The Hill

It was around 1969, maybe in the early or late summer. My parents and I were driving back from somewhere but I was too young to really remember for sure, but I know we were in a dustbowl part of Western Kansas.

I only recall fragments of trips back then; a lot of driving with the windows up and both parents smoking which often made me nauseous. My dad had family in Colorado who we visited to ride horses (I was a little bitty thing then, but I rode for a moment), and he also had relatives in Hayes, Kansas. So either of those could have been where we were returning from.

At some point in the early afternoon, we were driving through an arid patch and there was some discussion in the front seat that didn’t sound overly promising to me. We pulled over and we got out of the air conditioned car and stood on hard dirt in the hot sun. I asked my mom why.

She told me something about my dad wanting to go climb a mountain.

There were tall hills and I seem to remember buttes around, and apparently my dad felt the siren’s call of one of them. So we watched my dad head off towards adventure, and finally he disappeared into the distance. He said he wouldn’t be gone long.

I don’t know how long he was out there, but I recall at some point the sun began to sink, and my mom became more and more impatient. Soon she started calling out for him to come back, but of course all she did was make herself hoarse. Finally she just told me to stay there with the car because she was going to go get him.

I was probably 4 at this point, and the distance was too far for me to walk in the heat and too far for her to carry me. So I stood by the car watching my mom disappear into the distance that my dad had already disappeared into.

All alone, in a hot deserted part of Kansas, I stood crying. I eventually started calling for my parents, but I do not recall them coming back. At some point I must have crawled into the back seat and cried myself to sleep.

Fast forward to some point in the late 1970s and my mom and I lived in Independence, Missouri which meant occasional road trips to Nevada Missouri where we had been living until recently. My dad’s mom and grandma lived there, and so did my mom’s parents. We made the long trip down highway 71 quite a lot.

Going out 71, just outside of Butler Missouri, there was this hill. It was a two-level affair to the side of the road. With half the hill, then a plateau, then a steeper part of the hill to the top, it was captivating to me.

I asked my mom frequently if I could get out and go climb it. I was always told no, but I never lost the pure desire to climb it. I felt the hill before we made the curve and it came into view, coming and going. I stared at it as we past it each time.

On August 4, 2012 I was driving back from Nevada in the mid-afternoon. My dad had passed away earlier in the year and my mom had been gone since 2008, and this would be the last time I would drive down to Nevada with any real purpose. I felt the siren calling as I approached the curve. As I rounded the curve, I found myself pulling over and stopping.

I never intended to stop and climb the hill. It never entered my conscious mind. I now found myself preparing to answer the siren’s song.

The experience wasn’t all good. I lost my cell phone somewhere on the hill, and because a Missouri State Trooper had stopped to figure out why my car was sitting to the side of the road and what I was doing on the hillside (a passing trucker had reported a potentially stranded motorist) I ended up falling down the hill and tearing some tendons in my right ankle. Long story.

But the exhilaration of climbing that hill was worth it.

I could not explain why I climbed the hill. People call it a bucket list item and I found that insulting, because I don’t have some list of things I want to accomplish before I die. I didn’t plan this consciously, although apparently I was planning it most of my life subconsciously.

I now see the connection. In a sense, I followed my dad’s path, heeding the seductive song and climbing the hill that called to me. I also set out to find my parents figuratively, something I couldn’t do in 1969. I needed to make the trip, conquer the hill, and prove to myself that I really would be okay, just as my mom said I would.

No other challenges beckon me. I had finally made peace with The Hill.