Above The Treeline

My hiking group has a tradition of sharing something honest at the summit and this is what I finally said out loud last weekend. Standing above the treeline outside Bozeman after months of grief following my mother's death, I felt something break open in me from outside myself, not a thought I arrived at but an understanding placed into me all at once, that she was at peace and so, eventually, would I be. I cried harder up there than I had at the funeral. It felt like being told something rather than realizing it, and it felt like relief instead of sorrow.