by Sonja Yoerg
“Over there!”
He moved quickly, waving smoke away, coughing. She was nearly at the tent, searching for the cans with the light. The smoke was densest near the ground. There! Dante’s hands were already on them. He picked them up and was enveloped by smoke. She shone the light in his direction to help him, but he was already gone.
She started after him, but turned back. If she could rescue the tent, she should. They had nothing else to protect them in severe weather. She cast the light into the thickest part of the smoke, trying to see how close the flames were, but it was impossible. Flashlight in her mouth, she grabbed a corner of the tent and jerked it upward, pulling the stake out of the ground, freeing the ground sheet, tent and fly. She palmed the stake and she moved around the tent, yanking stakes from the ground and pushing aside the rocks she had used as anchors. Smoke stung her eyes and twice she had to remove the flashlight from her mouth during a coughing fit. She cursed herself for not having the headlamp handy. The last stake refused to budge. She recalled struggling to drive it into the ground earlier. She pulled with both hands, her heart pounding and hands slick with sweat. The stake flew out, disappearing into the smoke. Liz grabbed the tent and dragged it toward the meadow. Nearly blinded by smoke, the flashlight useless, she kicked each foot in front of her, searching for the trip line. Her foot hit the cord. She stepped over it, lifting the tent clear. Dante appeared and together they carried the tent to the stream edge.
Liz bent over, hands on her knees, coughing. She swallowed, the taste of sour charcoal burning her throat. As she got up, Dante pulled her into a hug. She put her arms around him and he exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath a long time. His jacket smelled of ash, and she could feel the warmth of his body through it. He stepped back and held her by the shoulders. The flashlight lay in the grass. She couldn’t see his face.
“Are you all right?” His voice was gravelly from the smoke.
She nodded.
He pulled her close again. “I could have lost you.”
She held him tighter and bit her lip to quell the surge of relief rushing through her—for being alive, and for that meaning something to him. Fear and fatigue had shredded her, so however much he cared, at that moment it seemed enough.
“Dante, I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
He nodded, brushing his face against her hair. “I wish I could say it doesn’t matter. But I can’t.”
A tide of sadness and regret rolled through her. The apology she’d already offered many times came to her lips but she didn’t utter it.
He let go of her and cast his eyes at the gear strewn around them. “We should take care of this stuff.” He picked up the flashlight and handed it to her. “You hold the light and I’ll carry everything across.”
The creek was shallow and only a dozen feet wide, so the task was finished in minutes. Liz joined him on the far side. He picked up the water bottles and handed her one. She drank, the cool liquid easing her raw throat.
He said, “This was the Roots, wasn’t it?”
“Had to be. No lightning and no campfire. I can’t think of anything else.”
“They could’ve killed us.”
“I know.” She drank more water. This time it made her shiver. “We should put on some more clothes before we get chilled.”
They located their clothes amid the sleeping bags and collapsed tent. Dante was missing a sock but found a dirty one in his backpack. They sat on their backpacks, facing the campsite, and drew their sleeping bags around their shoulders.
Liz was almost breathing normally again. She checked the time. Five thirty. She tried to remember how far they had to go today. Not too far, she thought. She pictured the map but the miles along each segment kept sliding off. She gave up.
Across the meadow were a few scattered flames, all at ground level. In the beam of the flashlight, smoke still billowed in the same direction but, it seemed, with less force.
Dante said, “Should we be doing anything about the fire?”
She shrugged, which made her cough. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “We could dump water on it with the cook pot, but I’m not thrilled about doing it in the dark. Too easy to fall. Besides, the wind seems to be dropping.”
“The fire doesn’t look that big.”
“The smoke was bad enough. And you can never tell with fire. If we had been asleep—” Her voice was blocked by a lump in her throat.
He put a hand on her shoulder, left it there a minute, then took it back. He pointed at the eastern sky. “First light.”
“New day,” she said, without conviction.
As soon as light permitted, they carried water from the river in bottles and the cook pot and dumped it on the hot spots. The closest was a few yards from where the tent had been. The wind had died down completely, and the smoke became a low fog.
There was a lot to do. Their belongings were scattered. Soot coated everything and had to be washed or shaken off. Liz and Dante attended to their tasks in silence. Liz felt dizzy and untethered from lack of sleep and too much adrenaline. She fumbled the dishes as she rinsed them in the creek and had to run downstream after a cup that floated away from her. Several times she thought she heard someone approaching from the woods, and her heart leapt into her throat, but it turned out to be a squirrel, or nothing. As she returned to camp, she noticed Dante kept looking up from what he was doing and peering into the trees. What would they do if the Roots came after them again, other than run? They were, in truth, defenseless. The best they could hope for was to find other people, and soon. She said so to Dante.
He nodded, but didn’t say more. His shoulders were slumped and he moved with deliberation. She’d never seen him so beaten. He was tired, scared and sad.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said.
“Good idea.”
She filled the pot, lit the stove and placed the pot on it. A memory flashed so vividly she thought she was hallucinating and lowered herself onto a rock. Her mother stood before her, asking Liz to show her where the coffee was. Gabriel was dead. Her mother steered her toward the shower. One foot in front of the other. Coffee, shower, food. Normalcy, routine, sanity.
Liz shook her head to dispel the image and scooped coffee into the first cup. The tremor in her hand rattled the spork against the edge. She breathed deep into her lungs, forcing her hand to be still. There wasn’t enough coffee to waste.
She sat waiting for the water to boil, and thought of her mother at home in Santa Fe, standing in front of her easel, surrounded by color and light. The image calmed her—Claire was content—but Liz was also struck by the irony that her lesson in the comfort of routine should come from Claire, whose thirst for freedom through art trumped schedules of any kind. Maybe in times of crisis everyone, even the highest-flying kite, returns to Earth and the complacency of time and order. Either that or go mad. Liz poured water in the cups and stirred.
“Coffee’s ready,” she said.
Dante was folding his clothes and sniffed his sleep shirt. “I’m going to throw everything away when I get home.”
Liz held her cup in both hands. She stared at him a moment, then got up and walked to the edge of the meadow, unable to guess whether “home” included her. A knot formed in her belly. She wished she could be alone, to think about what she wanted to say, what she wanted to do. She wished she could start this trip again. But why stop there? Why not rewind the clock further? To before the abortion, or before Etta’s wedding. Or before Gabriel’s death. Before Gabriel. She laughed at herself. She might run out of life before she ran out of regret.
Dante appeared beside her with his coffee. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After they ate and packed, Liz and Dante consulted the map. The John Muir Trail continued south from Wallace Creek another four miles to an intersection, then veered due e
ast six and a half miles to the Whitney Trail junction. There, the north fork led in two miles to the summit of Mount Whitney. The south fork led in a half mile to Trail Crest, a pass of 13,650 feet, then continued another nine miles to Whitney Portal, a trailhead with a campground, store and small restaurant. Most hikers, Liz informed Dante, camped near Guitar Lake their last night, eight miles from where they were sitting.
“How hard is the last day?” Dante said.
“Hard. Two to the Whitney Trail junction, where, if we were going to the summit, we’d drop our packs. The round-trip to the top from there is four miles.”
“But we’re skipping that.”
“Right. Another nine to the Portal, so eleven in all, with twenty-five hundred feet up and over five thousand down.”
He frowned and shook his head. The stress of the last few days told on his face. “But the Roots will be following us, or waiting for us.”
Liz’s chest constricted. Thousands of miles of wilderness, and they were trapped.
Dante bent over the map. “Is there another way out?”
Liz pointed to trails leading out of the Kern drainage. “We could go out this way, but it’s a lot longer. Also, the way we’re headed is the popular route. Even though it’s late in the season, tons of people go up Whitney every day.”
“How many?”
“More than a hundred. You get a permit through a lottery. Except if you go the long way, like we are. But most people are day-tripping from the Portal.”
Dante looked hopeful. “So the trail to the top will be crowded.”
She nodded. “If we can make it to Guitar Lake today, there should be some hikers coming up from the Portal this morning, bagging Whitney, and stopping at the lake on their way someplace else.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Her logic was sound, but even to her own ears she was less than convincing. It was as though the Roots controlled the entire wilderness, that they’d staged Brensen’s fall to appear accidental, directed a wind to blow the fire their way, and would empty the trails of hikers. Liz was frightened and tired enough to almost believe they had the power. She glanced at the sky, a washed-out blue. Perhaps they could summon the clouds, too.
They donned their packs and left the charred campsite behind, Dante in the lead. Liz turned to look at the site as approaching hikers would. The damage didn’t appear to be the result of anything more than an out-of-control campfire, not significant enough for anyone passing by to report to a ranger.
They climbed out of the watershed onto the broad shoulder between Kern Canyon and the Whitney massif. The terrain opened, and the mountains of the Great Divide came into view. After three miles they reached Sandy Meadow. A mile farther, they left the main trail and turned east. It seemed impossible Whitney was less than ten miles away. Liz noticed clouds had formed above the peaks in the distance, although it was not yet noon. Not an encouraging sign.
She pushed her concerns about the weather to the back of her mind and divided her attention between the rocky trail and the possibility of the Roots approaching from behind. She was especially vigilant in wooded areas where she and Dante could be ambushed. She glanced behind her frequently and noticed Dante looking around more than usual. They spoke little. Dante was undoubtedly as tired as she was but didn’t complain.
They ate lunch near a stream running through a pink granite gorge from where they had a clear view of the trail in both directions. The clouds had stitched themselves together above their heads, and darkened. As they finished eating, the first drops fell. They frowned at each other and put on their rain jackets and, as a precaution, slipped rain covers over their packs.
The storm was quick to gather momentum. They’d covered less than a mile before intermittent drops became continuous rain. At Timberline Lake they lost the protection of the trees, and the rain became a downpour. Piercing drops roiled the lake surface. A steep hill, mostly granite and dotted with a few pines, rose behind the far side of the lake. At the top would be Guitar Lake, sitting at the foot of Whitney, but they couldn’t see even the lower slopes of the mountain because of the rain.
The trail traced the crease between the hill and the near-vertical face of Mount Young to the left. Halfway up a set of switchbacks, they paused to catch their breath. Water ran off the bill of Dante’s cap, which stuck out of the hood of his jacket.
He pulled Liz’s rain cover aside, retrieved a water bottle and offered it to her. “I thought there were supposed to be people camping at Guitar Lake, but we haven’t seen anyone.”
“Maybe they read the forecast.”
“Maybe.”
“But it is weird.” She thought a moment. “Maybe if they were heading south, they’d have cut the corner near Crabtree, so we wouldn’t have passed them.”
“But would everyone be heading south?”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
The absence of hikers disturbed her. Whatever courage and moxie she had found when facing the Roots in the past had evaporated, and the thought of another encounter terrified her. As it was, she was so exhausted she could barely manage hiking. The hope that they’d find friendly faces at Guitar Lake was the only breath of encouragement she could find.
They continued upward, a hard, slow slog. They came over a rise and Guitar Lake appeared before them, gunmetal gray and dull. The area around the lake was empty—no tents, no people—and barren, devoid of trees and large boulders for shelter, or cover.
Dante jammed his pole into the ground in frustration. “Where the hell is everyone?”
Liz swiped the rain and sweat from her forehead and fought back tears. “I have no idea.” She hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on seeing other people, and the disappointment sat heavily on her. She turned and scoured the trail behind them, trying to discern color or movement in the driving rain. She didn’t see anything, but that did nothing to allay her fear.
Dante was scowling, and his voice was sharp-edged. “So we go higher, find a place to hide?”
“We have to. If we stay here, we’re sitting ducks.”
“We are sitting ducks, Liz! That’s exactly what we are.”
Before she could speak, he turned up the trail. She hurried after him, certain his anger and frustration did not stem solely from the threat of the Root brothers. The wounds from her actions and her deceit were deep and fresh, and the feelings they evoked would not be subjugated. She understood this well, because although the malevolence of the Roots was close upon her like a pall of smoke, the fear of losing Dante gripped her heart.
The next level terrain lay three-quarters of a mile away—nothing compared to the miles and mountains they left behind—but Liz struggled. Her pack was as light as it had ever been, but seemed filled with stone. Her legs and lungs burned. Several times she stopped, to rest or to quit, she wasn’t sure which; but Dante climbed on, so she did, too.
The switchbacks ended and a traverse brought them to the top of the hill behind Guitar Lake. An acre-sized tarn appeared on the right. The terrain from there to two lakes at the base of Mount Hitchcock sloped slightly downhill, away from the trail. Unlike Guitar Lake, there were numerous outcroppings and slabs.
Liz stood beside Dante. “This looks promising.”
Dante exhaled and squinted into the rain, searching. “Somewhere hidden from the trail.”
She pointed toward Hitchcock Lakes. “And also from this gulley.”
They stashed their packs and began searching together. The rain fell in torrents. Twice they broke off their search and went to the edge of the shelf from which they could survey the lower trail and most of Guitar Lake but saw no one.
After forty minutes, they discovered a tiny patch of crushed gravel wedged between a sloped bank and a slab of granite the size of a garage. They returned for their packs and confirmed the location was invisible from the main trail. Someone at the lower H
itchcock Lake might detect them, but the chance the Roots would come this far was slim, especially in bad weather.
Once they were secure in the campsite, Liz and Dante relaxed a little. The rain let up. Dante fished the salami from a bear can and divided what remained between them. Liz sat on a rock, bit off a large chunk and chewed, allowing the pleasure of salt and fat to overrun her.
They pitched the tent and Liz placed the mattresses and sleeping bags inside. Everything smelled of smoke, an insistent reminder of last night’s close call. She finished setting up the beds in haste, eager to return to the fresh air.
Although it was not yet four o’clock, they were desperate for more food, so Dante began to prepare dinner: vermicelli with pesto from a tube. Liz carried the filtration kit and the water bottles to the nearer lake, taking a long look up the gulley before she hurried to the shore. She crouched behind a boulder and pumped water into the bottle between her feet, recalling the first time she’d done so on this trip, high above Yosemite Valley, chatting to Dante about how the water from every stream tasted different. They’d sampled dozens of creeks, rivers and lakes during the last seventeen days, often too distracted, too tired, too scared or simply too thirsty to taste it. She pumped three more times. The bottle was full. She pulled the adapter out and took a long drink. Cold. Flinty. A little salty. Sweet.
She filled the other bottles, tucked the filter into its pouch and looked at the sky. Above the craggy summit of Mount Hitchcock, banks of clouds were piled high like whipped cream on a sundae. A sudden wind blew up from the Kern and set the clouds in motion over her head. The billows flew by and parted. Blue sky. Sunlight angled through the gaps, searchlight beams of yellow-white touching down upon the lake, the granite, her. A shaft of light, a passing moment of warmth. The beams sped along the earth until the wind relented and the edges of the clouds met and joined, trapping the sun again.