By: Ryan Versaw

Ridge

Court began at an hour that surpassed early and deemed late by my heart, and I wanted to start the day outside. I headed up high where the school will always be, and there were students standing tall. A good student is tall and proud for me always, for I am Man. Snow encrusted the top of the ridge above the school in Durango, Colorado, so that only students with hearts glowing with love stood there. Every student had the pride to love, and that place was the school. Me. Their place was the first step above the hill that I would go in order to reach the people I love.

After checking out, I walked away from a wall stained with grease from my breakfast and walked up the hill. I walked until I reached the college that I love, Fort Lewis College, and made my way to the ridge decked with squares composed of stones—one for each child there. I used a rock as a table to eat and walked until I reached a valley that allowed me to look at Missionary Ridge from the same height. Flashes of memory came to me still as I remembered the night I stared at the stars from here.

For now, I made my way across the ridge to a low, mellow valley that was occupied by a building that was the former train depot. Next door, I met a husband and wife—both huge, Hebrew child to be seen—who claimed there was no room for me in their house.

“Nah, we are all full up in here,” he said.

I slept on several feet of snow packed with the moisture of this world, every girl I love, lined with a fleece blanket that zips up the side. Stars comforted me, even though I lay between a pair of hills in a place I only wanted to be on while on my way up.

By morning, I looked upward at the round, white stars of snow drifting downward between golden rays of light. I let the light warm me, looked up the hill of juniper trees and white snow, and walked upward. Near the top I saw a cabin with only the corner standing. Through slats that were splintered by spite, I could see several buckets. All that I cared about was that the boy and girl were below me.

“Do you know whose property you are on?”
“My people are up here with me,” I said.
“My people can call your people,” she replied.
“They are already up here,” I said.
Then her husband responded, “I’ve got a bullet for your ass!”

I calmly walked away, knowing that they would not come up here or aim this way. While that hurt my pride, my heart burned with my own altitude.

The rising sun reflected off the windows of a mansion with stucco sides and a flat roof. When I walked the ridge leading past the house, I saw the living room through the window with the television on. After rounding the corner to the door, I knocked. I asked a tall, athletic boy for water. He pointed to the spigot and went back inside. After walking past his driveway to a smaller hill playing host to a sundial, I walked through the pines and down the hill. I later remembered that this was the mayor.

As I walked down the hill, the first sight that fueled my eyes was a girl standing naked in the window with a towel wrapped around her head. I crossed the street and knocked on her door to tell her she was beautiful. A boy answered the door, and again I asked for water—and I wanted so much more. Then I walked on my merry way.

There is nothing wrong with us, I thought as I walked.

Through the woods and across Florida Road is a neighborhood called Edgemont Ranch. This neighborhood calls for fog and pine to be wet, and that means rain in the winter. Droplets fell, and people began to stare through their windows at me. After the police car rolled away, I crossed the street and asked a resident with a deep Southern accent for a blanket.

“Do you live around here?” he asked.
“Not here. In Durango, though,” I answered.
“I will be honest. This is a private HOA. I’ve been here for four years, and I’ve never seen this,” he replied.

A walk down a path made of soggy wood chips takes me to a house with no windows and doors. From the second story, I watched the spotlight sweep the neighborhood.

I have been here for many more years, and all that I wanted was a blanket and a pillow. After I walked back to the house, I saw the spotlight of the patrol officer sweep the ceiling again. I lay down and let the cold settle into warmth for a change and allowed the night to come. My family were on my mind, and the mountains beckoned me.

The moment I awoke, I walked up the hill to a house with nothing but frozen muffins to greet me from the porch. I kept walking north with my head held high.

The next few miles were a trail of houses, each with a different pulse. Then a walk brought me to a cabin with a sawblade on the side. I was able to procure a cup of coffee—and another from a lonely housewife up the road.

My relative, who loved me dearly, walked a trail of frozen tears to find me here, years behind me. She arrived just recently, and she was still so close that I could smell her. The search for her—and more—kept me going.

All the way up the trail brought me to a ridge lined with trees where I took my lunch. The fumes of memory kept me going while staring at pine trees that swayed in the wind.

I walked from a burned forest that prods through the packed snow to the top of the hill, closer than ever to the sun. As I continued past a bridge made of soil, earth, and ice, I noticed that the earth was naked on top of the ridge that slanted deep on either side. At the top of a mountain, I could feel the eyes of the people warm my skin—and I got naked to show this.

I wanted the entire world to see me, so I stood and lifted my leg to my head until I showed even my asshole and hid nothing. Front and back, I showed all and hid nothing. As I turned around, I saw more.

As I surveilled the other side of the valley from up here, I walked by a table turned on its side. A pair of military gas cans hung on a tree. Past the pair of trees I had slept between was a cabin built high enough for a small child—out of large sticks. Around me, the ground stank of petrol and gasoline, and I remembered a story about a relative, David, who was a Sheriff here. David lit a portion of the hill on fire in order to keep the law away. I thought of this and calmly walked away.

My life has led me to the wind—as is the case when I walked down the hill to find a ridge I could slide down. In memory, I see my relative Sarah slide down a steep cliff and land in the river below. When I followed, I arrived at the edge of the world on snow that gave way every other step. For several more days, I walked up the hill and back down again, reaching a creek and a sign depicting the name of a trail. The sign had been moved recently.

As the earth slanted up, I walked, and from inside of my torso, I anticipated the place where the crust of ice on top of the earth would break and I would be in snow up to my knee. After walking down the hill, I remember my relative dragging a sled with a sleeping mitt behind. I walked past the pearlescent sheen of the moon on the snow and saw the luminescent face of a woman suspended between the trees.

The last climb was from a creek to a shelf made of snow. After I left my socks over my pack to dry, and both were wet the next day, I decided to put on wet socks and fling pants that were saturated with icy bell bottoms against a tree, to stay.

From here, the story goes where I GO—which was down the hill.

Again, I reached a creek and filled a Dixie cup with water. My legs were numb but throbbing still, and I only felt my feet while moving. Bare feet clothed in ice and fire, drug me downward, as I walked along the road that I found, I walked past the first house and to the next, as I was taught. An empty shelter mended my path.

I stood by the heater until my blackened skin began to peel and rot from warming so quickly. Moments later, the father of the homes resident had called the sheriff. After that, I was brought to a hospital where my warrant for failure to appear was suspended until I received medical attention.

I was taken to the hospital. My warrant for failure to appear was suspended until I received treatment. The next morning, I was in an ambulance to a burn unit in Denver, on Colfax. While awake, I dreamed—nerve sheets lighting up my feet to my knees. Then I was waiting for a car to take me to Denver Health’s psych unit, M1 hold. For the second time in my life, I thought: this is where I’ll live. Then they told me I could be held for up to three months. Then I was released.

From the warm bed of the hospital in Denver, I drift back to the hills of southern Colorado.

I think of the lunge into the hills above Durango as a session of juxtaposition. I recall a plastic cup I drank from—melting trickles from frozen hills. From the low valley, I left a video game to go high in search of water. I was within a mile of the mountain.

Out in the compressed winter air, I watched rain fall on old snow. From the bottom of the hill to the top, from inside the house to the forest in late February, I used all I found for all I could.

I walked frozen hills on a road well-traveled, and then uphill to a mountain where many had walked—but few had stayed. The many walked. The few lived.

Memory is something which is clouded yet vivid, a stream always present. And if I go back up there to that stream again, I won’t come down.

Only then will there be more to live for—
between a ridge and a mountain lies the stream.