Last licks

The branch had to go. It was blocking the topmost spot on the communal kayak rack, where our new sit-ons would fit perfectly.

Tom clambered up and tugged. No dice. He muttered some curses to let the branch know he meant business. Tug, grunt. Tug, grunt. Tug... Ahhhhhhh!

In an instant, the branch detached from the tree, and Tom’s rotator cuff detached from his humerus. And that’s not funny.

His face turned chalk-white. His limbs trembled, his clothes were sweat-plastered. He mumbled something about screwing the pooch. But he was already using his good arm to fend me off. “I’m fine! Nothing to see here. No, stop that. Get off me! What’s a doctor going to do? Ridiculous!”

Tom believes in his body’s natural healing powers. And if sheer believing made the difference, he’d have been fine the next day.

But one whole year of intermittent ooching and ouching ensued, each cry followed by: “You really should get that checked out,” followed by: “It’s getting better!”

This summer, the ooches escalated in volume, reaching a crescendo one afternoon on the Rio Reservoir, which has a distinct echo. Tom stopped paddling. His kayak started to spin.

“You know,” he said. “I should do something about my shoulder.”

He did something about his shoulder. I stood by, immensely relieved, as he shook off the anesthetic. The hospital room felt like a pit stop, with its team of ready-racer technicians intent on getting my husband back into action.

Some things can’t be rushed, though. I could see from Tom’s grotesquely swollen shoulder, and his horrible bratwurst fingers, that we were in for a wait.

Outside the window it was mid-August, time for last licks on the water and for glorious late-summer hikes. Time for the black flies to recede and the woolly bears to appear, time for the blue asters to mingle with the goldenrod and, high up in the Catskills, time for the wild black cherries to fall thickly on the trails. But, right then, all of that seemed very far away.

I asked Tom to envision the hikes and paddles we’ll take next spring. How amazing will be, I said, to have a shoulder that supports your backpack and turns your paddle and just generally does what it’s supposed to do without your ever having to think about it? (And how great for me, to no longer wince in sympathetic pain!)

Tom’s doctor was straight with us from the start about the long recovery ahead. But ahead of the procedure, he said Tom could do whatever he liked, using pain to inform his limits. Kayaking was out! But hiking was still manageable. And we had a few weeks.

We headed to Split Rock Lookout in the remote western Catskills. At the trailhead, on the prettily named Holliday and Berry Brook Road, I transferred some of the weight from Tom’s pack into my own.

A story in the New York Times hails a new form of exercise called “rucking”: walking around with a heavy backpack (or rucksack, for the quaint). That’s it. No, really. You can apparently buy a “rucking-specific pack with weight plates” and then walk around your neighborhood to make your muscles stronger and your brain sharper. How about, instead, you fill a regular old backpack with fresh water and yummy snacks and other useful stuff and head out for an actual adventure? I thought sensibly, or maybe smugly.

The trails in the western Catskills are usually shaggy for being less traveled, and this summer’s plentiful rain and heat made them even more overgrown. Tom, our dog Henry, and I pushed through the lush ferns — northern lady, cinnamon, Christmas — that leaned into our path. Also stinging nettles.

The staggered layers in this mountain’s shale ledges, formed in deep time at the bottom of a quiet Devonian sea, are especially beautiful. We spent a lazy lunch hour debating which of several dramatically split rocks gave the lookout its name. I studied the shale layers intensely, to keep them with me until I could see them again.

In the meantime, Tom is home, strapped to an ice machine that has gotten his shoulder down to its proper size. We live through the adventures of others now — the people who film themselves sailing alone across the Pacific, hiking through the canyons of the Southwest, or camping among grizzlies in the Kodiak Archipelago. As we follow along in our comfy chairs, we’re checking these adventures off our bucket list. That way, when the time comes, we’ll have more time for the places we already love, the mountains and ridges of home.

SNEAK PEEK

Trailhead: Holliday and Berry Brook Road in the Delaware Wild Forest, Catskill Park

Trail: Out and back — Take red-blazed Mary Smith Trail 1.2 miles to the blue-blazed Pelnor Hollow Trail and make a right; the viewpoint is about a quarter-mile beyond (on the left). Both trails are part of the 580-mile Finger Lakes Trail that extends from Allegany State Park to the summit of Slide Mountain in the Catskill Park.