I am waiting for a bit of light. That simple statement captures my morning so far. Or at least it describes the time since I sipped my first cup of coffee, somewhat palatable, since the room in this Olympic National Park lodge comes with a Keurig maker. It includes the moments I spent pulling on a pair of black, quick-drying hiking pants and a turquoise top. This is the final week of August, and the sun rises later each morning. The wait has been longer than I would like.
I am waiting for a bit of light to leave my room feet from the lake and walk. This is a habit I follow when home, setting out in my neighborhood or driving to a nearby park. Even though I’m in this rainy part of the State of Washington on a group hiking trip, and the itinerary calls for two hikes today, one starting later this morning, I have to get outside as soon as there’s enough light. That’s because I want–and need—to experience this wide long lake, giant old-growth trees, rocks, and emerald ferns alone.
I am also waiting for a bit of light, as I hover close to the end of my third year of widowhood, thirty-six months in which I passed the majority of my time solo. At the start, following the death of my beloved husband Richard, I vowed to create a meaningful life without him. That vow resulted from the fact that until close to the end, Richard made every possible effort to live. His efforts included enduring the punishing cancer treatments prescribed by his oncologist, with their myriad side effects. They also contained his struggles to retain some semblance of life, fun and joy, even as his body weakened from cancer and chemotherapy.
Since I still had the life and health taken from Richard, I felt my task, now that I was no longer a caregiver and spouse, was to make a life worth living. When I made this silent vow, I had no idea what a life worth living might be. Nearing the end of my third year as a widow, I’m forced to admit I still don’t know. I haven’t managed to create that sort of life yet and sadly think I never will.
More than a meaningful life, I have, as in the present moment, been waiting for a bit of light. At this juncture, I can report that slender rays do sometimes come in and brighten my spirits. In fact, I know the light is waiting for me and will probably be there, when I step out the back door and walk towards the water.
My room is near the end of a short line of likely identical rooms perched above Lake Crescent. Two once-white plastic chairs sit on the narrow patio. It occurs to me, as I step out the door, that if I were here with Richard, I would be sitting in one of those chairs, sipping coffee and writing. Until I came out just now, I hadn’t realized the chairs were there.
That thought leads to the awareness of how moving through life alone, I often narrow the boundaries of my world. I’m not sure why, except that I’m trying to stay safe, which can sometimes cut me off from interesting experiences or surprises.
I shake my head, as I start to walk toward the lake, which is visible now that the sky has grown somewhat light. There’s a soft sound, a tiny tap, and then another. I’m under a canopy of soaring greenery, a handful of the gigantic old-growth firs and pines that fill this national park. The cover clears a minute later, as I step onto rocks and then the sand that lines the water. Rain, I realize, and notice that the massive pieces of driftwood onshore are damp. I head east, toward where the sun is getting ready to rise, and smile, seeing that in every direction, no one is here but me.
I almost run out of fingers, counting the trips I’ve been on since Richard died. Except for the first, a flight to the Island of Kauai where I scattered some of Richard’s ashes on a beach below the vacation rental I’d booked for a week alone, the trips have been with groups of strangers for time spent in the great outdoors. In the nearly thirty years of our relationship, Richard and I headed outside at every opportunity, to hike, kayak, swim and snorkel, and even fish. Losing my spouse, my lover, my best friend, the person who became part of me, as necessary to my existence as my eyes, ears and limbs, I also lost untold precious moments, sharing time on the shore of a mountain lake or paddling our kayak down a sparkling river or arriving at the viewpoint after a heart-pounding hike.
Richard was my first and only spouse. Before meeting him, I hadn’t known how it felt to take in the awe-inspiring wonder of this planet with someone as moved by the sights as I was. Creative souls, Richard a landscape photographer and me a writer, we felt deeply about practically everything, which made being out in nature together an even more remarkable time.
When I signed up for my first group trip as a newly widowed woman, to hike in Utah’s Arches National Park and nearby Canyonlands National Park, I hoped this would be the first of many journeys that would bring back a piece of the life Richard and I had shared. Eight trips later, now on my ninth, I regretfully admit what should have been obvious from the start. It’s impossible to bring back the life I so loved. It’s impossible for the most obvious reason. Richard is no longer here at my side.
Still, there are moments, or rather, I carve out bits of these trips, when I can be alone with a river, lake, or the view of a nearby mountain, especially when the light is limited, at sunrise or dusk. I grabbed several of those moments on that first Utah trip, following a path above the Colorado River, outside Moab, when the sun had dropped, drenching the water golden and saturating surrounding rock a fierce scarlet hue. On a stay in Sedona, Arizona, I walked a path across from the hotel, as the sun slowly emerged, coloring the rock and landscape a vibrant rose. One evening before dinner, I stood on the patio outside my room, taking in the towering sandstone on all sides, while listening to the soft sounds of an electric guitar being strummed to the haunting Beatles’ tune, Yesterday. And the first morning on a small ship sailing the waters of Southeastern Alaska, I stepped from my cabin to witness massive snow-tipped cliffs, ribboned with myriad slender waterfalls, in Misty Fjords National Monument, and wept, moved by the astonishing beauty and filled with sorrow that Richard couldn’t be there to witness it with me.
I walk toward the lake, the air fresh from an earlier shower, banks of thick white clouds suspended between dark hills bordering the lake. If Richard were here, he would be composing photographs in his mind. Over his many years capturing nature in color photographs that resembled paintings, Richard developed this habit, which he described as emanating from mindfulness, ridding his mind of everything except what was in front of him at that moment. Though I lack his skill and experience, and only have my phone, not an expensive camera with special lenses, I try to compose several shots, hoping I will capture the sense of calm and peace I feel as I walk along the shore.
The Lake Crescent stay is the final stop on a nearly week-long visit to vast and wondrous Olympic National Park. The park houses old-growth trees so huge, I have to stop and take in their size, admiring the width of the base, then stretching my neck far back in an attempt to glimpse the top. These forests, which are drenched with feet of rain much of the year, contain a multitude of ferns and fungi, along with moss, in every imaginable shade of green. Walking the trails, I’m able to shed the sorrow I still feel without Richard. The raucous profusion of life, along with rays of light filtering through the canopy, buoys my spirit as nothing else manages to do.
At times, I wonder why I come on these trips. They are temporary, a week or two at most, short bright breaks from life at home alone. I sometimes think I should quit leaving and put my efforts into creating a more fulfilling existence where I live. When I have such thoughts, I recall moments, such as this one. I shift my attention to the eastern side of the lake, where the sun is rising and brightening water. I then turn to the south, where a collection of thick white clouds hangs suspended, settling into various shapes with every whiff of the wind.
I recognize how it is exactly in these moments when I’m most able to bring Richard with me. It is in these moments, when I am standing, sitting or walking slowly in a place I know he would have loved, that I can feel the awe, the sense of peace and joy he and I used to experience together. Yes, it is sad, to imagine Richard wearing a favorite tank top he bought in Hawaii, with tan Bermuda shorts, showing off the muscles he’d worked hard at the gym to build on his normally slender frame, his black hair cut in the cute spiky style I’d encouraged him to get, an Asian man who felt comfortable striking up conversations with strangers everywhere, and my heart breaks with love, sorrow, and gratitude for what we once had.
I shake my head to clear my mind of the image and memories, and focus on what’s around me in this still, silent space. Lifting the phone to my eye, I hear Richard softly remind me to stand over there. He knows I want the best photo possible. He knows the photo will bring up a happy memory, long after this day has come and gone.
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Patty Somlo’s most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories (Cherry Castle Publishing), was a Finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were Finalists in several contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Delmarva Review, Under the Sun, the Los Angeles Review, and over 40 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the J.F. Powers Short Fiction Contest, had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times.
© 2026, Patty Somlo
Halfway Down the Stairs 