Christmas Eve Hike

     It was cold on Christmas Eve.  At the base of the foothills north of Boise, the sun was so bright I had to squint, and the wind so strong stray pieces of hair fell from my hat and got stuck in the corners of my mouth.  The hillsides were blond-gray with wet cheatgrass.
     Clara crouched down the trail from me, bulky with clothing, collecting pebbles and rocks.
     Simon, holding Wilbur on his leash and carrying our backpack full of provisions--gummy bunnies, cheese, water, and Cliff bars--stood over Clara, speaking gently.  I could sort of make out that he was encouraging her not to collect all the rocks on the trail, and reminding her that we had a long way to go.
     She suddenly stood up and, grinning, started to run, her winter boots and the Pull-up diaper under thermals and jeans making her little hips swivel awkwardly.  Arms pumping, head down, she looked like a tiny, very fierce linebacker.
     I knew it was only a matter of time before she would again hear the siren song of the trail's gravel.  So, as soon as she and Simon caught up to me, I had Simon put her into the baby pack on my back.
     Clara wasn't pleased about this. She screamed into my ear. Her speech, usually about seventy-five percent intelligible to Simon and I, plummeted to about five percent.  I finally put her back on the ground as we crested a rise.  Above us, Bogus Basin mountain was dusted with snow.  Below us, naked tree branches jutted sharply, dolorously, from thousands of Boise backyards.  And beyond that, the less-attractive wilderness, the desert, stretched bleak and cold, to the even more desolate Owyhee Mountains.
     "Come on, guys, awight? Awight, guys?" Clara said as soon as she'd regained her land legs and I'd wiped the snot from her cheek. She beckoned us further up the trail with a pudgy toddler hand.  Did she need help?  I wondered.  It was pretty steep and getting steeper.  Please, her body language said.  It's you who don't know the dangers of this terrain, the strength of thigh it requires to climb this mountain, the agility of foot needed to find purchase on this wind-blasted surface.
     She took several steps and then puffed to a stop.
     "Huggie," she moaned, lifting her arms.  I carried her to the summit.  She took off on a trail that bisected the side of the mountain, grabbing at the branches of sagebrushes while I tried to keep up.  Suddenly ravenously hungry, she systematically plowed through half of our cheese rations without breaking a stride.
     Finally she seemed tired enough to sit in the baby backpack again and eat gummy rabbits. One of them got stuck in her hair.  Later I would have to cut it out with scissors. Simon walked behind us, trying to keep Wilbur from asphyxiating as he pulled enthusiastically on the leash.
     "Dude, please, chill out," I heard Simon say.  (Wilbur's caprices always make Simon talk like a frat boy.)
     Halfway back down the mountain, the sun went behind some clouds, washing the landscape in anemic gray.  The shift from light to dark felt devastating.  The mountainside was exposed to the bitter wind and Clara started to cry from the cold.  We stopped to put her gloves on and then changed direction, so my body shielded her.
     "Wannu go on a plane, Mommy.  Wannu go on a plane with Aunt Nay-na.  Wannu go on a plane visit Gammy an Popi in dere house."

     "Someday we'll go on a plane again."

     I wondered if the physical pain of being too cold reminded her of emotional pain: her ever-present longing to ride in an airplane to visit relatives or simply people who seem more exciting than Simon and I. Or maybe it was the hawk, riding the wind currants above us, that made her think of the airplane.
     She talked about airplanes and how badly she wanted to ride one again--and how badly she wanted to visit Grammy and Popi at their house in an airplane again, and how disgruntled she was that her aunt (Simon's sister) had flown off in a plane the day before but she had not been allowed to go with-- all the way down the mountain.  I murmured condolences.
     Finally, near the bottom of the mountain, she sighed deeply, and then began to sing.  She sang, "The Wheels on the Bus," and something that Simon translated as "Bippety-Boppity-Boo" from Cinderella.  She sang, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and then some sort of caterwaul that, after several verses, we discerned was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
    Since she was riding on my back, her mouth was essentially in my right ear.  There was no escaping the pitch problems and slurred consonants.  But I didn't mind.  I don't think I myself would have thought, as a very little girl, to sing as a way to feel better.  Or even that I had such power to make myself feel better.  In spite of the suddenly dreary sky, I felt sublimely happy for her.