Posted As Missing

23. Of Expectations

After recovering from Maria's examination, David glanced at his watch. "It's nearly four thirty. The sun's going to leave this side of the nook in less than half an hour. After it goes, it will quickly chill, but we can light a fire in here this evening."

"But won't Fritz see it?"

"No, Mama," Maria answered. "There's still smoke and flames on the slopes above us, so our fire will fit in with the scene. Ours won't look different from the rest of the fire."

"Exactly my thoughts," David said. "I'm going to dress and go back up the opposite slope to take another look."

He checked the safety, unclipped the case from the handle, flipped the lid open and slid the pistol inside. Then he slipped the case into the harness, looped the strap over his shoulder, and fastened it to his belt. "Just in case I've a need for protection. We have this; we may as well use it. I've been so comfortable here, so relaxed and well cared for, that I keep forgetting I'm deep in enemy territory."

After kissing them both, he checked the mirror and headed out. "The snow should be mostly gone by now from the sun. I'll likely be less than a quarter-hour."

He dipped his hand in the shallowest pool. Still the same temperature as yesterday. Must be a flow of thermal water across the slabs. He examined the strata junction, smiled and nodded.

David quickly regained his previous outlook perch. The snow was almost completely gone from the forest floor, down to a few patches which had remained in the shade and in places it had stacked up from sloughing off tree branches. There were still many small fires around the periphery of the charred scar, with flames licking both standing and fallen trees. Dirty white smoke rose from underground fires across the whole area. Our little fire will fit in well. Wonder where Fritz is.

He scanned the area again, then relaxed his eyes and set them out of focus on the slopes opposite as he sat still, waiting for motion. There was none for several minutes, then he caught movement and focused on a doe and a fawn picking their way across a small clearing in the trees beyond the fire scar. He watched in appreciation.

Then there was a gunshot, then quickly two more as both animals collapsed. Half a minute later, five soldiers walked into the clearing toward the fallen deer.

So Fritz is still up there. What bloody cowards, killing a defenceless doe and her fawn. But elsewhere, they're also killing defenceless mothers and children.

He watched as the soldiers approached their kill, raising their arms and weapons in victory. The biggest man tucked the small fawn under his arm; the four others each took a leg of the doe and carried their meat across the slope, angling slightly upwards and then out of sight.

David retraced his route back to the bottom of the bluff and followed the ramp back along toward the gully, picking up a thick fallen branch from the slope as he went. He tossed the branch across the stream, and it landed on the slab with a clatter. Then he stood in the mirror's view until he saw Maria poke her head out from behind the gabbro block.

She ran out across the slab to the stream's edge, Rachel close behind her. Her face was streaked with tears; she looked distraught. "We thought those shots were for you. We didn't know what to think."

Rachel's face was also glistening wet with tears. "What was that about? What were those shots? We were so worried."

"Fritz shooting some meat for dinner. Looks like you both need a hug," he said as he sidled along the narrow ledge. He manoeuvred around the bulge, leapt across the stream onto the slab, took a few steps and wrapped them both in a huge, warm hug.

Maria was still shaking, almost convulsing with deep sobs. "We thought you ... you were ... gone," she blubbered out between sobs.

"Don't let your mind go there." He cupped the back of her head with his hand and gently pulsed. "In times such as these, it's important to keep only positive thoughts in here. It's cold here in the shade; let's go over into the sun before you catch a chill. You're still in your nursing uniform."

The three walked back across the slab and into the sun, and then he pointed to the triangle. "Inside, it's much warmer. You're still crying. I don't understand."

"I'm crying for relief now, not for loss; I'm so relieved you're safe, uninjured, alive." She reached out and stroked the stubble on his cheek.

"Just because you heard gunfire? We've heard a lot of gunfire the last two days. Why are these shots different?"

"You weren't here. You were out there. I watched my dreams, my expectations dissolve. Maybe my mind was too busy; it just took over and started telling me the worst. I went along with it."

"Dreams are good for ideas, for review, but not for living. We can only live here – now. That's all we ever truly have. What was the dream that had devastated you?"

"I've been dreaming of spending my life with you – ever since I first saw you. The gunshots put a hole right through that dream."

"But you are spending your life with me. Right here, right now. And that's the beauty of this – it isn't a dream. It's real. We can sketch broad ideas for the future, certainly, but we can't live there, because we don't know what will unfold."

He gave her a gentle squeeze. "Have you ever thought about where disappointment comes from?"

"No ..." She tilted her head. "No, I don't think I have."

"Let me tell you another story, then. A few years ago, high on a rib in the Bugaboos, approaching the summit of an unclimbed spire, I was stopped by a nearly holdless vertical wall. The top was only twenty feet above me. I tried several times to get up it, but alone and without a belay, it was too risky. A slip would have meant certain death. I had to give up.

"I searched for a traverse and, finding none, started back down, bitterly disappointed, my mind clouded. I stopped for a break at an easing of the steepness and moved around to a ledge to sit and ponder. I had expected the route would go."

"Route would go? What's that mean?" Maria asked.

"A mountaineering phrase meaning the route leads to the goal." David smiled at her. "I had expected it would lead to the summit, but it didn't. That's what disappointment is – expectation colliding with reality. Possibilities are always shifting, and we miss most of them when we're busy demanding that life follow the path we imagined for it."

"But what about planning?" Maria asked. "How do you do that?"

"By looking at the broad shape while paying attention to all that's around us and being ready to use what fits best. Planning is forcing life into shape. Living is responding to what emerges."

 He gave her a gentle squeeze. "Emptying our minds of the future and the past gives us much more space to appreciate the present, to live and experience it fully. Have I told you lately I think you are absolutely gorgeous? That I love you?"

"It's all over you. You ooze it. How can I help but see it?"

David chuckled. "That's an observation you acted on in the gasthaus – quite unplanned – and look where it's brought you."

"Ummm." She snuggled closer to him. 

"From every point, there are possibilities we haven't seen yet. Move a hair's breadth and the whole picture changes. That's why we must be ready to change. Change is constant; it's the force of life. Try to resist it, and we stagnate."

"Your thinking is so deep, so clear," Rachel said. "You sound like you've lived a thousand years. Where does it all come from?"

"From inside. From climbing alone in the mountains. Wasted time, my father called it. It's amazing what thoughts come when we've no distraction – when we're fully involved in being where we are, doing whatever we're doing. Not trying to design our lives, but simply fully living them."

"So, were you satisfied as you headed back down?"

"Wonderfully so. After my mind had cleared, as I was preparing to continue down, I looked back up to bid the peak farewell and saw a narrow layback crack a bit to the left. With a few thin moves, the crack led me onto the summit. I hadn't seen it previously; I had been distracted by expecting the rib would go."