The Weight We Carry Up

The Weight We Carry Up

I took him into the mountains the week after the diagnosis.

Not his—mine. Three syllables the doctor said in a voice so careful it felt like being wrapped in gauze I didn't ask for. Depression, clinical, treatment-resistant. Words that turned my body into a stranger's house, a place I lived but didn't trust. The medication made my hands shake. The therapy made me cry in parking lots. I stopped answering texts. I started measuring days by how many hours I could stay awake without feeling like I was drowning in my own skull.

But the dog—my dog, this ridiculous creature with ears too big for his head and a tail that wagged even in his sleep—he didn't care about any of it. Every morning he'd press his nose against my ribs and wait, patient as stone, until I remembered I was still someone who could be needed. So one morning, when the weight in my chest felt like it might crack my sternum, I clipped his leash and drove us to the trailhead like I was running from a house on fire.

The parking lot was empty. Dawn light slanted through the pines, cold and clean, and the air smelled like sap and wet earth and something I didn't have a name for but recognized anyway: possibility. My dog leaned against my leg, his whole body vibrating with a joy so uncomplicated it made my throat close. I cinched my pack—too tight at first, then looser, because I was shaking and couldn't get my hands to cooperate—and listened to the quiet jangle of his tags, the only sound in the world that felt like home.

I didn't know what I was doing. I'd packed the night before in a manic spiral, throwing things into the bag like I was preparing for war: water bottles, a collapsible bowl I'd never used, a first aid kit still in its plastic, a leash I wasn't sure was long enough, treats I hoped he'd eat if something went wrong. I had no plan. No map. Just a trail name I'd found online and a desperate, clawing need to be anywhere but inside my own head.

We started walking.

The trail climbed immediately, steep enough that my thighs burned within the first ten minutes. My dog surged ahead, then circled back, then surged again, his nose low to the ground like he was reading a book written in scent. I stumbled over roots I should have seen. My pack felt wrong—too heavy, shifting with every step, the straps digging into my shoulders in a way that felt like punishment. I thought about turning back. I thought about a lot of things. But his tail kept wagging, and his body kept moving, and something in me—some feral, stubborn part that hadn't given up yet—decided to follow.

We stopped at the first clearing. I fumbled the collapsible bowl open, spilling water on my boots, and poured too much. He drank like he'd been dying, tongue sloppy and joyful, and when he looked up at me his eyes were so clear, so unburdened, that I had to look away. I drank from my own bottle, hands still shaking, and realized I hadn't brought enough. The weight of that mistake sat in my chest like a stone. One more thing I'd gotten wrong. One more proof I wasn't capable of keeping anything safe.

But he didn't know that. He just licked my hand and waited for me to keep going.

The next mile was harder. The sun broke through the trees and the air turned hot and sticky. My dog's pace slowed. His tongue hung longer. I started checking him obsessively—paws, gums, the rhythm of his breath—terrified I'd brought him out here to suffer because I was too broken to plan properly. Every rock looked like a trap. Every steep section felt like my fault. When he stumbled once on loose gravel, I nearly lost it, kneeling beside him in the dirt, hands on his ribs, whispering apologies he didn't need to hear.

He was fine. He licked my face and kept walking.

I learned things that day in the brutal, graceless way you learn when you have no choice. I learned that water isn't just carried—it's rationed, offered before thirst turns into emergency, poured in shade when the sun feels too close. I learned that paws need checking the way hearts need listening to: often, gently, without waiting for crisis. I learned that a leash isn't control—it's conversation, a steady pressure that says I'm here, I've got you, we're doing this together.

By the time we reached the ridgeline, my shirt was soaked through and my legs were trembling. But the view—god, the view. It opened up like a secret the earth had been keeping, valleys folding into each other, peaks catching light like broken glass, sky so blue it hurt. My dog sat beside me, panting, and for the first time in weeks—months—I felt my lungs fill all the way down. Not peace. Not healing. Just... space. Enough space to breathe without choking.

We stayed there a long time. I fed him treats from my pocket, one at a time, and watched him chew with the same focus he brought to everything: absolute, unselfconscious presence. He didn't care that I'd underpacked. He didn't care that I was a mess. He cared that we were here, together, and the wind smelled good, and his person was sitting still for once instead of pacing the apartment like a caged thing.

Coming down was harder than going up. My knees screamed. My pack, which I'd loaded wrong, kept shifting and throwing me off balance. I slipped twice, caught myself both times, felt the adrenaline spike and then drain in a way that left me hollow. My dog stayed close, glancing back every few steps, his body a steady metronome I could follow when my own rhythm failed.

At the car, I collapsed with the hatch open and let him drink until the bowl was empty. Then I checked his paws one more time—gentle, methodical, the way I'd learned to check my own pulse when panic tried to convince me I was dying. No cuts. No limping. Just dirt and a few small burrs I picked out with shaking fingers. He leaned into my hands like this was the best part of the whole day.

I cried in the parking lot. Not the pretty kind of crying. The ugly, shuddering kind that comes from a place you can't name and don't want to visit. My dog climbed into my lap even though he was too big for it, even though we were both filthy, and pressed his entire weight against my chest until the sobs turned into hiccups and then into silence.

I drove home slower than I needed to. At every red light I reached over and touched his head, just to make sure he was real.

The mistakes I made that day could have been dangerous. I know that now. Not enough water. Wrong pack fit. No real first aid knowledge. A vague, half-assed plan that could have ended badly if the weather had turned or if he'd gotten hurt or if I'd pushed too far in my desperation to outrun my own mind. But those mistakes also taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way: that care isn't perfection. Care is showing up. Care is checking paws even when your hands shake. Care is pouring water you're not sure you have enough of because his thirst matters more than your fear of running out.

I started hiking with him every week after that. I got better at it—lighter pack, proper harness, a real first aid kit I actually learned to use. I memorized trail etiquette, learned to read his signals before he had to spell them out, started treating water like the sacrament it is. I bought boots for his paws when we hit sharp scree. I carried extra food. I checked the weather. I stopped trying to prove anything and started just... being there.

Some days were easy. Some days I still cried at the summit. Some days my brain lied to me the whole way up, whispering that I was a burden, that I'd mess this up too, that even the dog would be better off without me. But every time, without fail, he'd look back at me with that stupid, unearned faith and wait for me to catch up.

Preparedness, I learned, isn't about having all the answers. It's about loving something enough to try. It's a leash that keeps meaning clear when your thoughts won't. It's water offered before thirst becomes crisis. It's stopping to check paws even when the summit is close, because the body you're with matters more than the view you're chasing.

And sometimes—on the days when the medication finally hits right, when the therapy gives me a tool I can actually use, when the trail levels out and the light filters through the trees just so—preparedness looks like this: a dog leaning against my leg at a trailhead, my pack sitting right for once, enough water for both of us, and the quiet, stubborn knowledge that we're going to make it home.

Not because I'm fixed. Not because the darkness went away.

But because he's still here. And so am I. And tomorrow, we'll try again.