Creature Discomforts

as an artificial, if credibly naturalistic, route, this section of the Ladder Trail followed the steep downward incline of the base of a cliff. The dramatic rise of the rock wall to the right somehow made the stones of the steps look narrower, sharper, and more treacherous than those of the other stone trails. Cutting sharply between the cliff and an area of smooth ledges and stunted vegetation, the stairs had none of the quaint, inviting charm so notable on the nearby trails. Although the morning was sunny and dry, a humidly sinister aura seemed to hover over the staircase, as if some nasty woodland sprite took perverse delight in coating the rock treads and risers with the unexpected danger of slippery dampness.
    It was presumably on these steps that Norman Axelrod had taken his deadly fall.
    Standing safely above the top tread, I tried to envision the mechanics of the fatality. A man makes his way down to the topmost step. He is out of shape; he moves slowly. In today’s sun, the stones looked damp; in yesterday’s fog, they must have appeared even more slippery than they did now. Therefore, he moves with great care. He places one tentative foot on the first step. Then the other. And then...?
    And then all of a sudden, slipperiness gives way to the heart-jolting sensation of feet sliding out from under, arms flailing, body twisting in a futile, reflexive struggle to regain hopelessly lost balance, and in a split second, indeed in a kaleidoscopically shattered second, stability flies upward and vanishes into the fog, and the body plunges downward, bouncing off rock after cruel rock until a vicious twist of gravity seizes the vulnerable head and, with fatal force, hurls cranium onto granite in a coup de grâce.
    Oh, really? My imagination balks. In the absence of the late Norman Axelrod, I envision myself in his place, and when I send myself, strictly in fantasy, of course, running lickety-split down the long, narrow flight of swiftly descending stone stairs, the vivid scenario that presents itself is a double picture of terrifying illusion and harmless reality. If, in fact, I sprinted down this ever-so-picturesque staircase, I might trip and tumble. But far from cannon-balling off the rocks or plummeting off a precipice, I’d soon grab or bump into the smooth ledges and vegetation that act, I now see, as a subtle safety wall while sustaining the tantalizing illusion of danger. It is easy to imagine how someone could fall on the stairs. It is almost impossible to imagine a fatal plunge down them.
    The morning’s tune returns. I love to tell the story, it sings. Of unseen things above. With a definite above to look toward, I run my eyes up the face of the cliff. Seventy feet? Yes, from the top of this cliff down to the sharp rocks of the staircase is a drop of a good seventy feet, and unlike a knee-skinning topple down the trail, a plunge off that cliff could only mean a dive to death.
    So Norman Axelrod died here, on these stone steps. Why here? Because he fell from above. And I’d been nearby. Unseen things above: things I had seen? People? Events? Norman Axelrod, inexplicably standing atop that cliff. Alone? And then...? And then plummeting from it? Witnessed. Witnessed by me.
    I was suddenly in a great hurry to see everything unseen, to scramble up the cliff and then down or over to my Rock of Ages, to find where Axelrod had stood the second before his plunge, where I’d fallen from, where I’d landed. Driven by the conviction that I was, at last, actively pursuing this wretched, forgotten mission, I hastened up the trail and found the spot where the handsome hiker had set off uphill in what I’d assumed was confident bushwhacking. A second’s pause at the spot revealed what now seemed the obvious signs of an old trail: a narrow and overgrown but beaten path up through the scrubby huckleberry bushes, and flat stones set in the ground stair-tread fashion in the wonderfully as-if-by-nature style of every other trail on this little mountain. Hampered more by my concern for the safety of my dogs than by the dogs themselves, I glanced eagerly around for a place to hitch them while I made a quick dash up the abandoned path. As if operating all on their own, my eyes sought out a tiny moss-carpeted clearing just off the main trail with two oak saplings that could serve as temporary hitching posts. Clambering the short distance uphill to the area, I said to the dogs, “I’m only leaving you here for two