"Photo of Woman's Chance Encounter with Hillary Clinton Wins Internet"
In a hushed clearing far from Chappaqua, the Earth was alive with movement. A caterpillar inched with single-minded, halting determination up a tree, falling clumsily backward, advancing, falling again. A large bird drifted in a long arc overhead, a black silhouette with wings fully taut, quivering from the same buffets of wind that were shaking the trees, causing them to gently moan, well below. The carpet of leaves—yellow like a wet rain slicker, so thick you waded when you walked—crackled with hidden activity imperceptible to those trudging past. The traveler had to sit, quiet her mind, and listen. The leaves dampened the bottom of her trousers, but they made for a comfortable throne. A grander throne than any made by man, she thought.
Hillary Rodham opened her eyes with contented slowness in the quiet place. She was lying on her back with leaves good-naturedly pricking at her cheeks, catching in her hair. This was the clearing she had discovered and staked as hers after hours passing through identical clearings. She had claimed it because of the rock ledge.
She thought of dozing off again, but knew that frigid darkness would soon descend upon her clearing. The return journey to the Other Place was miles, a hike not easily measurable in minutes. She tried to put it out of mind, but habit—the clenching in the stomach that came from a lifetime of checklists and schedules and rope lines—asserted itself. She lifted herself from her cushy throne with a resigned "oof" and stood on creaking bones.
Just one more peek, Hillary Rodham whispered internally, mischievously. No one would miss her for one more moment. She waded to the edge of the clearing and walked through the stand of trees, allowing her hands to brush the coarse bark until she reached the rock ledge overlooking the canyon.
It was sunset. Bands of warm light striped the sky like searchlight beams. They set ablaze the embers of late-fall foliage—yellow-red holdouts intermixed with the charcoal grey of barren limbs. And not a trace of orange. It was the most beautiful thing Hillary Rodham had ever seen.
She was a far lighter woman than the one who stumbled into the clearing hours before. Before she clambered onto the rock ledge and creeped right to its edge and sounded her barbaric yawp into the chasm and was knocked back by the resonant power of the Wizard of Oz voice that answered. She remembered that moment and how silly it was, but how it unburdened her as of a heavy pack. For hours—or was it decades—she had powered through unchanging wilderness, blind to its beauty, insensible to its electric charge. Only once, early on, had she encountered a hiker, and had to don the plastic face for the obligatory photograph. "No, no selfies, please"; here in the wild she had felt empowered to insist on that, at least. And then she was alone in the natural world far from Brooklyn. Far from idling SUVs, muumuus, and the sharp chemical smell of dry-erase markers. Far from inquiring courtiers begging please just one moment of her time. Far from dress-up dinners. Far from Sid’s dripping poison. Far from Brian Fallon’s manic, grizzled smile. Far from the incandescent nose and glassy stare of—
Hillary Rodham caught herself in that instant. She had been laughing—and it was not just the perfunctory passing of air over the larynx in a rhythmic and convivial manner, but actual, sincere laughter. It receded after a few seconds, replaced by a warm glow of contentedness. Hillary Rodham turned and began the return trip without a second thought. She had found humor and heart and peace in the wilderness.