Te Iubsec...Forever.

3 The Hike

Ches had a few days off from work the following week, so it was a perfect time to take a long hike into the mountains, camp for a few days, and be far away and alone. We'd both be captive to our pending conversation, which she insisted on putting off until that time. She wouldn't even entertain the discussion in the car heading to the foothills. I kept at her, dropping hints, giving the what if's and why not's to the best of my ability. Nothing, she would flash a grin at me now and then but wouldn't budge.

"Nick," later, when we can talk, I'm driving," she would plead, taking my chin in her cold hand and squeezing it.

"You are sweet, Nick, but we will wait."

We drove about four hours out of Constanța to the foothills of the Carpathians. It is a beautiful country, but everything is mysterious, every tree, every building, every obscure road sign. There were plenty of abandoned churches and crumbling ancient buildings along the way; I could see them in the distance as we passed but never made mention. It didn't feel right; it actually felt too creepy even to try.

We stopped at the Baraj Siriu dam. The town was sizable enough; many buildings crowded along the beautiful but tamed Buzău River. It was every bit as modern as Constanța and every bit as strange. We had lunch at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the deep lake below the dam. The water's color was like everything else in Romania, deep, dark green, and seemingly bottomless. All she would tell me was that there was an old ruin, what was left of a small village, that she wanted to show me hidden far up in the mountains. Ches took the car to a garage and paid to leave it for the duration of our trip. We started our hike into the mountains with full stomachs, which was not the best idea.

I honestly didn't know what to expect. Looking at the monstrous green hills before me, I had no idea how we would find such a place, but she was confident and never looked back as she blazed a trail across an open grass field, heading straight into the darkness of the forest. At that second, the only thing on my mind was the two or three signs Ches breezed by, the Urs signs. Bears, and enough of them around for someone to put out warning signs. If she wasn't worried, why should I? I struggled at first to keep up, me, a lifelong hiker, yards behind this woman; unbelievable.

When I finally did catch her, I grabbed her pack and held it, stopping her in her tracks. She yelped, turned around quickly, and was obviously frustrated, but I was ready. I took her face into my hands and kissed her slowly, holding her until she calmed and kissed me back, which she finally did and gave me her usual soft girlish giggle that I had come to adore in the few weeks I had known her.

"Thank you, Nick," she said, pressing her forehead onto mine and looking me in the eyes.

"But we have to go."

"Bear?" I asked.

"Bear? No. The wolves are more dangerous anyway, and the Badger, but no Nick, nightfall. We want to be somewhere good, somewhere flat so that we can make camp."

I looked at the hills before us, nodded my agreement, and let her go. She smiled, kissed my cheek, and plodded on ahead of me. She was the one who knew where we were going.

"Bear," she said once, smiling at me.

"I will protect you from the bear," she giggled.

Sometimes her sense of humor was lost on me, like she was laughing at jokes in her head that I wasn't privy to. But, at least, I felt confident she wouldn't dump me figuratively or emotionally in the deep, dark Romanian countryside. I thought she might have ideas of a future together but had no idea how to make it happen. I was trying to pack it all into the back of my mind, but with every step on our journey, those thoughts kept getting jarred loose. I had become relatively anxious about the whole thing by the time we stopped.