by Ann Gimpel
“We’re already married,” he reminded her.
She waved her hands in the air. “You know what I mean. Married in the sense our friends and relatives will recognize it.” She winced. “I didn’t tell anyone about our mountaintop adventure. They might have pulled my medical license and carted me off to the loony bin.”
He chuckled. “Know what you mean. I’ve been pretty quiet about it myself.” He walked to her and put his hands on her waist. “The important thing, though, is we know we belong to one another irrespective of any piece of paper.”
She turned her face up for a kiss. “Careful, don’t muss my makeup.”
“Humph. What happened to kiss the bride?” He kissed his fingertip and laid it lightly on her glossed lips.
“You can muss it then, once everyone’s had a chance to see us in all our sartorial splendor.” She glanced at her watch. “We still have a few minutes before we need to leave. Come into the front room. We’ll drink a toast to a long and happy life for ourselves and chat.”
She stopped by the built-in wine rack and selected a bottle of twenty-year-old Cabernet. She’d been saving it for something special, and it didn’t get much more special than today.
He snagged the bottle and went to the kitchen, presumably in search of a corkscrew.
She pulled two of her grandmother’s cut crystal wineglasses from the china cabinet and carried them to the coffee table. While she waited, Tina gazed about the familiar room. Carved wooden wainscoting covered the walls halfway up. A floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace occupied most of one end of the room. Scarred oak furniture that had been in the family for over a hundred years was scattered about, replete with plump, colorful cushions. She settled onto a loveseat her grandfather had carved.
Craig bent and poured wine into each glass and then handed her one. “To us.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “To us.” Tina drank deep and patted the cushion next to her. “Sit.”
He took a long sip of his wine, savoring it. “My but that’s good. We should buy a few more bottles.”
“Can’t. I’m sure this vintage isn’t available anymore.” She cocked her head to one side. “Are you certain about moving to Leadville?”
“Absolutely. It’s three thousand feet higher than Flagstaff. Better for conditioning. Plus, I already put my house on the market. I forgot to tell you, but the real estate agent called me yesterday to say we had an offer coming in early next week.”
She set her wineglass down and clapped her hands together. “Oh, Craig! Wonderful news!”
He glanced around the cozy room. “Hope you still think so after I move all my stuff in here. We may need to build an addition on the garage.”
Tina placed a hand on his arm. “We’ll make it work.”
“Yes.” He smiled, making her feel al melty inside. “We will. We live in a tent together for weeks on end when we climb without tearing one another’s hair out. If we can do that, we can do anything.”
There was something infectious about his good humor. She grinned back, and he laid a hand over hers. “Think we should kill the wine and get moving?” she asked.
“Well, we can finish what’s in our glasses. I’ll cork the rest. We can celebrate after we get home.”
Lightness filled her. “I like the sound of home when you say it. This has always been my home, but there’s been something missing since you stopped coming here—”
“You mean since you walked out of our Denver apartment. The invitations to Leadville weren’t exactly forthcoming after that.”
“Don’t quibble.” She poked him in the ribs.
“You’re right.” He got to his feet and drained his glass. A rakish edge to the angle of his brows lent him a naughty aspect. “I do believe I’ll save the quibbling until after you’ve signed on the dotted line and can’t escape.”
She joined him, stumbling slightly. He reached a hand to steady her. “Damned high heels,” she sputtered. “It’s why I hardly ever wear them.” She picked up her glass and tipped it back, draining its contents. “Ready?”
“Never been readier.” He held out a hand. She took it. Together, they walked out the front door.
Happiness radiated from the center of her being, warming her soul. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“For?” He held the car door and helped her in.
She waited until he was behind the steering wheel and buckled her seatbelt. “Being you. You’re the best gift of all.”
The End
The next mountain tale came to me after I’d climbed Mount Darwin. I know the Evolution area in the High Sierras well, and it’s one of my favorites. Read on, and join me for one more story set in the best playground of all.
A Run For Her Money
A Science Fiction Romance Novella
By
Ann Gimpel
Tumble off reality’s edge into an alien invasion and unexpected love
Book Description:
Sara’s day begins like any other. A routine extraction in tandem with a local Search and Rescue team. Routine crashes to a halt when she ends up trapped in a hut, high atop Muir Pass in the Sierras. Four days later, running out of food for herself and her dog, she makes a bold dash for safety.
Jared’s walking the Muir Trail when all hell breaks loose. After hunkering beneath a boulder pile for days, he dares a difficult cross-country route, hoping it’ll put him into position to approach a backcountry ranger station. Surely one of the rangers will know what happened, because he sure as hell doesn’t.
Jared locates the cabin, but it’s locked tight. He’s getting ready to leave the next morning when a helicopter lands, with Sara at the helm. There’s no time to trade war stories. It takes a leap of faith, but they throw in their lot together. Can they face the impossible and come out the other side unscathed?
Chapter One
My name is Sara Holcomb and I’m a Ranger for the U.S. Park Service, a post I’ve held for better than twenty years. There are those who say I should’ve transitioned to a desk job long ago, but somehow I don’t think I’d like that nearly as much. See, I’ve loved the backcountry ever since I was a little girl, probably because my daddy was a Park Ranger too. He used to tell me stories about the forest creatures from the saddle we shared while he patrolled Yosemite Valley. I’m sure you couldn’t get away with dragging your daughter along on horse patrol now, but things were different back then. Another thing is I don’t really like people all that much, so wandering the trails in the national parks is about as perfect a job as I’m likely to get...
Her forehead furrowed in thought, Sara read over what she’d written as she absent-mindedly swept a strand of greasy hair out of her eyes with grime-crusted fingers. It didn’t stay put, though, and she found herself looking through the lank, black strands again almost immediately.
“Well,” she muttered, “this doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece. I’m just writing it so people will know what happened to me if they find my body.”
She cleared her throat to flush the thought of her possible death out of her mind and picked up her pen again. That was one of the good things about the Muir Hut, there were lots of pens and paper as well. Too bad some desperate traveler had chopped up the only table and burned it for firewood years before. The Park Service debated replacing it, but in the end they decided not to. If one table could burn, a replacement might meet the same fate. Besides, it wasn’t easy to get supplies to the beehive shaped stone hut sitting atop twelve thousand foot Muir Pass.
Blowing air out through her pursed lips, Sara frowned as she considered what to write next. She’d planned to dive right into the meat of things, but whoever read her journal really needed to know how she’d ended up trapped in the Muir Hut, so they could understand all the rest.
...I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’ve been stationed at the McClure Meadows Ranger Station for the past few summers. Sometimes there’s another Ranger with me, but usually there’s not. The Park Service has had some cutbacks i
n recent years. McClure Meadows is in Evolution Valley, and it’s my favorite of all the backcountry stations. It even has a geothermal spring so I don’t have to heat water for baths. At ninety-six hundred feet, it’s below timberline, so there are lots of trees around it—not just granite and shale. Incredible wildflowers dot the meadows all summer.
About six days ago, I got a radio call for help late in the day. A climber was stranded on Mount Darwin, and things weren’t looking good. I put in a call for the rescue chopper, packed up what Jake and I would need, and started on the five mile trek to Evolution Lake. Jake is my coal black, search-and-rescue German Shepherd the Park Service finally agreed to let me keep in the backcountry.
It was pretty much a mess when we got there. Suzy, the missing climber’s wife or girlfriend, was hysterical and it took me over an hour to get anything useful out of her, like which route her significant other had taken. By then the chopper was circling to land. There are some flat areas at the south end of the lake that are perfect for that...
A chill seeped into Sara from the cold, stone floor, so she changed positions. As she rubbed feeling back into her butt cheeks, she wished again for the missing table. She could’ve sat on it. A stone bench leaned against the wall of the hut outside in bright sunshine, but it was safer if she didn’t go out there. Benches lined the hut’s walls inside too, but they probably wouldn’t be much warmer than the floor. Stone was a real heat-sink unless it had a chance for the sun to warm it. She gazed back over what she’d written and shrugged. Pushing to her feet, she stretched, rotating her torso first in one direction, then in the other.
Fingers pressed against the ceiling, she blessed her height and her strength, shaped by years of grueling, manual labor. She could do anything a man could, and she was proud of that. Though frequently the object of admiring glances, she’d been very selective in that regard. The occasional co-worker had possibilities but, while the Park Service said relationships are fine so long as you’re not in a direct line of command on paper, Sara didn’t think they were especially open-minded in that regard, so she kept her dalliances brief and private.
Sometimes it was a lonely life, but it was the one she’d chosen. Her hours and time away from home wouldn’t have played well with most men, anyway. Children were out of the question. Not if they ever wanted to see their mother.
“Crap, my thoughts are really wandering,” she said wryly as she reached over to stroke Jake’s soft head. When she’d come to her feet, the Shepherd did as well. “Not much point in telling whoever might read this about the rescue,” she went on, talking to her dog. “The climber was dead when I got to him, so the main problem was figuring out how to get the poor son-of-a-bitch out of there.”
Jake whined as if he understood exactly what she was saying.
The actual extraction had taken hours. The SAR volunteers—God only knew where they’d been trained—had been less-than-useful. They were competent enough as climbers, but one began puking at the sight of the dead guy’s mangled remains, and the other had a hell of a time forcing himself to actually touch the corpse. Since she ended up doing most of the packaging-up of the body herself, Sara was exhausted when she slithered down the last steep talus slope above the southern end of Evolution Lake. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since she’d started on the rescue mission, and she was surprised she was still capable of sentient thought.
One thing that still bothered her was an unusual amount of rock fall during her descent. Not that she could see anything, but explosions boomed around her. Usually if you heard rock avalanches, you could see them, but not this time. One of the SAR dudes had asked what the fuck all the noise was, but she’d been too tired to have much of an answer.
It had been a relief when the chopper left, and she and Jake were alone again.
In the few hours she’d been high on Mount Darwin, autumn had attacked the aspens around Evolution Lake with a vengeance, and fall colors blazed from every hillside. That was the way things happened above ten thousand feet. Winter lasted a really long time, while the other seasons came and went in the blink of an eye.
After feeding Jake, she’d keyed her radio to report in, finding a small pleasure in hearing Lonnie’s cheerful voice. He was her boss, and he ran the dispatch service from Park Headquarters.
“How’s it going, pumpkin?” he’d asked. In his sixties, Lonnie didn’t pay much attention to the latest governmental directives about not using words that might be construed as sexual harassment.
“Not bad,” she replied. “But I’m tired. I’ll camp here tonight and head back to McClure tomorrow.”
“Now that you mention it,” he drawled, “think you might have enough energy to run up to the pass?”
Sara didn’t feel like running up to the pass. It was another four miles and fifteen hundred feet of climbing. “Uh, not really,” she murmured. “At least not tonight.”
“Come on, Sara,” he’d urged. “We’ve been getting odd reports from that area. I’d like some firsthand data. You move fast. You could be there in well under two hours.” There was a pause, then Lonnie added, “It won’t even be dark by then, princess.”
Maybe it was the princess that did it—her father used to call her that. Sara gathered what she thought she and Jake would need for a few days, stashing all her extraction gear behind a boulder pile. Then she shouldered her pack and struck out for Muir Pass. Lonnie was right, she did move quickly over the trails, her long-legged stride capable of eating up over three miles an hour uphill, more if she was coming down.
Distracted as she replayed the tragedy on Mount Darwin, Sara was surprised how quickly she reached the hut. It was still twilight. Plenty of time to get herself situated.
She dragged herself back to the present, settled on her spot on the floor, and picked up her pen again.
...The extraction was long, but uneventful. No point in describing it here. Once it was over, my boss sent me to Muir Pass to check on reports he’d been getting of unusual activity. While I wasn’t anxious to do more traveling that day, I do know how to follow orders. Jake and I reached the hut around six-thirty. I pushed the door open and, as always, was greeted by whichever of the resident rodents chose to take a stand. Jake made short work of them while I shoveled last season’s snow into poly bags so we could melt drinking water. Dredging my tent out of my pack, I smiled at the small, satisfying clicking sounds the segmented poles made as they nested into one another.
I didn’t know then it might be one of my last smiles ever.
So much of setting up camp is automatic, I’m surprised I even noticed. What did grab my attention, though, was Jake. While he sleeps next to me after I turn in, he usually prefers roaming about when I’m getting our camp set up. Not that night, though. Oh, he started wandering all right, but before I was even done with the tent, he was back by my side whining, with his ears back and his tail tucked low.
“What’s the matter, boy?” I asked, but of course I didn’t get an answer.
Some of you reading this might wonder why I didn’t just bed down in the hut. Well, huts are always, always cold. It’s actually far warmer in my down bag and my double walled tent than in a stone hut. In a winter snow storm, I might use one of the widely-spaced huts that dot the Sierras, but never in the summertime or autumn.
Just as I was settling in to melt some of the snow I’d gathered for water and dinner, the light—or what was left of it—began to look really odd, all flickery with iridescent fingers reaching down out of the sky. Searching for a reason, I glanced up and froze. Right above Jake and me was this really large thing that could only have been a spaceship. It was oblong with blue and green lights lining the long sides, and white lights at either end. It was huge, maybe over two hundred feet, though it’s hard to measure things when they’re in the sky. Jake clung to my side like a shadow as I stared upward in utter and absolute disbelief. He head-butted me toward the open door of the hut, so I told him he could go inside if he wanted. Pretty silly to tell a German
Shepherd that. They’re trained to die by your side, so, naturally, he didn’t go anywhere.
The ship altered course. It had been heading pretty much due east, but it began circling and getting lower and lower. In the meantime, I’d grabbed my radio but, for some odd reason, I couldn’t get anything out of it. Usually, high places like the pass have great reception. I checked the battery indicator, and it said eighty percent, so that wasn’t the problem.
At first, the ship looked exotic and, well, fascinating. I majored in ecology and wildlife management eons ago. As I studied the ship, I tried to tap into some of that scientific training to figure out how something that non-aerodynamic could fly.
I should probably tell you I’m—or, I used to be—a helicopter pilot. I got my training during a brief stint in the military right after college. I’m pretty sure that’s why the Park Service hired me in the first place since they were short of Rangers who could fly back then. Anyhow, I’m getting off track here. I’m not sure how long I spent gawking at the thing in the sky. It was mesmerizing in a weird sort of way.
As it got lower and lower though, I began to get scared. Really scared. At one point I crooked my fingers into a sign against evil I haven’t used since I was a child. Then one of those unnatural light beams sweeping the ground found a pica and vaporized it. One minute the little guy was there, looking hopefully at me as I pulled dried food packets out for dinner. The next he was gone in a poof of smoke, leaving this icky, burned smell.
Well, that certainly mobilized me. I dove through the door of the hut and huddled next to Jake on one of the benches. I did leave the door open a crack, though, so I could still see. As soon as I was inside the hut, the damned thing altered course again. It stopped circling and resumed its easterly trajectory, despite being, probably, a thousand feet lower—too low to clear the passes next to either Wallace or Echo Cols. Even though I willed it to crash, I’m sure it didn’t. I would’ve heard something...
Sara skimmed over what she’d written. She wanted to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important, at least up until when the ship appeared. Laying the paper aside, she shivered. It was nearly as bad reading as it had been to live through. It also shed a whole new light on what she’d labeled as rock fall when she was descending from Mount Darwin. Maybe it had really been some kind of detonation.