It was a pristine English morning, and uncharacteristically warm for the Lake District. I locked the rental car and fished around in my pocket for the 80 pence parking fee. Three thousand feet in nine miles to the summit of Helvellyn, Britain's second highest peak, was probably as much as I could handle.

"With the morning sun on my back, I raised my eyes to the sharp horizontal ridge ahead, running north to south atop an ancient volcanic bowl of pastureland-known locally as Striding Edge..."

The village of Glenridding, on the soft green banks of Ullswater Lake, receded behind me step by step. White lace windows peeked out of stone cottages, with doorways dressed up as if for church. Ahead on the right, perched on the hillside, one last cabin appeared. A tall gentleman holding a mug of tea and wearing striped pajamas and leather house slippers opened the cabin door.

"Does the Helvellyn trail go this way?" I called.

"No, Luv--off to the left over the footbridge," he replied cordially, with a slight lift of his teacup and a fuzzy smile.

"Thanks--sorry to intrude," I said, already backing toward the footbridge.

"Don't worry, Luv," the man with the teacup replied, smiling. "Nice day for it, anyway."

The British, I reflected, are a civilized race. They have a head start of several centuries over Americans in learning how to get along in the world with other humans, who, as humans tend to do, get in the way and trample on your marigolds. One must simply learn, they seemed to have decided, to put up with others' trespasses. And it helps all around if one can do it graciously. Luv, he had called me. Luv your trespassers.

Low stone walls crawled with infinite patience up and over a high green pass. Smitten, I stop and look around, trying hard to understand what kind of faith had led my grandfather to leave this place for the high plains of Utah. He had lived here, and raised prize cattle as his fathers had done for centuries before him. I remember him wistfully recalling the grasses of his native land, how they grew so lush they brushed the bellies of the cattle. He had lived here, perhaps hiked this trail himself, before a pair of missionaries knocked on his door on a summer day like this one in 1915. He must have found an answer to a question that was big in his heart.

In the shade of a stone wall I sat to rest. These walls stood about five feet tall and two feet wide. They seemed to be constructed simply of flat rocks stacked on top of each other, with no mortar of any kind. Some had stood here since medieval times. I shed my pack and leaned against the wall. An inexplicable calm spread through me, an ancient security. My back rested against a barrier impervious to weather and war, immune almost to time itself, strong as the battlements of love.

"The grass is tender and generous, dotted with buttercup, purple thyme and delicate white sandwort. Now I know why poets write hymns to England..."

I munched contentedly on the scone I had bought that dawn in a Windermere bakery, while sheep strolled and snacked their way across the meadows. If you were a good sheep in a former life, I thought, perhaps you got to come here. Surely this is Sheep Nirvana--lonely hills, gentle shepherds who call you Luv, probably, and take their mug of tea out to the pasture with them. Even the sunlight is soft. The grass is tender and generous, dotted with buttercup, purple thyme and delicate white sandwort. Now I know why poets write hymns to England. In springtime, since Wordsworth walked here, he would have to write something immortal about a field of daffodils. It was inevitable.

The grass grew sparse and the climb grew steeper. The backs of my calves began to stretch, the pack became heavier, and the pump in my chest began to boom. I liked this part, when all concentration came inside, when the rhythm of legs and heart and lungs fought to stabilize.

But the hill was endless above my head. From here I couldn't see the summit or Striding Edge, and my mind began to complain that this hill was too steep for too long. My left ear filled with fluid, amplifying the rasp of my breath. I couldn't get it to clear, and felt irritation rising up my spine. You'll never make it, I thought suddenly, and felt something small and hot flicker in my chest at the thought. I checked the time. Only two and half hours on the trail, and I had already considered giving up. I looked back over my shoulder at the hill, and set my jaw. This isn't even a climb! It's a damn grassy hill! You can pace yourself, I lectured.

I climbed on. My legs began to quiver and burn. The pace of my breath never significantly slowed. Fatigue made my mind chatter. I heard it without listening, without caring. You can still quit, and no one would fault you for it, I told myself. But not here. Not yet.

"They looked like teenage British boys, their bare legs shockingly white, their heads sensibly covered with floppy hats..."

The crest of a solitary ridge drew a sharp outline against the sky above my head. I pressed uphill, grateful for the more open view. I was still gaining altitude, but it seemed more tolerable now. Pausing again to rest, I saw two young men coming up behind me, still far below. They were the first hikers I had seen, and I couldn't help resenting their presence.

I craved the solitude of the trail, found my own lost motivation and courage only when alone. Even the most comfortable of companions on a day like this represented inevitable negotiation and need for concensus.

I decided to take a break and let them pass. They looked like teenage British boys, their bare legs shockingly white, their heads sensibly covered with floppy hats. Already in the clear air their voices floated up to me. Their pace up the hill was humbling.

Fitness is not something one can judge by outward appearances. More than once on a trail I had been awed by the mysterious power of a stranger's progress-heavy legs under pudgy bodies sometimes marched past me, their owners parting with a tactful nod, onward and upward--as if powered by some quiet, invisible reactor or by dilithium crystals or by magic, while my lungs burned, and my recently toned limbs hung limp, clinging to the side of an impossible rise. I felt the same humility now, watching these boys come up behind me on the trail, talking and laughing together as if they were strolling by the lake shore below.

"An impossibly long, sloping trail approached it from the right. My heart floated up to the top of my chest at the sight. So big. It's too far, I thought, too high..."

I nodded in greeting as they approached. Their faces seemed lit from within. All hikers smile from the inside out, as if they shared a marvelous secret which should have been obvious from sea level, but somehow was not.

"Nice day for it," I called as their faces came into focus, remembering my shepherd below.

"Ah, luvly, yes," they both replied. They were fair, white skin flushed bright pink, faces without guile.

"You're not giving up are you?" one asked as they ground to a halt. They stopped a good fifteen feet away, respecting the space of a fellow hiker, and knowing it is large.

"I'm considering it," I replied honestly. "It's a big hill." "Oh, you can do it!" the heavier one cried. I found his lung power remarkable. Speech was a waste of energy here. How had this soft boy become so fit? "It soon levels off a bit," he continued. "I've done this climb twice before. You can do it," he repeated.

I was unreasonably reassured. "Good. Then I will," I said. They were pleased with this answer, and took another look up the trail.

"Right. We're off then," he said. "Right then," his companion agreed, and they trudged on. I waited for them to climb out of sight, and rose, gauging my legs. They were tired but not yet jellied. I set off again.

The enormity of the hill began to spread below me, the views shifted down and away. Then above my head the summit of Helvellyn appeared again, enormous against the sky. Striding Edge angled up its left flank, jagged and raw. An impossibly long, sloping trail approached it from the right. My heart floated up to the top of my chest at the sight. So big. It's too far, I thought, too high.

I sat and ate an apple, eyeing both routes. This would be a logical place to turn back. But I don't want to. Not yet. I will take the longer right-hand way, to give my legs a chance to recover.

I set off across the valley. On the left, in the bowl of an ancient volcanoe, lay Red Tarn, a barren mountain lake in the shadow of Helvellyn's summit. My left ear finally cleared, and the relief of normalized hearing energized me. I smiled, and salty drops of sweat ran into the corners of my mouth. Second wind--a long time coming but strong when it hits.

The long, relatively flat stretch rejuvenated my spirits along with my legs. When at last the trail angled sharply uphill toward the summit, I found a kernel of stoicism wrapped in my own stubbornness, put my head down and began to climb. The hill fell away sharply on the left, steep and close, down several hundred feet into Red Tarn's blue waters.

"I must have that inexplicable joy of setting my foot on a place which before had only been imagined, of feeling my legs under me on the rock of what was before only a dreamed-of place..."

On this kind of trail, you become completely awake. There is nothing to think about now but the balance of your next step and the location of your center of gravity. There are no other issues. I must make my own steps sure. I must have that inexplicable joy of setting my foot on a place which before had only been imagined, of feeling my legs under me on the rock of what was before only a dreamed-of place. And now it is real, reached under my own power and none other. No one carried me, no one pushed me. I had stepped, one boot at a time, through excuses and fatigue, had ignored logic and looked fear in the face, in the daytime, in the sunlight, clean and sober, on a rock as real as anything I've ever touched. And my own legs, finally, are as real as the rock.

Now the trail arched up sharply and vanished in a mass of house-sized boulders. I rounded the first one, keeping close to its face, the drop on my left still disconcerting. I heard voices ahead--two men's voices, not the boys I'd seen before. Around the next bend they came into view--both men white-haired and lean, in their sixties, I guessed, resting and regarding the impressive vista below.

"It's damn selfishness, pure and simple," the one with the hat declared. His voice pushed a wave of recognition through me. It was the lovely, rural British lilt of northern England, trimmed with a soft Scottish brogue. It was my grandfather's voice. "Just pure selfishness, all these divorces, especially when children are involved."

"Yes," the other man agreed shortly, saving his breath. He was American, and he was winded. I stepped out then so they could see me approach, and stopped a respectful distance from them.

"Hullo there!" the Local called, giving his hat a slight lift. "Nice fresh day for it!" His voice washed over me. I had come on this journey to find traces and hints of my grandfather, and here was his very voice in my ears. Had my grandfather, too, climbed Helvellyn? It suddenly seemed likely that I stood in his very footsteps.

"Hi," I said, instantly revealing myself as American. "Cheryl," I said, walking up to them now with my hand extended. They both had strong, unselfconscious handshakes--a very good omen.

"My name is Ian," the Local said. "And this is my guest, Don, from America like yourself. I am guiding him to the summit."

"Would you mind if I followed you up?" I asked Ian.

"We'd be delighted!" he exclaimed, displaying that particularly British quality of courtesy which could only be described as gracious. His response made me feel as though I had just granted him an enormous favor, instead of having just asked for one. We're going up, I thought with a jolt. I'm going to make it.

I followed Ian precisely. He clearly knew where to place his boot at each step.

"I've been climbing this hill since I was minus three months old," he shouted from above," as if responding to my thoughts, "and I have the photograph to prove it!" I gazed up at his outline against the brightness of the sky. His ruddy face was creased with smile lines, his step was springy and quick as a teenager's. I imagined the photograph he spoke of then--his mother, pregnant and happy, standing on the boulder above me where he stood now--a woman from my grandfather's time. Little had changed in this remote place since that day. Perhaps time didn't reach this high.

We picked our way to the top in an hour. Then, almost too easily, the three of us stood atop the rounded summit of Helvellyn.

"There's the Irish Sea." Ian pointed at an expanse of blue off to the east. "It's a lovely clear day--look--that's Scotland," he went on, pointing north. "And that's Scafell Pike there," he said, indicating another broad peak to the northeast. I gazed in every direction, taking a long look each way, wanting to remember it later.

"I must have that inexplicable joy of setting my foot on a place which before had only been imagined, of feeling my legs under me on the rock of what was before only a dreamed-of place..."

For some reason a lump rose in my throat. I had planned to give up, resigned myself to it, decided more than once that day I couldn't possibly make it here. But here I stood, watching the Irish Sea on my right hand, regarding my grandfather's birthplace from above on the left, and haunted by Scotland behind me. An empty place in my center dissolved into the rest, gave up its emptiness, ran itself out like blood from an artery. I regarded my boots. My eyes began to sting. There was sky below me here; a path to be taken with exquisite care.

On the descent, my two companions and I began to speak frankly, in the easy intimacy of strangers. The path eventually widened and grew almost flat under our weary legs.

"I think this calls for a lager." Ian announced as the trailhead came into view.

The staff of the old hotel raised a civilized eyebrow when the three of them swaggered up to the bar--two white-haired, visibly spent gentlemen with a younger, impudently dressed blond woman, and all in dusty hiking boots with creases of sweat across their shirts.

Ian removed his hat as they entered, revealing an amazingly white forehead.

"Please allow me to buy the first round. I insist," I said, touching the polished bar. Ian paused, lowered his head, then acquiesced.

"Very well then, if it is your wish." he said. I suddenly wished to kiss his white forehead. "Here you go," I said, handing him the first drink. We sat outside on the wide veranda, and the lagers hit us fast. It felt good to sit in a chair. As we began the second round, Don began to quote Wordsworth, then Yeats, then Shelley. Ian countered with a recitation from the Canterbury Tales in the Olde English. I closed my eyes and listened to their voices. My back of my neck was sunburned. It felt wonderful. With a long swallow of lager, I launched into the Shakespeare sonnet I had memorized in high school. To my surprise it rose out of memory verbatim, in spite of, or perhaps because of fatigue and alcohol. It seemed as though I must have memorized it then, a quarter century before, just for this day, for now:

      Since brass, nor stone, nor earth nor boundless sea
      but sad mortality o'ersways their power
      how then against this rage can beauty hold a plea
      whose action is no stronger than a flower?
      Ah, how can summer's honey breath hold out
      against the wreckful siege of battering days
      when stones impregnable are not so stout,  
      nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
      Oh fearful meditation! Where, alack, can Time's best jewel
      from Time's own chest be hid?
      Or whose strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
      Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
      Oh, none! Unless this miracle have might--
      that in black ink my love may still shine bright.  

"To the Bard," I replied, my throat suddenly full, "and to Helvellyn, and to us."

The sun began to dip into the lake. Ian drove me to my rental car and laughed when I tried to open the wrong side. We shook hands goodbye. It felt warm as an embrace.

I heaved my pack into the back seat and sat behind the wheel. Then, in Helvellyn's looming shadow, I drove the high path back to Windermere on the left side of the road, shifting gears with my left hand easily, naturally, as if I had been born to it.

— Cheryl Behrends, MountainZone.com Pubster