naked elder

Last week while in Mexico I made plans via email to go hiking in the Chiricahuas with a friend of a friend upon my return to Arizona. This friend of a friend sent an email with an attached photo: "This is what I wear hiking". It was a picture of him standing on some outcropping somewhere, gazing out over the distant mountain ranges, a backpack on his back, hiking boots on his feet, and wearing nothing else. Of course I had to show that photo to my friends who all commented on his cute butt but, ewwww, what a bizarre thing to do, send a photo like that to a woman you barely know, and thus he was dubbed "The Naked Hiker".

Getting older is a bitch. No doubt about it. I'm not real fond of it. It's gotta be worse for people who were beautiful when younger, or had killer bodies, or had heads full of hair. What's that saying? "Getting old ain't for sissies" or something like that. So every time I've been with the Naked Hiker I've gotten the impression that he is having more trouble than most with this getting old bullshit. He brought along a picture of our mutual friend. "This is what she looked like 50 pounds ago," he said as he handed me her photo. Why should I care what she looked like with less bulk? Is this his way of saying "look, when I met her she was beautiful and thin and I can't help it if she got older and fatter."

As The Naked Hiker and I hiked (both fully dressed), he told me over and over what great shape he used to be in and I wanted to tell him to let it go, to stop fretting over his shape and his friend's shape and probably everyone else's shapes. Life's short, paddle hard, as my friend Bobito is fond of saying.

Lucky us, we ran into a group of 78 grade-schoolers from one of the border towns, out there in the Chiricahuas with their very own Forest Ranger for a guide. The parents looked exhausted and bedraggled but the muchachos and muchachas were going strong, shouting out greetings when they saw us. One little boy asked "Are you elders on vacation?" I said "Elders!?" and he said "Yeah." And, well, he left me kind of dumbfounded. Elders. I guess that's better than "old people", more respectful, but it bothered me. How old did that kid think I was? I reminded myself that kids have a warped sense of age, that someone 35 can look old to them. Fuck, talk about being in denial about the aging process; hell, I'm as bad as The Naked Hiker! I nearly let that little shit ruin my day.

After our hike we returned to town where we had dinner and roamed the streets and listened to music and stayed out past midnight. Not bad for a couple of elders.