Текст книги "Lost Canyon"

Автор книги: Nina Revoyr

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Eight

Oscar

When Oscar’s alarm went off he did not wake gently; the state of sleep shifted into the state of pain. He lay on his back, eyes closed, and couldn’t believe how much he hurt—his shoulders, his neck, his upper and middle back, his pecs and abdominal muscles, quadriceps and hamstrings, even the muscles of his ass.

Once, as a teenager, he’d fallen off a motorcycle and when he woke up the next morning, he’d felt like this. He let out a groan and realized he wasn’t alone in the tent. But there was no movement beside him—Todd was still asleep, his feet wrapped in a narrow mummy bag directly at Oscar’s head. And now Oscar remembered the snoring. It had started as a low rumble and then built into a sound like an eighteen-wheeler idling right beside him. Todd had snored the first night too, back at the trailhead. But nothing like this—this had been a sound louder than Oscar thought a human could make. He’d tightened the top of his sleeping bag around his head, stuck his fingers in his ears. Nothing had helped. The snoring continued, despite his not-so-gentle nudges to try and get Todd to stop. No wonder all the bears had stayed away.

He must have fallen asleep, though, because now he was waking up. Slowly, carefully, he unzipped his bag and slid backward out of it, opened the flap on his side of the tent, and rolled out. It was about ten past six now, clear, and cold. He understood that they were in a beautiful place—the lake was still in shadow, the meadow covered with a layer of dew—or was that frost? He heard the sound of the river and the morning calls of birds, but he was aware of all this only vaguely. Mostly what he felt was his own misery. A vise seemed to be closing in on both sides of his head. And he felt like a piece of plywood was lodged in his back, holding him rigid, making it impossible for him to turn his head or even lift his arms. He thought of his earlier bravado and was annoyed at his own stupidity. He no longer had any illusions about kicking the mountain’s ass. His ass was officially kicked.

“I feel like fucking hell,” he said aloud. But softly. He knew Tracy would have no sympathy. It was her job to push people past what they thought they could do, and suddenly he felt annoyed at her for not being more understanding about their limits and fears; for pairing him with a Westside white guy who was also an epic snorer; for bringing them out here where they hadn’t seen another soul, not one damned person, on a route that for all he knew might lead to nowhere. And Gwen. A nice person, for sure, and not bad company. But she was no more suited to being out here than his mother was. Oscar knew she had struggled yesterday, had watched her stagger under the weight of her pack—and yet she’d kept her spirits up and he was grudgingly impressed. But did she have to be so damned excited about everything? Yes, it was pretty out here; that was not a news flash. But he didn’t get her reaction to the hawk and the fish. So what if the hawk caught its lunch? That’s what hawks did. If they all thought hawks were such a novelty they should come to Glassell Park, where the big-ass pushy birds were always circling overhead, swooping down into the canyon to catch squirrels or rats.

And Todd. Okay, well, Todd wasn’t as bad as he’d first expected. He seemed to know what he was doing, and Oscar had to admit, after falling behind yesterday, that Todd was in better shape than him. And he was turning out to be a pretty decent guy. But his cluelessness was typical and infuriating. How could he be so dismissive of things that were glaringly obvious? He probably didn’t even notice the weird looks that their party had gotten at the ranger station.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pang of missing Claudia. He regretted not calling her before heading to the trailhead, not appreciating her enough in general. They’d met four months ago during Lily’s regular checkup, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed the nurse taking his daughter’s temperature if Lily hadn’t blurted out, “You’re so pretty!” Claudia had blushed and said, “So are you,” and then Oscar blushed too, especially when he saw that his daughter was right.

“Well, maybe Nurse Hernandez,” he said, eyeing her name tag, “could go out with us sometime for an ice cream.” And Claudia smiled and they all blushed some more, and they met at Griffith Park that weekend, where they rode the merry-go-round and took a train ride and had double scoops of ice cream.

Things had gone slowly—because Oscar was always working, he said, but really he wasn’t ready to settle down. Besides, he wasn’t sure what to make of this woman, who was so low-key, and so good with Lily. He hadn’t let himself realize how much he enjoyed her presence. What he wouldn’t give to be lying next to her in a soft, cushy bed, her warm hands dissolving the pain and tension in his body. Why the hell was he out here, anyway? Right now, he missed everything about his normal, everyday life. Right now, even pushy clients and an ever-ringing cell phone weren’t seeming all that bad. He had to get over this crankiness; he was stuck with these people for another three days. According to his GPS unit, they were now at 8,445 feet, and they’d traveled a little more than eight miles. Only eight miles! How the hell was he going to make it the rest of the way? Now he stood and bent sideways, touched his toes, pinwheeled his arms, trying to soften the plate of plywood in his back. He scratched the mosquito bites on his legs and arms, at his waist where his shirt rode up—his bug spray had been totally useless. He scratched his face too; his two-day beard was getting itchy. He examined the burst blisters on the backs of his heels and dug some Moleskin out of his pack to cushion them.

Ten feet away, the zipper on the other tent opened, and Tracy emerged, already dressed in her clay pants and red down jacket, looking like she’d stepped out of a North Face catalog. Why was she not beaten up by sleeping on the ground? She was always so ready, whether here or at the gym at five thirty a.m., when most reasonable people were still asleep. Oscar felt another wave of resentment and tried to squelch it.

“Morning,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not so great, actually. As I’m sure you heard, somebody snores.”

“Really!” she laughed. “Well, that’s too bad. It was all quiet over here.”

Now the slippery sound of nylon being pushed aside and Gwen and Todd crawled out of their tents, Todd looking like a hungover frat boy. His hair was a stirred pile of windblown blond, held in place by a faded Stanford baseball cap, and he needed a shave. Gwen’s hair was in a ponytail, with several clumps hanging loose. Both looked tired—but also peaceful and happy.

“Morning!” Tracy said.

Gwen stretched, yawned, rubbed her eyes, and then caught sight of the others. “Morning,” she said, laughing. “What a motley crew.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Tracy. She was moving around the edge of the campsite, gathering more sticks for the fire.

“Wow, I did not sleep well,” Gwen said. “It was colder last night, wasn’t it? And I kept waking up because I thought I heard a bear. How is it that you’re not exhausted and sore? It’s really annoying.” But she didn’t sound annoyed. She sounded happy.

They went off to retrieve their bear canisters, which were all undisturbed, then ducked behind boulders to pee. By the time they’d brushed their teeth and splashed their faces with river water, Tracy had made oatmeal and coffee. They filled themselves with warm food and drink, still shivering in their down jackets, and Oscar slowly started to feel human again. As the sun peeked over the range to the east, it lit the crests on either side of the valley and bathed their lake in light. Tracy pointed out their route for the day—up the canyon wall beyond the left side of the lake and toward a notch between the peaks.

“Then what?” Todd asked. “What’s after the pass?”

“We head back down into forest, from what I can tell. We’ll have to cross a river and then go back up to another ridge.”

After they finished eating, they broke camp, Oscar helping Todd with the tent. He was amazed, as he had been yesterday, that all their tents, pots, clothes, and food compressed into the packs they carried on their backs. By eight thirty they were making their way back down toward the lake, then through the meadow where Gwen had seen the fawns, mud sucking their shoes and splattering their legs. Soon they were traversing up the slope, picking their way carefully through the rock. There appeared to be a bit of trail edging up the side, so they followed it, walking half a mile toward the vertex of the bowl, then doubling back, taking switchbacks up the crumbling slope.

“Watch yourself!” Tracy shouted. “There’s a big drop here from a rock slide.”

The worn-away spot was only five or six feet wide, and they all stepped through safely, and Oscar remembered a story that Eduardo had told him, about two mules who’d been on a resupply trip when they fell five hundred feet to their deaths. He wished he had thought to bring hiking poles; he’d underestimated how tough this trip would be.

The trail smoothed out but the climbing was relentless—like taking stairs all the way up a skyscraper. With the weight of his pack and the pain from his blisters, every single step was a struggle. They walked past boulders whose outside layers had flaked off in thin, delicate pieces, like the crusts of pastry shells. They walked over wedges of flat, tombstone-like rock that might have been picked up and shoved diagonally back into the ground. The sun had come over the ridge and changed the temperature from cold to too hot. But the air was still bracingly fresh, tinged with a minty, spicy smell that seemed to come from the bushy plants that covered the slope. And the views were getting better and better. Each time they doubled back, they could see more of the valley, the dark blue lake where they’d camped. The mountain facing them across the lake had a thin streak of white cutting through it, like a scar from the slash of a giant dagger. As they climbed they could see more of the land to the north, the wooded valleys and distant snow-capped mountains. Despite Oscar’s soreness the pack felt better today. It was hard work stepping through and over the rocks, but the movement had loosened his muscles. He’d gotten into a rhythm and he was—finally—enjoying the landscape. They reached the pass within two hours.

They stopped for a moment, giddy with accomplishment. Then, at Tracy’s urging, they left their packs and scrambled a hundred yards up to the top of the nearest peak. They were now at just over ten thousand feet. The views from the summit opened up to the west, countless ridges and hills, all the way to the distant horizon. Todd and Gwen took turns shooting photos of the group, and Oscar felt himself relaxing. Maybe he would make it the rest of this trip. Maybe his back would keep loosening and his head would clear, and he could really enjoy all he was seeing.

They carefully worked their way back to the pass, then continued down the other side. It was steeper here, loose boulders and unstable dirt, so the others all used their hiking poles to brace themselves. The downhill was much harder on Oscar’s feet and knees; he felt like the Tin Man, creaking and in need of oil. About halfway down they crossed a flat sheet of water sliding over rust-colored rock—they were on top of a waterfall. They dipped their hats in the water and Oscar draped a bandanna over his head, to shield his neck and face from the sun. They filled their bottles again, looking over the edge where the water fell to some unseen place below. It was a lovely spot, but they soon walked on.

As they approached a cluster of trees, he saw something on the ground, a white and orange object that stood out against the sand-colored earth.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing.

Tracy, who was leading, went to look at it. “Wow,” she said.

Gwen, who was right behind her, went over too. She jumped back as if she’d been burned. “Jesus.”

Oscar followed and looked over Gwen’s shoulder. It was an owl’s head, perfectly severed, as pristine as if the bird were still alive. Its feathers were white with a ring of orange rust; they looked downy and waved in the breeze. Its narrow beak was shiny and its eyes were wide open, staring up at them. It was hard to believe the rest of the body was gone. There was no blood—the head had been removed with surgical precision.

“Wow,” Oscar said, echoing Tracy. “That is fucking weird.”

“Must have been an eagle or a hawk,” Todd said. “It probably dropped him.”

“It still looks alive, doesn’t it?” Oscar said.

“Yeah, it’s amazing,” Tracy said. “It’s beautiful.”

“It does look alive,” Todd said. “Must have just happened.”

“It’s creepy,” Gwen said. “I don’t want to look at it anymore.”

She seemed genuinely freaked out and Oscar didn’t blame her. Sure, the head was beautiful in a macabre kind of way, but it was hard not to take it as an omen. He became even more certain that it signaled bad luck when, within a few minutes of resuming their hike, they heard the sound of water—not the gentle trickling of the river in the meadow but a louder sound, active, insistent. Oscar’s stomach tightened. This was real water—how big and fast would it be? And how the hell would they get across it?

Todd must have been thinking the same thing because now he remarked, “You hear that? Doesn’t sound like a creek.”

“What’ll we do if it’s too big to cross?” Gwen asked.

“It won’t be,” Tracy assured them.

They were all quiet for the next few minutes, watching their footing, and with their voices still, the river grew louder. They hiked down through one last steep section and then suddenly there it was: a solid mass of moving, churning water, twenty feet wide, big and full and serious.

They stood four abreast at the edge of the woods, about ten feet up from the bank.

“Well,” Todd said after a few moments of quiet, “that’s a heck of a river.”

It was like a living thing, the river, steady and strong, arguing with itself and with them. The water flowed past them quickly without flourish or drama; it stepped down several terraces, rounded a corner, and disappeared from view. But the sheer mass of it—the steady inevitable progression—made Oscar wonder about the strength of the current. It looked powerful and indifferent. And cold.

“How deep do you think it is?” Gwen asked.

“No way to tell, really,” Tracy said. “Not until we start to cross it.”

“You actually want to try and cross this thing?” Oscar blurted out. “No way, Tracy. This is serious. This is too fucking much for me.”

Tracy stared out at the river for so long that Oscar wasn’t sure she’d heard him. Then she said thoughtfully, “There’s got to be a way. Let me just go upriver for a bit to see if there’s an easier spot.”

“I’ll go down,” Todd said, and Oscar looked at him, surprised.

“Really?”

Todd shrugged. “It’s worth checking out. It would suck if there was an easier place just around the corner and we didn’t even bother to look.”

Were these people crazy? Were they out of their fucking minds? Oscar thought of the tourists who died every year in Yosemite, the ones who stepped over railings and past clear warning signs. But while he hated to admit it, Todd’s calmness eased his own nerves just a little. And he discovered to his own surprise that he trusted this guy’s judgment more than he trusted Tracy’s.

“Well, I’ll wait here,” Gwen said, bending to unshoulder her pack.

“Me too,” Oscar said, unfastening his waist straps and letting his own pack fall.

Todd made his way downstream to the left, feet crunching on fallen branches, and Tracy walked off to the right. Soon Todd was around a bend and out of sight; Tracy’s figure grew smaller but stayed visible as she walked along the riverbank. Oscar sat down and rooted around in the top of his pack and pulled out a Snickers bar. A lizard ran out on the boulder beside them, feinted in their direction, and then scooted away. In the silence the sound of the river was louder—patient and steady, speaking to the trees and the ridges above them, a conversation as old as time.

“Want some?” he asked, holding the candy bar out to Gwen.

“No thanks. That poor owl made me lose my appetite.”

“Yeah, this is more than we bargained for, huh? Not exactly a leisurely stroll.”

“Oh, I’ve been having a great time,” Gwen said quickly, glancing at him. “But this,” she said, gesturing toward the river. “I don’t know, it just makes me nervous.”

“Do you get the sense,” Oscar said carefully, “that we’re in a bit over our heads?”

“Maybe.” Gwen sounded noncommittal, and Oscar realized that whatever doubts she might have, they were still about herself and her own abilities—not about the wisdom of taking this unused route, not about the judgment of Tracy.

Todd returned in a few minutes, looking discouraged. “No luck,” he said. “It actually gets worse down there—after that bend, there’s some rapids.”

Tracy came walking up jauntily and after she heard his news, she said, “Well, there’s a spot up there that might work. A little wider, the water’s slower, no big rocks below—and a fallen log across the whole river.”

“Is it big enough to walk across?” Todd asked.

“No. It’s too skinny. But we could probably hold on to it and wade.”

This didn’t sound promising to Oscar, but Todd, replied, “Well, okay! Let’s go check it out!”

They all reshouldered their packs and made their way a quarter-mile upriver. When they got to the spot that Tracy had found, Oscar’s heart sank again. Sure it was wider here—maybe twenty-five feet—but the “log” was more like a sapling. The rocks beneath the water looked slippery and dangerous. This was no place to take a fall.

“That’s not much of a log,” Todd remarked, echoing his thoughts.

“I know,” Tracy said. “But it’s all we’ve got.”

The fallen tree lay about two feet off the surface of the water, a few jagged points sticking out where branches had broken off. Oscar’s eyes followed the length of it to the stump on the other side, where the trunk was still attached by some strands of wood. The color of the exposed flesh there was shocking in its lightness; the tree might have fallen just that month, that very week.

“I’m not sure it’ll hold,” Todd said now. “It’s not attached by very much.”

“It’ll hold,” Tracy said.

“Well, maybe one of us should test it first.”

“I’ll go,” Tracy volunteered. She set her pack down and loaded her phone and bear spray into the lid. She collapsed her poles and shoved them into her pack handles-first, the points sticking out of the top. Then she sat on a rock and removed her shoes. “It’s too dangerous to wear your flip-flops,” she said. “You could really fuck up your feet. So take your socks off and put your shoes back on. Unclip the clips of your sternum and hip belt. If you lose your footing and start to get pulled backward, let the pack go or it’ll drag you down with it.”

Oscar listened to these instructions with a detached wonder. Were they really learning how not to drown? Yes, they were. Before he knew it, Tracy had put her shoes and pack back on and had scrambled down the bank.

“Uh, what if we do lose our footing?” Gwen asked.

“Try to keep your head upstream and your feet downstream so they can brace you against any hard obstacles,” Tracy said. “And pray like hell.”

She took hold of the tree and stepped sideways into the water, which quickly came up to her calves and then her knees. Her poles swayed behind her like antennas. About a third of the way across, the water reached her thighs, and she slowed down and gripped the log more tightly. Oscar could see the force of the current pulling her back, extending her arms until he thought she’d lose her grip. But she didn’t. Even as the water reached almost to her waist, even as her knuckles grew white from the effort of holding on, she stayed on her feet, she kept moving. Oscar looked at her face and saw that she was grinning.

Then she was across and she pulled herself up onto the bank, letting out a whoop of triumph. “Piece of cake!” she yelled out. “Who’s next?”

Todd looked soberly at Oscar and Gwen. “Let’s go across together. I’ll go first, and Oscar, you go last. Gwen, you stay in the middle.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Gwen said.

“Sure you can,” Todd replied reassuringly “And we’ll be on either side of you.”

“Are you sure the log can support all of us?” asked Oscar.

“I’m not sure,” Todd said. “But I’d rather take my chances than have Gwen try to cross on her own. But let’s hold on to each other, all right? And keep your center of gravity low.”

Todd and Gwen collapsed their poles and stuck them into their packs. Todd maneuvered through the branches and plunged in first. He grabbed the log with his left hand and held on to Gwen with his right as she gingerly stepped in after him. Then it was Oscar’s turn, and he gasped as he lowered his foot in the river. The water was fucking cold—like just-melted ice. “Jesus,” he said.

“Just ignore it if you can,” Todd instructed. Slowly, slowly, they crab-walked sideways into the river, each man with one hand on Gwen’s shoulder strap and one hand on the log. The rocks underfoot were slick and unstable. Oscar stepped onto one and it gave way beneath him; he grabbed the log with both hands in a panic. But he regained his balance and took hold of Gwen’s strap again. As the water crept up past their knees and then their thighs, Gwen made a noise between a groan and a yelp.

“It’s okay,” Todd shouted, “you’re doing great!”

But it wasn’t just the cold that bothered them now; it was the force of the water, the current pushing against them, as if the river had intention and purpose. Each time Oscar lifted a foot the current pulled it away; it took all of his strength and focus just to set it down again. The sound of the water was all around them, louder now, more insistent, as if the river was displeased with their presence. The bark was rough and sharp against his hand, but the tree held firm. Slowly, slowly, they made their way across. When they reached the other side, Tracy helped Todd out, then Gwen and Oscar. When he was clear of the water, Oscar scrambled up the bank and sat down. He had never been so glad to feel the ground beneath him.

Gwen collapsed beside him. “Thank you, God.”

“See, I told you we could make it,” Tracy said. “Piece of cake.”

No one answered—they all just sat and tried to catch their breath. Oscar’s pack was wet about halfway down; he didn’t want to think about how soaked his stuff must be.

“Hey, we need to dry off,” he said, beginning to shiver. “Think we can find some sun?”

They looked around. The canyon was already in shade, and the sun had moved past the upper wall.

“No luck till we get out of the woods and up on a ridge,” Tracy said. “But it would be good to change clothes, if you have anything dry.”

They dug through their packs with varying success. Gwen changed back into her clothes from yesterday. Todd put on his shorts from the day before but his shirts were all soaked; he wore his fleece on bare skin and draped a half-wet shirt over his pack to dry. Tracy undid the bottom half of her convertible pants and removed the wet legs, not seeming to mind the wet tail of her shirt. She was cheerful, visibly charged up that they’d made it across the river, and Oscar realized that it wasn’t that Tracy didn’t feel the privations of being in the wilderness; it was that she actually embraced them.

Oscar didn’t share this enthusiasm—especially once he’d examined his clothes and couldn’t find a single dry item. He had one pair of cargo shorts that was only half wet, but all of his tops were soaked. He changed into the cargo shorts and kept the same shirt on—at least the shoulders were dry.

“We should dry off pretty quick once we’re moving,” Tracy said.

“Does anyone need to rest for a bit?” Todd asked.

“Not here,” Gwen said. “I don’t ever want to see this river again.”

They collected their wet clothes and stuffed them into their packs. They reengaged their poles. Then they lifted their packs onto their shoulders, heavier now with all the wet clothes, and trudged back downstream, where the trail, or what they hoped was the trail, continued. They wound their way through a flat area of wood and started to climb again. Although they couldn’t see very far through the trees, Oscar thought from the way the sky opened up that the top of the ridge wasn’t far away. He was right. After half an hour of switchbacks, they’d reached the gap—and a clearing where the sun finally hit them. Far off in the distance, to the east, they saw a larger set of mountains—endless, imposing, majestic, their flanks draped with snow.

“Wow,” Oscar said. “You want to take a break?”

“Yes!” Todd said. “Let’s stop and dry off.” He stripped off his fleece and put his shirt back on.

“And eat,” Gwen added. “What a view!”

“All right,” agreed Tracy, but she sounded distracted. Oscar was about to get annoyed again—couldn’t she see they all needed to rest? But then he saw where she was looking and he understood why. Straight ahead of them, descending gently and parallel to the ridge, the trail continued on. But to the right there was another trail, which angled sharply down into a different canyon.

“We seem to be at a junction,” Todd remarked.

“There’s more than one trail out here?” Gwen asked. “Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“Not really,” Tracy said. “There’s probably some offshoots. Maybe one of these is actually a game trail. Or maybe it leads to a campsite.”

Oscar didn’t like to think about the second possibility—after two days of worrying that they were the only people out here, now he hoped that this was true. “Well, you have the map, right? Maybe that will tell us.”

“Maybe,” Tracy said. “Let’s take a look. And eat.”

They all sat heavily and removed their wet shoes and set them out to dry. Oscar was relieved for the break. He squeezed dollops of peanut butter onto a bagel and bit off huge chunks, and then wolfed down an apple. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

The others were silent, eating their own lunches. Tracy finished off her sandwich and pulled the maps and compass out of her pack. She lay the topo map out on the ground and ran her fingers over it, as if trying to feel the right way to go.

Todd leaned over her to look at it and made a disgusted sound. “That thing is useless. Lost Canyon isn’t even on there.”

“I know, but there’s some landscape features we can work with,” said Tracy. “This must be the river we just crossed. And maybe this is the ridge we’re on now.”

“I don’t know. And an inch on that is, what? Five miles?”

“Yeah, you’re right. There’s no real detail. Let me look at the other map.” She unfolded the photocopy of the hand-drawn map, the top left corner of which was now wet. She held it carefully with one hand, looked at it, and frowned.

“What?” Todd asked.

“What?” Oscar echoed, and now he got up and made his way behind her.

“It just gets a little blurry here,” she said. The line marking the trail had bled from the river water; the writing was now unreadable. Still, there clearly was the lake where they’d spent the night, a set of bumps that must have been the pass from this morning, and wavy lines that might have been the river. The trail continued up to the ridge where they’d stopped, and then veered right toward Lost Canyon. There was no sign—at least not as far as they could tell—of a trail straight ahead.

“It must be the trail going that way,” said Tracy, pointing right.

“I don’t know,” Todd said. “It looks like we should be heading here.” He tapped the paper to a point on the ridge.

“But the loop has us always bearing right,” Tracy countered. “What do you think, Oscar?”

Oscar wasn’t sure. All he knew was that they had already traveled five miles over rough terrain and he was feeling damned tired. He couldn’t believe that they were trusting this hand-drawn, faded, and now waterlogged map that had been made by God-knows-who, who might have been stoned or nature-drunk or just plain mischievous when he put these images on paper. Oscar took the GPS unit off his waistband and tried to pull up a map. But he hadn’t bought the detailed topo software, so all he could see was that they were somewhere in the mountains, with Fresno to the west. And that they now stood at just under 8,300 feet. There was no detail whatsoever. “I don’t know.”

Todd was fiddling with Tracy’s compass, shifting and adjusting the black wheel on a rectangle of plastic. “That’s almost due east,” Todd said, pointing at the distant range. “And this,” he gestured toward the more defined trail, “goes south.”

“So does this other one,” Tracy argued. “It just heads southwest a little.”

“It could be either one,” said Oscar. “Gwen? What do you think?”

Gwen was staring off, exhausted, not really engaged. “What?”

“Which way do you think we should go?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s up to you guys.”

“Well, I think we go down,” Tracy said. “Why don’t we give it a shot? If it doesn’t seem right, we can always backtrack and take the other trail.”

They could, but the thought of having to climb back up the slope with their heavy packs did not sound appealing to Oscar. He was pissed they were in this predicament, but what could they do? “Okay,” he agreed.

And Todd said, “All right, we’ll try it. But let’s reassess in a mile or so. Okay?”

They packed up their trash and put their socks and shoes back on. Gwen looked disheveled—a few strands of her hair were escaping from her hat, and her face was covered with sweat. Todd’s neck and cheeks had burned through his stubble and he looked dried out; his legs were streaked with mud from the river. Even Tracy seemed worse for the wear. Her black hiking shirt was dusty and there was a big bruise blooming on her shin, which disappeared when she zipped her pant legs back on. Oscar knew he looked no better. But he realized he liked how they looked. They’d spent two nights in the backcountry, hiked almost fourteen miles, crossed a river, and topped out at a significant pass. They were battle-tested now. They were for real.