The Hike

by Lucy Clarke

You don’t know how much you love someone until you realize you’re never going to see them again.

That you must live in a world where they no longer are. The finality of it, the utter endlessness of grief—it

Loneliness wasn’t the absence of people, she realized. It was the absence of people who understood you.

You can’t go into the wilderness without uncovering your wild self. She had squeezed