Royal

King Aaron wiped his brow and cracked the can of light beer he'd carried up the mountain. His wife and daughter had climbed higher to find the summit, but he was content to stand here in our company and catch his breath. We'd heard him coughing and wheezing his way to the lookout point, his burly hands parting the rich green Vermont trees and bending the young birch saplings out of the way of the crumbling schist path. He came up behind us but passed us soon enough, girth be damned, for we were with a three year old who insisted on avoiding the kid backpack at all costs and a six year old who had sharpened her ability to complain about mountain climbing in the year since we'd last climbed this peak. Another family squeezed into the lookout point and took in the boundless view, too many mountains to count, sometimes flattened into a faded backdrop by the periodic raven fly-by that seemed to embody dimensionality with those shiny black feathers, making it all seem like a movie set. We live right over there, they said, pointing.

The mother of this hiking family had already built a little bridge to our son, a bridge of words and gestures, since her daughter was also three and she meant him to know he was part of a tribe on that mountain, a tribe of children. He regarded this little girl as one of his own, calling her by her name, Eleanor, and engaging her in lengthy huge gape-faced stares. When's your birthday? the mother wanted to know.

The six-year old sister answered proudly, as she often does for him, her arm around his shoulder. In his own way, he paves the path for her participation in the group. He relishes connections. She has no fear of animals, around which he has a caution, but he has no fear of new friends. They cut through problems together, those two, the problems they sometimes make for themselves, so that they are a closed loop of solutions.

That's MY birthday! Said the king, breaking his silence. Celebrated fifty years of living. Fifty years! Ha. He was gruff, a little shy without a shred of hostility, not especially friendly, but just not sure of himself around others, or at least that's what it seemed like. Maybe he'd spent time apart, a lot of time.

We congratulated him, on his recent birthday and in silent ways on other things, like making it up here, wondering about those years of living. What had happened to make his eyes look so tired? The bags under his eyes had their own bags. His pale red hair was tied back and low into a ponytail. He took a long drink of his beer. He squinted out over the spruce pasture that was planted deliberately for the generation of spruce oil sold to cosmetic companies, and the rolling birches over the mountain ranges mixed with sugar maples. That's my land, he said, I own it. From her house, he said, pointing to a little white dot, across through to the other side of that mountain, over there.

So you're surveying your empire, said the hiking dad, his sweat-drenched t-shirt pulled off and hanging from a young white pine. I am, indeed, said the King. Been in my family since 1832.

You must be of the family, I said, that runs the sugar maple lines for syrup.

That is I, he said, or maybe he said me, but it was Kingly.

You are a King! I said, and he smiled, but it was a serious smile.

We love it, I said, we consume it every day, with these two and their pancakes.

I never touch the stuff, he said, finishing his beer. Never drink it. Only when I have to sample it. Glad someone drinks it though.

When his wife and daughter rejoined him, two sweet and normal-seeming people, he had gratitude in his face, like maybe he'd narrowly missed some other fate, and was far more aware than the rest of us, just how good we all had it. They were good-natured, relaxed and friendly, glad to be with him. They didn't seem to have his fear, his awe, his quivering seeking unanswered question. We gave him our phones for a picture and he didn't know how to operate a cell phone, he said, didn't know how to do it, but he took a damn fine picture in the end.

If I could go back, I might thank him for never developing that land. For keeping it in the family. We have a picture of that view in our living room, and it's his birthright that hangs there.

The things on our walls, I've found, always eventually materialize in life, but it's a shock to realize in what way it happened when it unfolds right in front of your eyes. There's always an angle to the story that you don't expect.

After a long run down the mountain, jumping over streams and rocks, or through them if you were one of the three-year-olds, or perhaps slowly through mud while growling like a Monster Truck if you were the boy, we gathered at the bottom. The other hiking family climbed into their mud-addled local station wagon, and we more delicate city folk walked the extra half mile to a distant parking lot rather than risk the Prius on the rocks.

Eventually a pristine silver Jeep passed us on the road, ferrying the good King back to his homeland like a chariot. With the windows down, the kids fighting like raccoons in the back seat, and the shoes off, we rolled back to our cabin, taking in the cloudless sky and the circling ravens, another day of living behind us.