Switchback

Switchback had learned about the zigzag when she was small.

The first steep hill she faced, she charged straight up it, proud and headlong, sure that the direct, hardest way was the brave way. Halfway up her legs were fire, her breath was gone, and she slid back down in a shower of scree, defeated, certain she was simply too weak for the mountains.

An old ewe, grey-muzzled and calm, watched her tumble and clambered over. "You went straight up to prove you were strong," she said. "But the mountain isn't beaten by charging it. It's climbed by respecting it." She started up the slope in long, easy angles. "Cut ACROSS the steepness, then turn, then cut across again. Each stretch gentle enough to keep going. You'll walk twice as far and arrive with strength to spare." She looked back. "Strength isn't charging the steep. It's having the patience to take the wise, winding way — and to leave the hillside whole behind you."

Switchback tried the zigzag, and to her surprise the impossible slope became a series of easy walks. She reached the top not gasping and beaten, but steady and strong. The burned-out, too-weak feeling settled into a calm, patient confidence. The mountain hadn't been too big for her. She'd just been attacking it instead of climbing it wisely.

Switchback walked to Trailforge as a tween, because a place that taught the outdoors ought to teach the wisdom of the long, kind way up.

The old ranger who kept the trailhead met her at the gate and asked one thing. "There's a steep pitch behind the station. How do you get to the top?"

Switchback didn't answer with a speech. She walked to the steep pitch — and did not go straight up. She angled across, turned, angled back, climbing in patient zigzags, each stretch easy, arriving at the top unwinded and unhurried, having left no torn line down the slope behind her.

The ranger watched the gentle switchbacks she'd traced. "Most people charge straight up and are wrecked by the top," the ranger said.

"Most people think the shortest line is the smartest," Switchback said. "But the steep straight way wastes your legs and scars the hill. The long way protects both." She looked at the untorn slope. "I'd like to teach that patience."

The ranger looked at the winding, gentle line up the pitch, then at Switchback. "You belong here," they said.

One afternoon a boy came to Switchback's lesson red-faced and frustrated, having failed a hill climb.

"I ran straight up," he said, "like everyone should be able to. But I gassed out halfway and had to stop, and slid back down, and everyone saw. I'm just not fit enough for this."

Switchback knew that gassed-out, not-enough feeling. She'd slid down a slope in scree once, too.

"You're plenty fit," Switchback said. "You just picked the one way up that beats even the strongest legs — straight up the steep." She led him back to the hill. "Watch. We don't go up. We go ACROSS — angle over here, gentle — then turn, and angle back — gentle again." She walked him through it, zigzag by zigzag, each stretch easy enough to keep talking. And the boy, who couldn't run ten steps straight up, walked the whole hill by switchbacks without once gasping. At the top, he turned around, astonished. "I made it. And I'm not even that tired."

"That's the whole craft," Switchback said. "You didn't need more strength. You needed the wiser line. And look—" she pointed back "—no torn gully behind us. The straight-up rush would've scarred the hill. The zigzag left it whole. The long way is kinder to you AND to the land you're a guest on."