The Old Silverback

About thirty years ago my father and I went on a day hike at a very beautiful place here called Wintergreen Gorge. He drove to a cemetery that is up above the gorge and parked the car there and we went to the back of the cemetery where there is a beautiful lookout and also a path that leads down into the gorge. This path is extremely vertical and going down it can be quite treacherous as you run from tree to tree, to keep yourself from gaining too much speed.

We hiked up and back through the gorge all day, even making a little fire and cooking lunch that I had brought in my daypack. We stopped at one point to watch some guys that were repelling down one of the sheer rock faces that this gorge is known for.

When we finally made it back to the path, I took off running up the steep vertical incline. I felt it was the best way to try to make it up to the top and after maybe about ten minutes I crested the top and collapsed onto the ground gasping for air. Though I was 14 at the time, it still was quite an exertion, even for me. After about ten more minutes my father showed up at the top of the cliff, sucking wind, but by then I had caught my breath and was seemingly just sitting there waiting for him. Years later he told me that, that was the first time in his life that he felt old.

This morning I went out and started tearing down an old deck in my backyard that I had built a few years ago. I spent about two hours on my knees unscrewing deck screws so that I can get the decking off before the major mayhem and destruction begins. When the battery on my cordless drill finally gave out, and I went to stand up so I could go inside to get another battery, both my knees and my back refused to bend. I had to climb down off of the deck and go inside all hunched over.

Now I have worked until parts of my body didn't function anymore, but that always required some seriously intensive labor that lasted all day, not two hours! I remember building this deck, years ago, when I would start early in the morning and not stop until the sun went down and I couldn't see anymore. Today for the first time I really felt old, and I realized that I'm the same age my father was when I ran up the cliff and made him feel old for the first time.

One of the things I didn't want was to become my father. Don't get me wrong, I love my father dearly, but after he divorced my mother, he spent the last forty years of his life alone, never dating again or remarrying. I swore when I was younger that I wouldn't let this happen to me. It appears now that I'm getting exactly what I didn't want. I've become an old, broken down, warhorse, with few prospects and little to offer any prospective mate other than an old silverback gorilla that is well past his prime and ready to wander off into the jungle. It sucks when the universe "whops" you on the head (or in the knees) and says you "arn't a big dog anymore" and maybe you should "get up on the porch." At least I understand my father better now and know why he has spent the last years of his life alone.