The Hike

by Drew Magary

“You have an appetite for grief like a cow’s rumen, Benjamin. You have chambers inside you for all that grief and rage, don’t you?” “I do.” “Tell me: What would you do with all that space if it were empty? Aren’t you tired of putting everything in there and leaving it?”

even know how I’ve survived it. I don’t know how anyone does. It was already a trial by fire.

There’s a certain way this has to play out, which means you can’t take any shortcuts. Whatever you find down that road will prepare you for what’s next.”

believe in the path because I have no other choice. Like you told me, right? Remember, on the beach? You said the same thing. I have to have faith in it, even though I am now very much its prisoner, Ben. I have doubts every second but all I can do is move forward. And now you have to believe in the path, even more than you did before.” “What

adjusted. You can adjust to anything if you’re willing to live

The path I stumbled onto accidentally is now holding me hostage in a faraway land. But I would never be away from you if I could help it. Never. Not for a day. Not for an hour. I will come back.

Every book was a door; every page a new place to hide.

Someone had shaken the heavens and let the universe resettle above him.

gaze upon you, that I have found paradise. The path to God. I am here to serve you, my God in heaven.”

“No, I mean this. I do not want this friendship to linger. I do not want it to wither and die. It will end here, as strong as it’s ever been. And this is a good thing. I don’t want to be around long enough to disappoint you.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s love. Love doesn’t require an explanation.”

The only reason I’m still alive is out of sheer habit.”

“Getting a good look. The last time you see a person is the thing you remember best about them.

There was nothing to confront here at this beach: no monsters, no past, no future. Everyone left him alone, the ultimate desire of any middle-aged man. The safety of it all wooed him. Coddled him.

He lived in a nearsighted fog, scrambling and swimming around in the current until random things popped into his limited field of vision.

There comes a point in life when you’ve seen so much that hardly anything surprises you or bothers you, and that’s a shitty moment. Wisdom is so terribly overrated.

“Pretend you’re in control of it. It’s a set track. You have no real control over where it goes. But if you pretend you do, it won’t seem so bad. Does that make sense?”

But just remember that everything bad can be made good if you know how to use it.”

all of that informed the path as it shaped itself just for you.

“We’re past why here, Ben. This is just how it is.”

“Kid, I am so far beyond what you think I am, it would make you sick.”

And who’s to say that the path isn’t God Himself, welcoming you in His arms, asking you to build the universe with Him? You can’t go back.”

Everyone needs to have something inside them that no one else can have.