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The family always takes the scenic route. The father holds the wheel. He swerves at the behest of a
sign, sheers off the highway and gets them on the road to the view. An arrow points the way. The road
spirals steeply upward, the air thins, they feel what is in their heads pushing out. The children chew so
their ears won't "pop." They top out in a circular parking lot filled with other families, surrounded by a
stone parapet. There is no fee.
 Visitors often take turns taking pictures of each other standing in front of the parapet, their backs to
the view.
In the middle of the parking lot is the Visitor Center, an octagonal stone structure two stories high. You
can see through all its walls. The roof is an observation deck for those who find the vantage from the
parapet inadequate. Inside, wildflower cuttings are specimened in the alcoves, and there's a wallboard
tacked with printed matter relating to the view. The souvenir stand is upstairs.
Many, if not most, visitors enter the Visitor Center to use the restrooms. The father always insists the
kids "go" before leaving the view, whether they feel they have to or not.
If they are heading straight home, the mother may drive, but if they feel like continuing further along
the scenic route, the father resumes the wheel. The highway gradually rises in elevation till the family is
nearly as high above sea level as the Visitor Center. Sometimes, though not always, the father will
announce he has to "pull over." By now the family understands what this euphemism means, nor do they
question why he didn't "go" back at the view; the gist of all previous explanations can be applied. The
idea is not to do it every time.
Because there are no gas stations, restaurants, or public rest stops on this stretch of highway, they
have to "pull over" on the road. They always do so at the same spot, where there's an acceptable width
of shoulder, and blind curves coming and going. This is one of the only spots, the father has explained,
where you can "go" and "cars can't see."
Lately he has not had to tell the kids they can't come along because they already "went" at the Visitor
Center, that it is tricky enough for one person to cross over, what with blind curves coming and going.
"Right back" is what he always says he will be.
The father crosses the highway and climbs a short, steep trail up the hill on the other side. As the trail
levels off, it winds through thick evergreen growth, and the road is soon lost to him and he to it. This
would be as good a place as any, but he presses on. The path straightens. Spruce and pine on either
side thin to scrub, the sky feels closer.
The father comes to a wedge-shaped clearing. Roughly in its center are the ashes of a recent fire.
The blackened cardboard container from a twelve-pack, charred at the edges. Dirty underwear,
half-burnt. The dead past rages briefly and subsides.
The father takes off his shoes.
It won't take long but he knows the family gets tired of waiting. He does not mean for them to worry. "I
couldn't relax," he has told them, and "What did you think it was I had to do?"
He doesn't always take off his shoes.
At the other end of the clearing he passes through the last of the trees and is out in the open. The
ground to each side of the path--rocky, mossy, barely grassed--drops away sharply for several yards
before sheering off completely, invisibly, but the father knows what is there, and what is not.
He continues to follow the trail as it grows narrower, the ridge on either side steeper, smoother.
Barren. With one socked foot he kicks pebbles over the side--especially the sharp-looking ones. They
click briefly off what is there, into what is not.
When the father stops, what is left of the path is stone, just wide enough for the width of one foot,
and he stands with his right behind his left.
Beyond his toe the spine of the ridge narrows to a razor's edge he would have to straddle if he went
any further, then downslopes like a nose into nothing.
In the distance to his left he can see the coiled road, the tiny glinting structure at the top of it. They
are part of the view now, and to his north and to his east is all the rest of it.
Sometimes he "goes" right here.
Then, the father of the family, husband of the wife, lifts his arms almost straight out from his sides.
Closes his eyes to complete the abyss.
He feels a coldness moving over him, shaping itself to him and him to itself. He draws a deep breath of
its breath.
Of sky.
Brink.
Nothing.
With his eyes still closed, the father slowly pivots his back foot till it is nearly right-angled to the front,
twisting slightly at the hips, then turns his left foot so he is standing sideways, arms still raised. He feels
beneath his toes and heels what he sees behind his eyes. He keeps turning his right foot till it is pointing
back toward the wedge-shaped clearing, following through with his other foot and the rest of himself--of
what he is and what he might be.
He puts one in front of the other. He doesn't open his eyes till his feet are side by side. Then he
heads back to the clearing. His shoes. His family.
They no longer ask him what kept him--some variation on previous explanations is inferred. Returning,
they always take the scenic route. Back home at sea level, a machine drags him over the lawn while he
loves every blade of grass, and his children.
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