Patrick was mesmerized at the sight of the cloud and the colors that it was creating as the sunset was trying to shine through it. It seemed as the whole earth was becoming the color of an amber traffic signal. The top and edges of the cloud were less dense and the color of hot dog mustard, while the center and thick portions of the cloud blocked out the sun rays entirely and were the color of expensive stone ground mustard with traces of deep orange. Patrick was so awestruck that he didn’t hear Makenzie approach.
“Dad! What is it?” Makenzie exclaimed in bewilderment as she reached the rock that he was leaning against.
“I don’t know Darlin’” he responded.
“Is it a forest fire?” she asked.
Although he knew that it wasn’t, he said “I suppose that it could be.” After a few seconds, he continued “If it is a fire, I think that we’re okay since there isn’t a tree for miles up here above timberline.” They both stood silently and watched the cloud move and grow. Even though it lay as one thick blanket now across all that they could see, one could tell from the various yellow hues that it continued to move quickly across the ground.
The sun was almost totally set or blotted out before Makenzie asked “What are we going to do Dad?”
Patrick didn’t know how to respond. He did know that they weren’t going anywhere near that cloud. “I’m not sure Mak. It looks like the cloud or smoke can’t make it up this high. I’ve been watching that edge closest to us since I first saw it, and it’s stayed about fifty feet down the trail the whole time.” He looked around at their surroundings in the growing darkness to see if there was a better place that they should be, and didn’t see anything in the massive boulder field. “I guess we hunker down and see what it looks like in the morning,” he reluctantly told her.
“What? How are we supposed to stay up here all night without our sleeping bags or stuff?” she asked challenging the reasoning.
“Well, I don’t know what else we can do,” he said. This time it wasn’t his father knows best voice that came out of his mouth, but the one where he tries to explain his reasoning even if he’s totally not sure of himself. “If that is a forest fire, that smoke is so thick that we’d have smoke inhalation problems before we could reach the tent. If it’s something else, I don’t think that we need to be near it either.”
“Won’t we freeze up here Dad?” Makenzie asked with her voice rising slightly in pitch and her words starting to come out faster and faster. “What are we going to eat? How long do you think we’ll need to stay up here?”
The light was becoming so dim Patrick was having difficulty seeing her face even though she was only standing a few feet from him, but he could still tell that her eyes were opened wider than normal and her eyebrows were raised. He thought that she may calm down if she could keep busy. “Darlin, we’ll get cold alright, but we won’t freeze to death up here tonight.” Patrick stretched out his hand with the stringer of fish in it to Makenzie and said “Why don’t you run these back down to the lake? If we keep them cold enough, they will keep until tomorrow until we can get back to camp and use the stove.”
“What are we going to eat tonight?” she asked with the excitement still in her voice.
“I think that we can get by with a granola bar or two from my fanny pack for one night, don’t you?” he told her. Patrick flipped the fanny pack around to the side of his waist and began to rifle through it as she took the stringer from his hand. Patrick found a headlamp in the main compartment and helped her situate it on her head. Without any other words, she began to walk down the trail towards the lake carrying both stringers.
It was almost totally dark and the light from Makenzie’s head lamp bounced up and down in front of her as she walked down the path back towards the lake. The setting sun could no longer penetrate the yellow cloud with its light, and it resembled the last embers of a dying campfire on the horizon. Patrick began searching around in the fanny pack again for another light source, but couldn’t find anything other than the water tight container of kitchen matches that he always carried in the woods. He decided to leave those in the pack. It was so dark now that he couldn’t make out the cloud down below him or even make out the rocks below his feet, so he decided to sit down on the sitting rock and try to figure out what they should do until Makenzie made it back to him with the head lamp.
Patrick’s mind was racing and a tight feeling between his shoulder blades made it hard to concentrate. He closed his eyes, tipped his chin up towards the sky, and tried to take in three deep slow breaths before righting his head and opening his eyes. Makenzie was about half way back down the trail to the lake with the beam of the headlamp continuing to bob up and down. Every now and then, the light would dart to the left or the right as she turned her head to look at some unknown noise. Patrick could still feel some adrenaline coursing through his veins, but his mind had slowed to where he felt that he could reason some. His first thought with the somewhat clear mind was to pray.
He knelt on his good knee and leaned against the sitting rock as he faced down the hill towards Makenzie. He bowed his head and prayed in a quiet voice “Lord, I thank you. I don’t know what that ominous cloud is from or what it is for, but I thank you for protecting Makenzie and me from it.” As he said those words, he began to realize just how lucky they were to not have been caught in that cloud. From Patrick sleeping in this morning, to deciding to go on the late afternoon hike, to catching all the fish right after the earthquake all seemed to matter somehow. “I pray that You continue to protect us tonight and be with us. I also pray that You’re with our family back home as You protect and comfort them. Please watch over my Mary and my little guy. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”
When Patrick opened his eyes and sat back up on the rock, Makenzie had reached the lake and was doing something at the edge of the lake. She must have been looking for something, because instead of the light bobbing up and down as it had when she was walking down to the lake, it was swinging from left to right almost in a frenzy. He closed his eyes again and tried to reason out what they should do and what precautions they should take. Patrick had made up his mind that they weren’t going anywhere near that cloud, so that meant they were going to need to spend at least one cold night up there in the boulder field with their camping gear back down the trail.
They had plenty of water in the bottle in his fanny pack and Makenzie’s bota bag for one night; and if they needed more, they had some iodine pills in the fanny pack. He ruffled through the fanny pack again and verified by feel that he had three granola bars left in there. If they got real hungry they could always have sushi, but he figured that they would need to be extremely hungry before that would happen. They both only had light weight jackets on and he knew they were going to get downright cold before the sun came up. Patrick could feel the warmth coming off the sitting rock through his legs and hands as he sat on it, but it would sap the heat from him once it cooled off enough. They had matches, but there was no fuel up in that boulder field for a fire.
Makenzie finished putting the stringers in the lake and was making her way back up the trail. She would look up towards her dad occasionally, and the light from her headlamp would point right at Patrick. He turned around on the rock and sat facing the cloud again so that his night vision wouldn’t be as effected from Makenzie’s head lamp. His mind drifted back to wondering what the cloud could be caused by. If Makenzie was right and it was smoke from a forest fire, they may need to stay up here for a day or two until the smoke dissipated enough. At least stay long enough to make sure there wasn’t danger of being caught in the fire on the way back to the trail head. Patrick’s gut told him that it wasn’t a forest fire though. He could hear his wife’s words from their argument about this trip echoing in his head when Makenzie reached the rock again.
“I couldn’t find anything to tie the stringers to, so I just put a heavy rock on top of the leads,” Makenzie reported as she plopped down on the sitting rock.
“That shou
ld be fine,” Patrick said somewhat disconnected.
Patrick reached up and turned Makenzie’s headlamp off so she would quit blinding him when she looked at him. As he did, he saw that she must have been crying for most of the walk down and back because her cheeks were streaked from tears. “Dad… I was thinking,” Makenzie said as the light snapped off.
“What’s that Darlin?” he asked still only half-listening.
“It’s going to get super cold up here and there isn’t any way to build a fire,” she started without any real confidence in her voice. “What if we were to find what was left of that plane and stayed in it for the night?” she asked.
Patrick didn’t respond right away and she let the quiet set in. He was still pondering what could have caused the cloud and didn’t really register her question. After maybe a minute or so, Makenzie asked again “Do you think we could find that plane?”
“That’s probably not a good idea Mak. It’s been twenty years since I was up there last and it’s hard to find in the daylight. We only have one flash light, and one of us will probably break a leg if we go boulder hopping in the pitch black,” he said in his father-knows-best voice. It was utterly pitch black. Makenzie was only a couple of feet next to him on the rock, but he couldn’t even make out her silhouette with the headlamp off.
“What are we going to do then?” she asked with a little bit of a quiver just on the surface of her voice. Patrick reached over and took the headlamp off Makenzie. He turned the lamp on and shown it in his lap as he unzipped the fanny pack to take stock of what all they had to work with. The fanny pack was organized with stuff in different pockets that included a GPS, a pair of binoculars, a short piece of para-cord, three granola bars, bug spray, iodine tablets, a camping saw, matches, fishing tackle, a water bottle, and a foil emergency blanket. There wasn’t a T-bone steak hidden in there anywhere, but Patrick took some comfort in knowing that they had some things to work with.
Patrick didn’t answer her right away, because he frankly didn’t know what to do. The more he thought about trying to find the bomber, the more it made sense. It would give them both something to do and concentrate on so that they didn’t sit there and go stir crazy waiting for the sun to come up. The fuselage would also give a little bit of a windbreak if they had to stay up there for a few days, and by hiking up there they would stay moving and wouldn’t get near as cold.
“Maybe you’re right Mak,” he told her as he reached over and helped her fix the headlamp back on her head. “But if we’re going to try to find the bomber, we have to work together and agree to some ground rules so that we don’t get hurt.” He pushed her chin to the side as he squinted and told her “The first rule is that you can’t look at my face when you have that headlamp on.” She giggled a little bit and he felt the tension in his neck relax just a little bit at the sound of it.
They walked down the trail to the lake where Makenzie had left the stringers of fish. While they walked, they talked about how it was important that whoever was wearing the headlamp had to keep the other person in mind the entire time. Patrick let Makenzie come up with the signals that they would use to communicate with each other while they were hopping from boulder to boulder. Since it was pitch black and they only had one light, the person in the lead would need to shine the light to the next boulder they were going to, jump over to it; then shine the light back to where they had been standing so the person behind could jump over to where the first person had been. It sounded complicated enough; but add being tired, being scared, a recovering knee, and a teenager into the process and someone was bound to get hurt.
Regardless of the danger, they had decided that they were going to find the bomber and that is what they headed out to do. Makenzie made up signal words for things that they would expect to need to communicate during the process. Patrick didn’t know why he agreed to her silliness, but “Glurp” was what the person in front was going to say when they were going to shine the light to the next boulder in front of them. “Nip” meant that the person in back had moved and settled on to the next boulder so the person in front could shine the light somewhere else. Makenzie came up with a few other signal words that they didn’t use or forgot by the time they had been moving for a few minutes. As expected, Makenzie would sometimes forget that Patrick couldn’t see without the light so they came up with the signal word “Slerk” for Patrick to yell at her when he needed the light and she wasn’t paying attention.
They found the memorial plaque near Florence Lake for the bomber site and decided to start straight up the boulder field from there. The bronze plaque’s engraving was difficult to read in the darkness using the artificial light, but they were engrossed in the moment and determined to read the memorial. They stood a little longer than they normally would have and helped each other make out the words on the plaque that read:
THE FOLLOWING OFFICERS AND ENLISTED MEN OF THE U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE GAVE THEIR LIVES WHILE ON ACTIVE DUTY IN FLIGHT ON OR ABOUT JUNE 28, 1943. THEIR BOMBER CRASHED ON THE CREST OF THE MOUNTAIN ABOVE THIS PLACE.
The climb up the boulder field was considerably worse than what Patrick had remembered. Not only was the climb steep and somewhat treacherous across boulders and up granite outcroppings, but in the dark they couldn’t pick or choose their route. Several times, they had to stop and back track to find another way around a cliff edge that they couldn’t safely make it up. The silly signal words that Makenzie had come up with made the difficult trek more bearable for them both. Anyone listening to the exchange on the high mountain would surely have thought that aliens had landed.
“Glurp” … “Nip” … “Glurp” … “Nip” … “Glurp” … “Nip” … “Glurp.” “Slerk!” … “I said Slerk!” … “Nip”
It was a monumental achievement, but just as they saw the first light of the sun gleaming on the horizon, they had made it to the top of ridge. They both were utterly exhausted and sat down to catch their breath. Because they had backtracked and changed their route so many times up the climb, Patrick wasn’t sure where they were with respect to the memorial plaque down by the lake. He also wasn’t sure whether they should walk up the ridge toward the peak or slowly make their way down the peak of the ridge.
“We did it Dad,” Makenzie said with a victory in her voice as if they had cured cancer.
“We sure did kid,” Patrick replied as he reached out and ruffled her wind-swept hair with his hand. “But the first rule was not to look at my face when you have that head lamp on,” he told her as he turned her head by pressing on her chin again. They both chuckled for a second, but then she stopped abruptly and stared into the darkness. “What is it Darling?” he asked.
“I thought I had seen something,” she said as she continued to peer into the darkness and pointed in the direction she was looking. As she moved her head slightly, Patrick saw it too. Something glinted just at the end of the headlamp’s beam.
“I bet that’s it kid,” Patrick said as he squeezed her thigh, stood up, and headed in the direction of the glint. They did their best to walk side by side over the boulders along the crest of the ridge toward the glinting object using just the light of the headlamp. While the sun was coming up, it seemed to be taking longer than it should and the light from the headlamp was still necessary.
“That’s it Dad!” Makenzie exclaimed before giving him a quick hug as they got close to the wreckage. She picked up the pace considerably and was almost running on her exhausted legs for the last few yards.
After reaching the fuselage, they both stood and looked at it as Makenzie panned the light from the headlamp from one end of the plane’s remains to the other. It looked pretty much the way that Patrick had remembered it. It was just crinkled bare aluminum with metal pieces and parts littered among the rocks and boulders surrounding the large remaining piece.
“That’s it Dad?” Makenzie asked a little disheartened as she took a good look at what was left of the bomber.
“Yep,” he said without much emotion
. “It looks like some scavengers have taken some pieces of it over the years, but it’s pretty much the way I remember it. What were you expecting?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” she said with disappointment in her voice. “And now that we’re here, I’m a little creeped out that people died in there.”
“I’m so tired that I don’t care if there’s a grizzly holed up in there,” Patrick said as he got on his knees and began to crawl underneath the aluminum shell. He couldn’t see a thing, so he was relieved when Makenzie joined him a few moments later with the head lamp.
There really weren’t any flat or good spots to lie down underneath the plane, but they each picked out a spot where they thought they could rest and used the fanny pack to lay their heads down on. With the weird cloud, potential danger, and uneven granite rocks Patrick didn’t think that he would get much rest, but he immediately fell asleep.
Chapter 4
Patrick awoke with the sun glaring in his eyes. There was a porthole in the fuselage just above his head that he hadn’t noticed when they laid down. As the sun made its way across the sky, it shown directly down onto his head. The sunlight was blinding, but he could tell through squinted eyes that Makenzie was still resting and wasn’t stirring. Patrick slowly crept out from under the plane’s remains by bear crawling backwards along the rocks and boulders until he was outside far enough to stand up. While his knee was stiff and sore, his back was almost as sore after the climb up the ridge last night and the few hours’ nap on the uneven granite.
When he was free of the plane and could survey his surroundings, he was awestruck. The view was utterly mesmerizing. From the top of the ridge, it seemed as if he was standing on top of another world. Only Cloud Peak to the north was higher than where they were. The yellow and orange cloud had engulfed everything. Only the few peaks and ridges that were higher than Florence Lake stood above the cloud. It was as if he was standing on a foreign planet with the sun directly overhead. Patrick stared out at the wisps of the cloud that danced at the edges of the ominous mustard colored fog. He looked in the same south-west direction that they had last night when they had first seen the cloud, but now it was hard to judge how far Lake Helen, the trail-head, or anything was in the opaque yellow fog.
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 4