The bear went over the mountain

Excerpt from Chapter Seventeen.

The rain had picked up again, and she was walking into the icy drops.  She put her head down, her hood up and started.  She had her hands in her pockets because of the cold and berated herself for not wearing gloves.  Her husband had always cautioned her about walking with her hand in her pockets.  

“If you fall, there is nothing to stop you”. 

If she fell.  When she fell.

She took her hands out of her pocket to quiet his voice inside her head.  The hood took away her peripheral vision so at street crossings she had to look up and out from side to side to make sure it was safe to cross.  Once across her head was down as she powered up the hill.

Her breath was deepening as she got half way up, and yes, she was sweating.  A rivulet of sweat ran down her temple and into her eye.  It stung.  She raised her face to the rain, and with her cold hand wiped the salt away. 

She was nearing the top, and the last block was always the hardest because the pitch of the hill steepened dramatically just before the crest.

Steepened dramatically just before the crest. 

Things are always darkest before the dawn.

The eye of the needle. 

She reached the top.  Her heart was pounding.  At the bus-stop she stopped to take her pulse.  She didn’t have a watch with a second hand on her, but her heart was beating fast and strong and resolute. 

She circled the transit pole, and started the journey down.  “The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain and what do you think he saw?”  “He saw another mountain, he saw another mountain, he saw another mountain. And what do you think he did? He climbed another mountain….”

It was going round and round in her brain.  An ear-worm from grade, what?  Two?  It seemed appropriate for today for indeed when she got within a block of her house there was another mountain. 

There would always be another mountain.