Before bed, I pack our food into two nylon stuff sacks.
“That’s enough for the whole family,” says Sophie when she saunters into the kitchen.
“We need extra food for Dad when we find him,” I say, and Sophie’s eyes widen like she’s seen a ghost.
“Every family needs one crazy kid,” Sophie says.
The packing is better than the shopping. At least we have a plan in place, which makes me feel so much closer to Dad.
It’s almost midnight by the time my backpack is cinched up and my hiking boots are laid out, ready for adventure. I crawl into bed without brushing my teeth or changing into pajamas. Then I imagine all the possible things I could forget. Parka. Got it. Boots. Yes. Pepper spray. Check. Bug spray. Got it. Knife? No.
I can’t go camping without a knife!
I hop out of bed and grab my folding knife from the closet. I tuck it into the top flap of my pack. While I’m up and shuffling through the closet, I find my headlamp too. It’s light almost all night in June, but what if I need a light during the dusky hours?
I add my headlamp to the pile.
A thought creeps in while I’m lying in bed, willing myself to sleep. What if I find Dad, and he’s too injured to walk home?
I need a rescue bag.
I’m up again, tiptoeing down the stairs to the garage—Dad’s place.
I find Dad’s mountain rescue pack underneath his cluttered workbench, below the candy stash. Inside it is a fold-up shovel, a rope, crampons, heat packs, and a puffy parka. Everything I could need.
While I’m there, I raid Dad’s candy stash one last time. I take just a few gummy bears from an already-open bag: three red bears, two green, and one white. They’re a little stale, but they’ll do.
A horrible thought takes hold of me: What if I can’t find him and this is the end of his stash? What if he’s never able to shop for candy again?
I push the thought away and carry Dad’s rescue bag and my six bears back up to my bedroom. When I get there, I line up the bears on my bedside table.
Three red bears.
“Hey, Dad,” I whisper.
Two green bears.
“Hold on a little longer.”
One white bear.
“We’ll be on our way by morning.”
Dad always says, “Ready is a feeling in your belly when you know you can take on the world.”
Ready is not how I feel when the alarm clock jolts me out of the nightmare. This time, I’m reaching my hand out to Dad, but our fingers never touch. I can’t tell if he’s in the glacier or on the tundra, but I reach and reach and reach, and I don’t get any closer.
My mouth is sugary dry from didn’t-brush-my-teeth-last-night gummy bear breath. I’m still wearing yesterday’s dirty blue jeans. I take a thirty-second shower to wash off the nightmare, and then I slip into my nylon hiking pants, my button-down plaid shirt, and a fleece vest. Inside the vest pocket I put Dad’s journal and map, one of his Sharpie markers, and my tiny flower book. Finally I tie a red bandanna over my wet hair. I’ll braid my hair later when I’m on the train.
I struggle to carry the load down the staircase and out the front door past Mom. It must weigh fifty pounds.
“You’re not going to be able to haul all that,” Mom says.
“No problem,” I say, standing up taller.
Mom shakes her head. “Did you remember your rain gear?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What about your parka?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Matches?”
“Yes.”
“Sleeping bag?”
“Stop it. I have everything. Trust me!”
Mom follows me out to the front porch. She’s getting hovery and weird again, like she’s regretting letting us go.
The porch steps are difficult to maneuver, but the tailgate is down on Dad’s truck. I’m tempted to set the pack on the driveway and wait for Sophie to help me hoist it onto the truck bed, but since Mom is watching—doubting—I’m determined to load it myself. I hurl the beast off my shoulders and into the truck.
There.
“You ready?” I yell up the staircase to Sophie.
“All set,” she yells back. She’s not smiling as she walks down the steps with a pack half the size of mine.
“That’s all you’re bringing?” I ask. Did she even bring the basics—a parka and hat and extra socks?
“Yep. This is everything.” She’s wearing her lime-green high-top sneakers, which are definitely not designed for hiking.
“You sure you want to wear those shoes?” I ask. What’s up with Sophie? She knows what to take camping. But as the words leave my mouth, I realize that I sound just like Mom did a few minutes ago.
“Yes, Mom,” Sophie says, confirming my instincts.
My face gets hot and tingly. Good thing I packed extra gear. Sophie doesn’t know just how adventurous this trip will be. I probably should have told her about the full plan—to walk to the mountain—but it’s late, much too late, to tell her now, with Mom watching and a train to catch. We’ll have to make do.
Mom drives us to the train station at Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage and helps us unload our packs onto the platform. Sophie and I have been to Denali dozens of times, but never by train, and never without Mom and Dad.
It’s weird at the station, like we’re here for a rocket launch to the moon, and all the other people are waiting to go to some other planet. I’m dressed in my camping grubbies, but most of the other people are old—with gray and white hair—and they haul suitcases on wheels like dogs on leashes.
“All set?” Mom asks. Her arms shake—not as much as when she got the call—but they tremble enough for me to notice.
I give Mom a hug, and it’s an awkward one. I almost tip over from the weight of everything.
“See you in a few days,” I say.
Mom squeezes me tight. “Careful out there,” she says. “Check in with Ranger Collins as soon as you arrive.”
Under the weight of our packs, Sophie and I teeter up the steps and board the train. When the whistle blows and we pull away from the station, Mom stands on the platform alone. She waves goodbye, a weak and floppy wave. Even though it’s cloudy out, she wears sunglasses, the kind with big dark lenses that cover half her face.
It feels like we’re leaving a stray animal on the side of the road. All wrong, like we should hop off and call her name and check her collar to see if she has a call-if-found emergency contact number. But Mom is Mom. She’s not a stray, and she doesn’t want to come this time. What spurs me on is knowing how happy she will be when we bring Dad home.
The train ride lasts forever. Eight hours. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking, and I’m squirmy in my seat.
Sophie and I go to the food car and get sodas. It helps to pace from car to car, but when my 7Up’s gone and I’ve chewed all the ice cubes and I’ve braided my hair, there’s nothing left to do but worry and wait.
“Why do you think Mom let us go?” I ask Sophie, still hardly believing that Mom agreed to our plan.
“She knows Dad would want us to,” Sophie says, and she sounds as sure as her high-top sneakers are green. It’s weird how Sophie is so hot and cold and moody. Sometimes she makes no sense, but right now she sounds pretty smart.
Sophie’s right. Even though Mom is much more orderly than Dad, she loves his adventurous streak. I think sometimes she wishes she could be more of a free spirit like Dad.
The worst part of the ride happens when the mountain—Denali—comes into view. The rest of the landscape is summery green, but Denali is snow-scoured white, and she’s so tall that she’s more a part of the sky than the solid earth below.
The other riders on the train gawk at her and say, “Majestic Denali.”
She is majestic, but I don’t want to hear about it from tourists. This is Dad’s mountain, and he’s up there, and that’s scary and beautiful—all mixed together.
All I want right now is to hop on over to the mountain, reach for Dad’s hand, take it in mine, and bring him home.
A fat red squirrel sits on the railing in front of the Wilderness Access Center. His whiskers twitch, and he chitters at us when we walk by, as if to say You’re almost there, Lily. The air smells clean, and the small scraggly spruce trees are my first clue that we’ve arrived in Denali National Park, a much more northern place.
“Here goes,” Sophie says as she swings open the door.
Inside, the line for bus tickets and campground reservations is long, snaking almost out the building. Dozens of tourists shuffle around, pointing at maps and photos on the walls, and making plans to stay at the campgrounds inside the park. I know we have to stay at Wonder Lake, the closest campground to Dad’s mountain.
We join the reservations line. Sophie shifts her weight between legs, and I stare down at her lime-green sneakers. It’s crazy that she’s wearing them. I’m still hoping she stowed away some hiking boots in her backpack, but I know better than to ask.
“Next,” says the lady behind the counter. “Are you two alone?” she asks.
Sophie nods. I want to tell the lady that alone is not the right word for two people together.
“In that case,” she says, with raised eyebrows, “how can I help you?”
“We need campground reservations for the next four nights at Wonder Lake,” Sophie says.
“All we have for tonight is Savage River Campground,” she says.
“Are you sure?” I ask, and the word savage feels crueler than ever.
“Yes, that’s it,” she says, looking over us toward the long line of visitors waiting in line.
I prop my elbows up on the counter, mimicking the way Dad always convinced people to bend the rules for him. “Can we pay you double and get out to Wonder by tonight?” I ask.
“No means no,” she says, not smiling.
“But Ranger Collins at Wonder is expecting us,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Full is full.”
“It’s okay,” Sophie says, elbowing me away from the counter. “What’s one more day?”
“Could be the difference between dead and alive,” I say.
The lady behind the counter squints her eyes.
“We’ll take one night at Savage and three at Wonder Lake,” Sophie says.
“No,” I say, but Sophie puts her hand hard on my shoulder.
“If you hurry, you can get on the four p.m. camper bus to Savage,” says the lady, handing Sophie the tickets.
What’s the hurry if we can’t get to Dad’s place?
After Sophie pays, we bolt out of the visitor center.
“I can’t believe she wouldn’t give us Wonder,” I say, kicking a peanut that fell from a tourist’s trail mix.
“The whole world doesn’t revolve around us,” Sophie says, but it should when we have such an important mission.
Before we catch the shuttle, Sophie insists on calling Mom. “We have to tell her that we can’t get to Wonder Lake tonight. Otherwise Mom and the ranger are going to freak out.”
“Fine,” I say, but what I think is, Who cares if they freak out? Right now, the only thing that matters is that Dad’s been missing in the crevasse for four days.
Four days!
How long can he last without food or water? Surely he had at least a granola bar and a water bottle in his backpack.
And I can’t push away the nightmare of Dad sliding back into the mountain. It’s as if I really saw it happening and I can’t escape it.
But I must. I’m the only one on earth who’s still on a mission to find him; well, Sophie is too, even though she doesn’t know it.
“All set?” I ask, when Sophie returns from the pay phone. There’s no cell service in Denali National Park.
“Yes. Mom knows we’re headed to Savage, and she’s all good.”
All good? Nothing is good. And there’s that squirrel again. “Chitter, chitter, chitter.”
This time, the squirrel’s sound makes me uneasy.
It’s raining when the bus driver leaves us at Savage River Campground. Weird. It’s been a blue-sky day since we left Anchorage, so I’m not sure where the clouds have come from. There’s nothing good about getting off the bus into a rain squall, especially when Dad is more than seventy miles farther down the road.
“Are we going to pitch this tent in the rain?” I ask Sophie as we huddle together. I’ve been here before, and I know there’s not a lot of natural shelter at Savage. We’re up in the taiga, which Dad always called “the land of little trees.” The winters are long and cold here—too long and cold for trees to grow big and tall.
Sophie looks at the sky. “It doesn’t seem like the rain will pass anytime soon, so we might as well.”
I wonder what it’s like for Dad on the mountain in the rain.
I pull up my jacket hood.
Normally we would spend an hour choosing the best spot for camping. Site 13 or site 4? Which one has the nicest view? What about the flattest ground for sleeping? Today Sophie and I don’t debate. We run into the first open spot—site 7B—and I drop the tent bag on the ground. This is not our final destination, and any spot will do.
Rain beats down harder, pattering against my jacket. Time to hurry.
The ground is muddy and wet. I dump out the contents of the tent bag and wish I could get the rain to stop long enough for us to turn all these poles and tarps into a tent.
Sophie stands a few feet away, staring at the ground. Why isn’t she helping?
“Sophie,” I say. She doesn’t look up; she doesn’t even bother to pull up her hood. She lets the rain pound her.
“Sophie, please,” I beg. This isn’t the Sophie I know.
“I can’t do it,” she says. “Not without Dad.” Her hands are empty, her chin down, and I can tell she means it.
But this is a two-person job.
The rain pummels me. What do I do first? Lay out the tarp? Yes. Then the tent body. Do the tent poles form a triangle or a dome? I can’t remember.
I’ve helped Dad pitch tents dozens of times, but never by myself. It’s as if this rain has washed away everything I know about setting up camp.
Water drips down both of my cheeks and slithers down my neck. I need to hurry.
Focus, Lily.
Once I begin linking tent poles, it starts coming back. The poles form a dome and clip into each corner of the tent—as well as its roof. The rain fly goes over everything. Then I pound stakes into the earth to keep the tent from lifting away in the wind.
Of course, the minute I’m finished, the rain slows—now that everything is sopping.
“Thanks for the help,” I mutter to Sophie.
Sophie doesn’t say anything, and it’s her silence that’s hard. Sophie’s always made a lot of noise, and even if it’s not nice noise, at least it reminds me that she’s my big sister and this storm will pass. Right now Sophie’s silence feels like that pause between lightning striking and thunder rumbling.
My stomach growls.
Lunch. I need to figure out lunch. It’s practically dinnertime already.
“You hungry?” I ask.
“I could eat a whole pig,” Sophie says, and it’s weird that hunger is the one thing that gets her talking.
I wish Mom were here right now to whip up our favorite mac and cheese. And Dad would build a fire, and it would burn even with the wet ground. Not even a flood could snuff out Dad’s campfires. Then we’d play a game of Scrabble. We’d sip cups of English breakfast tea with milk and honey while playing, and we’d scheme about where to hike tomorrow.
All this wishing is exhausting, and it feels drenched like my tent and hiking pants.
“What should we eat?” I ask.
“Whatever’s fine with me,” Sophie says, and that’s when I realize that Sophie’s not planning to cook, either.
I open our food bag and look for something that I can’t mess up.
Canned chili. It’s hard to ruin canned chili. But it’s trickier than I thought to open a can with my Leatherman tool. Sophie watches and chuckles at my efforts until I slam the can on the picnic table. “You do it, then,” I say. I grab the stove and try to light it. Dad always made this stuff look easy.
It takes less time than I think it will to heat up the chili, so of course I burn the bottom of the pot. After scarfing down a bowl of burnt chili, I can’t sit still. The only way to stop thinking about Dad and the mountain and the crevasse is to do something.
“Let’s climb up Healy Ridge,” I say. Healy Ridge is our family spot, the place we’ve spent so many summer days in Denali National Park.
“It’s kind of late to start that now,” Sophie says, eyeing her watch, but I don’t think it’s just her watch that holds her back.
“The sun shines all night,” I say. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Humph,” Sophie says. She doesn’t even argue.
“Well, I’m hiking,” I say. “Are you coming or not?”
“I guess so,” says Sophie, standing up from the picnic table.
“Get your gear,” I say.
“Why do we need gear?” Sophie asks.
“Healy is no pip-squeak of a climb,” I say, even though she knows it.
A tiny flicker of hope wings its way inside me. I know the chances are slim, but if Dad wandered anywhere, why not up Healy?
Before we head out, I fill my water bottle and grab two bags of gummy bears. I toss them and a winter hat and my Leatherman into my backpack. I clip some bear bells onto the outside of my pack so the jingle will alert the grizzlies. I leave the pepper spray behind. I’ve never needed to use it, so why would I need it today? This will be a short hike in the park. Nothing to get all fussed up about.
I’m antsy to get hiking, but as soon as we cross the road and we’re hiking up the trail, I sense grizzlies everywhere. I feel like a piece of walking bacon. That’s what it’s like to be at the bottom of the food chain.
My bear bells jingle warning, but bear bells alone won’t save us. The jingle jangle on the outside of my backpack offers little comfort right now. We need luck, too, and I wish I had at least brought the pepper spray—just in case.
Lily's Mountain Page 3