The Story of Four Hikers

Yesterday, I made my way towards a trail in the jungle.

Even though I went independently, I ended up running into a couple and another person during the hike.

As I walked, I couldn’t help but notice nature all around me. Ancient trees standing tall and broad leaves I could practically lay on surrounded me.

Now the trail was rocky, so I was often looking down.

What I noticed is that there was even more to see.

I walked past butterflies flying low.

Funnily, chickens were running loose from a nearby farm.

Multiple times, a line of ants were carrying leaves from one side of the path towards their home on the other side.

“¡Buenas!”

I had been looking down and hadn’t noticed another hiker coming up behind me.

“¡Buenas!” I responded as he passed.

I continued and came across a great tree rumored to be over 1,000 years old.

Imagine the stories it could tell.

Beyond the tree, the trail eventually led to a waterfall.

As I approached, the hiker from earlier was already on his way back.

“¡Buenas!” we each said again with a nod.

When I arrived at the waterfall, I briefly met an older couple who were beginning their return. We didn’t speak the same language, but our smiles and pointing at the waterfall and the surroundings were universal.

We became brief hiking friends.

I took some time to myself beneath the waterfall.

The volume of water wasn’t large, but coming off a tall cliff, the water spread out during the fall as if making it seem like heavy rain.

After a while, I began the hike back.

I noticed mushrooms layered on the sides of trees.

Roots covered the path requiring me to step high and over them to avoid falling.

Moss seemed to cover every part of the ground that hadn’t been walked on.

Eventually I looked up, and noticed ahead of me was the older couple.

The man had a brief stumble, and his wife giggled as she lowered her binoculars, surely asking if he was okay.

As I came up to them the woman pointed up and asked me, “byurds? quezals? byurds?”

I looked up and shook my head.

“I don’t think so? I haven’t seen many.”

She smiled and nodded then held up her binoculars motioning towards the trees.

I smiled back and kept going.

About an hour later, somehow all four of us found ourselves at the same bus stop.

Even though none of us spoke each other’s languages fluently, we were able to have one of the most beautiful conversations.

The hiker who had passed all of us razzed us a little.

“Muy despacio. Slow,” he said with a chuckle.

“I couldn’t help it,” I replied. “Did you even see anything?”

“Sure. Waterfall. Big tree. Back fast.”

He nodded his head in a been-there-done-that kind of way.

“I mean, yeah, but what about the bugs and the flowers and the little ants?”

“Ants?” the older man asked.

I did my best to describe the lines of ants carrying pieces of leaves bigger than themselves across the trail.

Apparently, none of them had noticed.

The woman razzed me back.

“Even look up? Birds. Very beautiful.”

“You found some birds?” I asked.

The couple nodded excitedly.

We had all walked the same trail.

I had seen the butterflies near my feet, the ants carrying their leaves, the mushrooms growing from the trees and the moss creeping across the ground.

The couple had seen the birds moving through the canopy.

The other hiker had kept moving. He knew the trail, the great tree, the waterfall and the way back.

None of us had seen everything.

“I’ll look more next time,” the other hiker said.

Maybe he would.

Or maybe he’d at least think about where he was looking.

As if on cue, the bus pulled up to the stop and we all stood to get on.

We formed a line, letting the woman go first.

Before stepping onto the bus, she stopped and looked back at us.

“Together” she said, making a circle with her hand around the four of us, “we see all the trail.”

Then she stepped onto the bus.