At the base of the hills he met Emma, as they had done every day this summer, at 6:30. Their togetherness had become a kind of record; proof that one another had existed this and made the most of the long evenings. “Do you remember finding that tree that was struck by lightning?” Emma might say, and Ike would remember it. Or Ike might say “that’s a big squirrel,” and Emma would laugh, knowing it was a punchline to a great in-joke. Together, those memories existed in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise. They both knew that they experienced said memory differently, but nonetheless carried on as if their two distinct impressions of the tree struck by lightning were only one, wholesome, impression. This was the nature of their friendship; it was, indeed, the kind of friendship that would allow two people to spend every evening of a summer together.

The sand from their respective vehicles settled on their shoulders before they began their ascent. Their routine was almost sacred at this point. First, Emma would walk briskly onto the trail they would be following that evening. They would walk in this way with packs on their backs for at least twenty minutes. Then they would both stop and begin to stretch everything from their calves to their necks. Next, it was Ike’s turn to lead, and they would run. The initial pace would always be too fast to sustain, but would result in the giddy feeling one gets when lost in an unknown area— the quicker this feeling could be achieved the better. As a result, this element of the hike had morphed into a near sprint for them both. On this particular day it took twenty-two minutes of lung-emptying galloping to reach the required disorientation. To this point, their evening excursion had followed an almost perfect script. They slowed to a walk. Now was the time for their adventure to begin.

“That’s a lovely tree,” said Ike, pointing at a full-bodied conifer.

“Western larch,” replied Emma, “It loses its needles in the winter. Most conifers don’t. It can’t stand competition either.”

“It’s nice”

They spoke between breaths as the altitude purloined the available oxygen from their mouths.

“They’re the ones that go yellow in fall.”

More walking. Emma picked up petrified wood and quartz. Their summer had been a training camp of its own, getting ready for nothing but this. Ike thought, with anxiety, about the fall—his next training camp would be with 115 strangers, competing for a starting position on an unfamiliar college campus.

“You got a lot of offers, then?” asked Emma.

“Yeah. I don’t know how you’re supposed to choose. You know where you’ll go yet?”

“Not really.”

The mountainsides’ shrubbery became thicker and transformed into clumps of greenery. The sound of running water appeared when they stopped, and they altered their route to climb towards it. Eventually they came to a meadow nestled between peaks. A thin river wound its way downhill. They took their shoes and socks off and walked on the hard riverbed rocks in the freezing water for as long as they could stand. Their feet shrank as the hot blood ran from the cool water. The river’s path cleared away any bushwhacking they might have to do, and eventually opened out to what looked like a carefully curated pond. A few small transparent fish scattered in groups as they wadded into the center.

“Do you believe in Eden?” asked Emma, knee deep in the water.

“I don’t even believe in God,” laughed Ike

“Yeah, but what about Eden?”

“Oh. No, I don’t suppose I do. Do you?”

“I like the idea.”

Ike splashed some water on to his face, “does this count?”

“That’s what I was wondering. What does it mean that this exists in the same world as oil rigs and poverty?”

Ike laughed.

“Seriously though, what if you could just bring every person in the world to a place like this once— like an Eden. What if we just had that as a rite of passage instead of getting a driver’s license or a GED. I can’t help but feel that would be better” said Emma.

“Maybe they wouldn’t get it, though. It’s a profound experience to us, but who’s to say everyone’s going to feel the same way?”

“You really believe that?”

“No.”

“I wonder if we could make it happen.”

“Here,” Emma handed him a knuckle sized lump of quartz from her pocket, put her socks and shoes back on, and headed back downhill. Ike looked at it, and thought he’d never forget the way the water ran over his knees; the way June felt; the way Emma asked questions with no hope for real answers.

The question stuck with Ike for a while. It was comfortable to consider, and he found himself thinking about Eden while eating or watching TV with his parents. It was fun to ponder, and, from that day on, Ike often fell asleep wondering about Eden or Bo Jackson or both.

The next morning, Ike ran on wet grass that churned under his cleats. The day had a feeling of beginnings. The air was warm and humid by midmorning. He ran with the others: one hundred yards at a time. Some threw their sweat-saturated shirts into the end zones while others used them to wick away the proof of their struggle.

They ice bathed together after the sprints. The exhaustion of the run quickly evaporated at the introduction of cold water into the boy’s lives. Some cannon-balled while others dipped precarious toes. Freshman were dunked while Seniors and Juniors basked in the water and exchanged notes on the professors whose classes they’d enrolled in for their upcoming semester.

In time, they all left the facility; packed into trucks, or going their own way on mountain bikes. The hard day’s work was over before lunch, they would return for a relaxed walk through after the hot sun retreated behind the hills. In the mean-time, each found their way to air-conditioned reprieve. This was their day one, and the next 150 days were filled with the promise of hard work and a season that would produce a championship team. This was life for the 100 boys on the Natrona Mustangs football team. Their season rested on the simplicity of their strategy, and the ability for their best players to punctuate the effort of the group.

Ike got home and made a bowl of white rice, plain chicken, and sliced cucumber, then sat at the kitchen table and sketched out run plays from memory. To an outsider, a run play appears to be a simple thing— a massive collision of 10-22 padded bodies in which one human tries to squirrel through a temporary gap. It is, however, a highly composed collision. When done right, every foot is positioned for maximum leverage, every hand is placed for the most efficient dispersal of power, and every body cranes to fit the design they are attempting to build or destroy. Every offensive player becomes focused upon the creation of a predictable, repeatable pattern while every defensive brain was focused upon disrupting the pattern and emphasizing the chaos that is inherent in the game of football. At its best, the pattern results in a crease that the runner follows forever. At its worst, there is no crease and the runner is punished via blunt force that rattles his spine.

By midday Ike fell asleep with his head propped on the table. He dreamt of being up in the hills at winter. He was snowshoeing alone, and had been climbing for hours. Soft snow fell around him and clouds concealed the hillside 10 feet above and below him. He continued to walk higher and the thick trees became scattered until each tree had enough room to stand out as an individual. He climbed sake of climbing, and came across a tall ponderosa pine covered entirely in butterflies. Low hanging mists hid the canopy of the tree; it seemed as though the trunk went up forever.

Ike woke with a sore neck, and headed to practice. In the locker room, he tied his cleats firmly and pushed his toes into the very front of his boots. He took his new girdle from the plastic packaging and pulled it on. It felt tight around his thighs, and—due to his newly found adult frame— had to find a new elastic band for his shoulder pads. He looked around the locker room and saw the other boys were just waking up, and barely talking. They shuffled around in sliders and momentarily fell asleep while putting on their pads. As they got ready to go to the field, he noticed that he was taller than most of the team. He noticed the calves that stuck out from the other boy’s pants were skinny while his seemed thick and hairy like men’s. He caught hold of other momentary details, like the rust on a facemask, or the smell of fresh dirt that was embedded into the locker room before they ran out together and got to it.

When Ike practiced, he became aware of feeling, at once, isolated and together. He knew that 99 other boys watched him run; the way his knees flexed, the way his shoulders cut through gaps. But, he also felt together. Like playing this sport was a way to go beyond his own mind, to operate on a shared level of precision. Questions of paradises and religion fell away; there was only being. The things he didn’t know ceased to matter in this realm in which he did know. He finished one long run, turned, and jogged back towards the rest of the team. It was in these moment, looking at the faces of his team, that he felt most alive. It was an addiction to these moments that felt almost chemical in strength. It delivered a salvation that was areligious in its content, but deeply spiritual in both its sensation and its expression. Hustling between huddles and plays felt like an expression of morality, reading the body language of a teammate felt like a fundamental dialogue of humanity, and carrying out a play felt like a duty to a religious script.

It was therefore essential, then, that from June to August, every lineman on the Natrona Mustangs work closely with their scripture, and develop a almost-unconscious relationship with the material. They practiced blocks till the movement patterns were as instinctual as walking around one’s home: they could have done it, together, blindfolded. This particular evening, while the hidden sun projected orange onto the blue evening sky, they practiced every block they knew: kick blocks, pulls (in which there are skip and traps), reach blocks, chip blocks, chop blocks, double-teams, and slide blocks. Each of these blocks require their own set of skills and contain their own inherent complexities.

The next evening Ike and Emma took to the hills again and made their way up into a splendid refuge.

“I’ve been thinking.” Ike said

“Oh”

“About Eden. About what it means, where it might be.”

Emma waited for Ike to continue. They sat upon a boulder, above the tree-saturated valley, like emperors looking down on the amphitheater. They faced the evening sun: it had rolled down to an oblique angle, and submerged their bodies in its warmth.

“Maybe it’s where you make it—where you feel it to be,” As Ike spoke he imagined the practice field, nestled among the Montana mountains, and the smell of dew. It was divine garden in his minds-eye; untouchable to the outside world.

“And I don’t mean it could be anywhere, just that it might be somewhere you don’t expect to find it.”

Emma smiled. They descended from their royal seat, and sauntered down the valley to their cars with overly-long looping steps.

60 years later, Ike swung his legs over the bedside. He bent his knees and waited for his eyes to focus. He had shuffled between dreams all night. In one, he was playing in college. It was the game in which he got his first concussion. They snapped the ball and he followed the guards outside hip. Ike watched him block lineman, linebackers, and safeties. They ran into the endzone together but didn’t stop. They ran out of the stadium and through the car lot. It started to rain and their cleats slipped on the asphalt. They ran and ran like wild things. Out of the city, still the rain fell and the clouds clustered together in the sky like big black puddles. They ran through prairies and over hills into a dense woodland. They ran up switchbacks and squeezed through boulders. The trees got thicker and thicker until neither of them could fit unless they turned and clasped their shoulder blades together. The thunder cracked right above their heads, and the only experience for them was sound as the thunderstorm knocked all other senses out. They still ran. Another flash of white cracked and a blaze started in the treetops. It spread and the black day turned orange.

When Ike looked over, he saw Emma was still asleep in the bed beside him. The moon brought silhouetted shapes into their room. He pulled the bedside drawer open and fumbled for his small flashlight. He turned it on and began his morning at 4 am, as he had done for the last two years. Not through choice, or anticipation for a new day, but because there is not enough melatonin in the world for an old man with CTE.

He wondered if it was worth it. Maybe he should have been a fisherman; maybe he would have drowned. Maybe he should’ve been a mountain climber; maybe he would’ve fell. He lost his train of thought, and could only remember the question, but not the reason why it was asked, so he left it be, and set the kettle on the stove top. He opened the fridge, the artificial light painted his face gold, and he carefully lifted the milk from the tray in the door. The pot steamed on the hob and he used both hands to pour hot water over coffee granules. After a minute, his shaky fingers tipped dollops of dairy into the black drink. Then, he sat for hours in silence; leaning on the quartz countertop while the sun rose into the kitchen window and birds flew about in random patterns.

Emma woke up later in the morning. She walked to the window in her nightdress and watched as Ike bent over, picked a blade of grass from the garden, lifted it above his head, and dropped it, observing which way it went in the wind. She watched as he nodded to himself as though this were some kind of secret signal then walked to the bench he’d built under the tree they’d planted.

Watching the grass flutter in the air reminded Ike of a butterfly he’d seen. It was an opaque butterfly, very rare. He held back tears as he remembered how the butterfly made him feel special—as though it were picked out from all of the creatures to give him a message that he’d forgotten. After a moment, his sadness lifted and he looked up to see Emma watching him from the window. He smiled and waved and wondered what she was doing looking at him. He remembered they’d planted the tree he was under together, and gestured for her to come over. He was filled with a nervousness when she left the window, like everything depended upon her coming and sitting with him this morning in the sun. He thought it was strange that a woman who’d spent her whole life studying trees had chosen a tree as common as a Western Larch for their back garden.

She was coming out to meet him with two cups of coffee. As she strode across the lawn, he tried to remember the kind of tree that went yellow in the winter, but couldn’t; he left it be and they drank their coffee together.

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