemed to enjoy my presence. At times I rambled almost non-stop through a litany of observations and old stories, but she never rolled her eyes or asked me to be quiet. In fact, we continued engaging in adventures—and with greater frequency. By early 2012 we were meeting semi-regularly—a walk down to the river, snowshoeing treks into the hills, doing trail-prep work for a winter challenge race, staggering through a blizzard on a glacial lake, watching the aurora from a hayfield near my house, ice-fishing for Arctic char, meeting every Tuesday for a mountain-trail climb.

And on and on.

Both of us could feel our relationship changing, but it didn’t change rapidly. Progressing in baby-steps, we edged forward, and along the way we cast aside shadows of the past to enjoy the sunshine of future possibilities.

It’s hard to say that I “stumbled upon” Yvonne, but—whether our union is pure chance, a mystical confluence of personal pathways, or something else entirely—I consider myself blessed every day by her presence.