Urban Hauteur

They are young, healthy, athletic
and wonderfully privileged, these
young women, parking their SUVs
emerging outfitted in the most
casual of leisure wear, expensive
and suited to the occasion of an
afternoon outing. Each removes
from her vehicle a well-designed
backpack to carry a child, one
an infant, the other a child old
enough to exercise his own strong
limbs, but content enough to be
hauled for hours through a long
forested trail circling the foot of a
mountain, following a swiftly
running mountain stream. No
country girls, these, but fit
health-and-exercise urban dwellers
leaving the city for a break in
routine to test their endurance
and their children's passive tolerance.
Their conceit is that they are closely
watched and envied for their youth,
beauty, health and fecund proof
in tow disdaining the presence of
others whose purpose beyond hiking
the forest path is to peruse the path
and growing natural treasures of
the land the exercise exposes them
to, the butterflies and songbirds, 
the glowing petalled orbs of orchids,
blushing trilliums and starlike white
bunchberry along with bright-faced
violets. None of which are noticed by
the vigorously advancing Bostonian
mothers, overtly ignoring the cheerful
presence of rural country folk from
New Hampshire, hiking and herding
their dogs; beneath the notice of the
vastly superior visitors who clearly
spurn the friendly greetings of strangers
offending their sense of extraordinary
cool, by their unstudied lack of
admiration for these urban exemplars.