[ WP ] A typical day

I welcome any and all constructive criticism about this submission - It's my first real attempt at getting into creative writing. 
 
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 `` A very good morning to you all and thanks for calling! It's looking like a very great day out there. Do n't forget this Sunday we're holding our monthly lead climbing class at the base of El Capitain, so come out and learn how to conquer the gorgeous rock faces this park has to offer!'' 
 
 With a mechanical click, the tape reel snapped to a halt. The ranger took a moment to absorb the musky wooden smell of his backcountry cabin as golden morning sunlight shot through the windows. Finished with the recording, he set the phone system to automatic answering mode, and stepped out the door into the wilderness. The fresh morning air, lacking any trace of the humidity of the cabin, bouyoed his spirits and urged his spirit up the path before him. He carried few items in his backpack: a large bladder of drinking water, a portable hammock, and a thick sunday newspaper. 
 
 Sundays during his childhood had been beautifully relaxing. He had gone to church on a weekly basis since birth, and fondly remembered his sunday school lessons and friends. He remembered this time as if viewing it through a warmly sepia tinged lens that must have radiated positivity from the comfort of home and parental security and childhood inquisitiveness and unencumbered joy. In the summer, his pack of friends would spill out of the squat building by the church and into the neighborhood. They never had plans. Congregating in trees and on beaches, along dried up creekbeds and in open fields, they were unknowingly basking in the beauty and calmness of nature that their twentysomething selves would so earnestly long for on rainiy and desolate nights in appartments high above the city. Those were bitter and difficult times. The responsibility of self reliance hung over his head, and his paychecks, and his relationships. Bottles of spirits finished in solitude churned in his stomach as he wondered just how his parents did it - all of it - with such unflagging courage. Did they ever feel this way? He had no way of knowing. 
 
 His memories of his father had been reduced to a glowing image of a man in a recliner, basking in his weekly ritual of reading the sunday paper cover to cover. Only once he had the comics read, the crossword finished, and the TV guide placed carefully on top of that garishly red tube tv would he trudge up the stairs and tuck his son into bed as the boy pretended to be asleep. 
 
 From the depths of the city he had clawed his way up and out of that cold existence. A failed career and a drug habit ago he had been an optimistic man - no, kid, - looking to partake in the fervor and excitement of a new life in a busling metropolis. It had consumed him, eaten him whole and he was lucky to have gotten out. 
 
 He got out to the country. First in the lowlands of the midwest, working overtime in construction. Then in Colorado, as a busboy in Denver. His path had taken him north and south, farther and farther west, but never back to the city. He was allies with the stars now, seeking them out in the darkest and most remote locations, far from the light pollution that signaled those masses of humanity, crammed and cranky, that been so complicit in polluting his soul. 
 
 He summited the peak, winded but triumphant. Each climb felt like a victory in and of itself. The view was spectacular; grey rocks and green pines rolled into one another as far as the eye could see, stretching into a desolate and beautiful infinity. His stance far above the valley floor reinforced the mental barrier he had erected between the present and the past. Those lowlands were behind him. 
 
 With relaxed purpose, he unfurled his hammock and strung it between two trees. Lowering himself into the fabric, he could n't help but be pleased with his portable recliner. And, with the same patient meticulousness that had characterized his father, he began his journey through the Sunday paper. 
 

