Arthur’s hiking boots sank with every step he took. It was early spring with only the barest remnant of snow, most of which had already melted into the rich, wet ground. Robins and blackbirds flashed red as they hopped from one bud-laden branch to another. They chirped brightly despite the wind creaking the trees.
Arthur referenced an old trail map that he had found stuffed in his high-school yearbook. For the past few months his pocket had been its home. He would take it out when he was at work or once his kids and wife were asleep to look at the trails through the scribbles and creases of his teenage years.
There was one trail in particular that drew his interest; a hilly path that descended through a meadow and then to a cliff overlooking some historic mines. The parking lot was blocked and overgrown, but he could hike in from the main road.
After a while he stopped in front of the trailhead, where a dented sign and ropes blocked the way.
Danger, Hazardous Trail
No Public Access
Arthur crouched under the ropes, his graying hair brushing against them, and continued on.
No one knew he was there.
He remembered hiking this trail years ago with his Young Men’s group. At the lookout they had leaned over the railing to look down at the canyon as their leader likened the ore in the mines to themselves: that it was precious but needed to be mined and hammered and heated and “quenched in the water of Christ.”
But Arthur didn’t feel like life’s hammering had formed him into anything particularly strong or useful. As a 14 year old he had imagined himself as a sword. Gleaming, bright, sharp.
But reality only left him dented and broken.
He could barely remember what it felt like back then. Before he had gotten this job. Before he had been called as secretary. Before he’d had kids. There was nothing particularly wrong with his life. He loved his wife. He loved his kids. Things just didn’t seem to be going quite right. And the pressures for years had piled up, pulling him down like the spring mud against his boots along with the thought that they would be better off without him.
Why did he have to struggle—when there seemed to be nothing for him to struggle with?
Why was life itself a burden?
Arthur asked God that everyday. Everything seemed meaningless, even though it was what he had wanted when he was younger.
He kept hiking.
On the path there were spots Arthur couldn’t get through: overgrown with moss and shrubs or washed out entirely. He had to backtrack at times or go around. Roots tripped him as he pushed himself past, brushing aside webs and using his arms to climb over trunks.
As his knees started to ache from the downhill trudge, the trees became sparser and the path leveled out, opening to a meadow. It looked so different than he remembered, but according to the map the lookout was only a mile away and he could see the remains of the path clearly through the short spring grass.
Taking a drink, he wiped the sweat dripping off his face and beard.
That’s when Arthur sensed something in the trees to his left. He stood still. Was it a glimpse of marching—or the branches waving at him? The striking of weapons—or a woodpecker? The smell of iron—or the spring mud?
He waited a while, but sensed nothing more than the loud forest. Birds chirping; bugs buzzing; wind blowing.
There was only grass, trees, bushes. The pale green of new growth and the brown of more mature branches.
Arthur stepped off the path; low shrubs jabbing at his calves. At the meadow’s edge he stood looking into the sunlit dappled shadows.
There was plenty of time; the sun was high in the sky. He could go on one more adventure he told himself as he walked into the forest.
The trees were denser here and he found himself wandering close to the hillside to keep his bearings.
He didn’t see anything of interest at first, but after a few minutes of walking he came across a mudslide. A portion of the hill had slid down on itself like a kneeling giant. There was a fresh violence about it: boulders scattered and cracked apart, trees pulled sideways and their roots stretched taut or snapped.
Arthur stepped forward, scanning, not knowing what he looked for but looking all the same. He was drawn to the chaos of it: the turmoiled dirt, the broken boulders.
A flash of light reflected into his eyes from a boulder larger than the rest. It rested amongst the carnage as though it had been set there gently. A natural granite altar with a perfectly flat top that gleamed in the sunlight.
He walked closer.
Arthur looked down on it and saw that the shine was from a beautiful sword. The entire blade was visible from point to handle; it was embedded in the stone with one side exposed to the sun like a fossil. Its steel was polished and shone in the speckled light, and there was a slight curve to its cutting edge.
He touched the blade, running his fingers up and down the engravings on the spine. He tried to test the sharpness but it was blocked by a ledge of granite.
Arthur felt drawn to this sword. He wanted to hold it, heft it by the decorated handle and then…. He stood thinking. There was no need to go to the cliff after all.
Arthur dug his fingers along the edge of the embossed leather handle, but it didn’t budge. It was as if the stone had sealed it in. Like the rock had started to swallow the sword but couldn’t fully digest it. He took a sturdy branch and tried to find leverage, digging it at the edge of the sword, trying to find a grip. But as he strained, what he could only describe as a voice pierced his mind, causing him to drop the stick in surprise.
They buried their weapons of war and promised not to kill. They did this so that they might remain bright as this sword. It will not be stained again.
He trembled.
But there was no one. Only the trees, rock, stone, mud. For a moment he questioned whether he had really heard anything at all. But the sword was real.
And it looked sharp.
Bury it.
Arthur’s hand had reached out to touch the gleaming metal again but he pulled back at the last moment. Unsettled.
The forest, for the first time that day, was silent.
Arthur stared longingly at the sword. He didn’t know for how long he stood there entranced by its blade.
It was quite some time before he set about it. But once he started, a drive and purpose quickened and steadied his motions. The stone was far too big to move, but he hauled handfuls of dirt that crumbled out of his hands and piled mud into his jacket to dump onto the granite. He didn’t dare touch the sword again, but he mourned as it was covered.
Arthur started to pray as he did this. Maybe it was only to fight the silence. Or to evade the temptation of uncovering his work. He talked quietly at first and then louder and louder; his voice cracking at his cries and breaths laboring at his work.
Once he had piled up enough forest matter to cover the rock, he gestured his dirt-covered hand toward it, looking to the sky between the oak and the cottonwoods.
“I buried it.”
Arthur waited. There was no answer.
It seemed to take longer to trek back to the trail. By the time he returned to the meadow, only the dregs of the sunset tinged the twilight sky. He looked back at the forest where the sword was, then across the meadow to the lookout that he had not reached, and then finally back up the hill from where he came.
He stretched out his aching muscles. Brushed dirt off of his clothes.
Should he go on? Arthur asked himself. Through the meadow and to the canyon and off the cliff? He brought out the map a final time and a scripture he had no memory of writing or seeing these past months popped to the front of his notice.
3 Nephi 24:3
And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Arthur stood there thinking of the sword he had buried and of what he could become in the hands of the Lord.
He hurried up the broken path: back to his car and his life.
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