Anatomy of a Hiker

by Sarah Carleton

When I stride along the asphalt

my heels recall blisters rubbed raw on trails.



When I sweat climbing hills as small as mosquito bites

my glutes remember a steep street up north



I used to ascend without pausing.

These lungs that pump heavy coastal air



swell at the memory of mountains

and my ears still ring with a silence caught fifty years ago



when I stepped off a porch in New Hampshire

without a canteen



and kept going between pines,

past the treehouse, till I saw only trunks.



Through stillness, I wandered, never finding the path

though each spruce looked familiar.



Daylight dipped and the shadows thickened.

Dread settled on my shoulders like a cloak—



I would surely dissolve into the woods.

Instead, I stumbled upon a cache



of unfinished timber structures on a dead-end loop

attached to a road back to the world.



Now when I hike toward that place where

my breath is engulfed by forest



my bones hold half-framed houses

on a cul-de-sac that leads to home.