I was on East Plateau Trail following an established path in complete trust — Complete trust, you ask? Thank you for dialing in on that particular adjective, and the answer is 100% yes. Complete trust – The Green Mountain South Nature Preserve is an established system of intersecting trails included in the Land Trust of North Alabama, a non-profit with a mission to conserve natural areas, educate on Alabama’s wild spaces, and provide outdoor recreation for hikers like me. “Complete” perfectly describes my level of trust. I was heading to Alum Falls.
Anyway I was following the trail without worry when it suddenly narrowed with encroaching vines – and disappeared. I slowed to a stop and pressed pause on my AirPods, looked around and realized I was way off trail.
*insert evaporation of all trust.
Northern Alabama is Timber rattlesnake country. Bushwacking (an amazing pastime for Oregonians who like to tromp around the woods off trail, because snakes aren’t an immediate concern in the PNW) is not advised in Northern Alabama. Anything off-trail over here is considered snake turf: leaf litter, rocky outcrops and overhangs, trees draped with greenbriar vines. Even in the dead of summer with 80% humidity and 95-degree temperatures, Alabama hiking sites advise wearing pants and boots.
I was trail running in minimalist running shoes with ankle socks, wearing a pair of yoga shorts and a tank top, a slightly stupid decision, but I felt confident in my understanding of the snake rules. My neighbor in Southern Maryland taught me a few years ago. He saw me raking my way through 6-inches of leaves in early October while wearing sandals.
“You fixin’ to get bit, Ms. Sonney. Snakes hide in leaves, especially copperheads this time of year.”
“What?”
Here are the rules:
- The first hiker to walk past a snake wakes it up.
- The second hiker pisses it off.
- The third hiker gets bit.
Don’t go raking leaves in early October while wearing sandals in Southern Maryland. Don’t tromp back and forth over the same line of ground, disrupting the places where snakes are resting. You will, by default, become the third hiker. You’re practically asking to get bit. Buy a leaf blower, you idiot. (I bought one.)
Back to the trail. I carefully double backed in retreat, ears cocked for any rattlers. I scanned tree trunks for trail markers, pulled up my GPS, checked my trail map, and found the problem. I’d veered left instead of right on one of the switchbacks about a quarter-mile back. I am good at course correcting.
This is a skill I possess in life, as well. In teaching, I can assess a lecture that fell flat and reapproach it from a new angle to achieve the desired student outcomes. You can throw me into the pit of a new career field, and I can easily build the necessary skills to survive and even promote. JD and I could have a massive disagreement, and not 12 hours later be face to face in humility, navigating the issue with a solid solution. I’m telling you, I know how to course correct.
No Course for the Widow:
The thing is, there is no established course for widowhood, and I don’t know what the destination is anymore. It was always JD and the kids, but he is dead, and the kids have all launched. My grandchildren are a blessing and fill me with joys I didn’t think existed, and also, they are not my kids; my role is different.
I am part of a multigenerational house, a system where there is a husband, wife, four beautiful children, and me. Micah and Ashley (my daughter and son-in-law) play and problem solve like lion and lioness. They prowl the world in unison. They prepare food for each other, protect one another, heal each other’s wounds. They make piles of blankets on the couch and watch movies on Friday nights with their cubs. It’s the amalgamation of pride and love and grief to witness their interactions. I am proud of the love they have cultivated, the traditions they’ve established, and their impenetrable loyalty and devotion to this thing called marriage. I love living in a house filled with family banter. It reminds me of my relationship with JD, a kind of sweet grief that both aches and confirms the “good” of our 24 years. It was good. We did good.
I am always invited, but sometimes I leave them to their den, a perfect little family. I belong, but then I don’t. I want to be there in the midst of it, but it’s too precious a space to invade. I am happy to be here, but I also feel the strange tugging of a call to preserve the family Ashley and Micah have become. I want to be Grandma without intruding. I am doubling back, retracing steps, second guessing my decision to do the rest of this life unpaired, uncoupled, reassessing its impact on the people around me.
I am looking for my place. I am the third hiker by default because I can’t find the trail and I don’t know how to course correct anymore. There is a rake in my hand, and I am turning over the leaves as though searching for a lost piece of jewelry, but there are only snakes to be found. I am speaking in riddles and symbols because I’ve lost the logistics of the story.
I am in the wilderness, an Israelite lamenting to God. I am questioning my path, my choices, my decision to do this alone. I am hiking the same line back and forth, back and forth, raking the leaves, practically asking to get bit.
I don’t know what phase of grief this is, only that it is mine. I am in the In-Between, the Upside Down, an alternate dimension that has me wondering if I am navigating catacombs in search of my resting place or merely in some type of cocoon.
Sources:
https://landtrustnal.org/explore-our-lands/
https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/land-trust-of-north-alabama/
About Sonney Wolfe
Sonney Wolfe is a writer, educator, mother, nona (grandma), and widow. She holds a Master of Arts in English, teaches academic and professional writing for the University of Maryland, and writes features, press releases, blog posts, and personal essays for various news and social media.
Widowed in December of 2019, she soon joined the masses in COVID lockdowns, which deepened her understanding of grief as she witnessed widespread loss, especially among students. Now, she integrates grief support in her college classrooms by addressing pandemic disruptions, community loss, and mental health challenges. Her autobiographical teaching philosophy, born from her own grief journey, provides a platform to share her experiences and support students who have also lost loved ones.
In her professional writing, she sheds light on the human experience of loss and grief, particularly for widows. She explores the complex societal shift they face, transitioning from wives to widows and often single parents. This sudden change forces widows to navigate not only grief, but also a landslide of challenges: income loss, economic strain, relocation, career shifts, altered healthcare needs, and declining mental health.
Her Blog WIM Dispatches (Woman in Motion), https://sonneywolfe.com, chronicles her personal grief journey and advocates for the needs of widows, along with her IG: @WIM_Dispatches – and Facebook page: WIM Dispatches Life After Jay.