The clerk’s manner of speaking struck Aiden as familiar, but he was unable to put his finger on it. Perhaps it was a local twang he’d heard before, maybe on television.
As the clerk handed Aiden his bag of purchases, the sound of the shop’s door chimes made both men glance toward the man who had just stepped in. Aiden could not believe his eyes. Mouth and eyes agape, he caught his bag in time before dropping it.
The man had a moustacheless beard and was wearing broadfall denim pants, a navy blue collarless shirt, suspenders, and a straw wide-brimmed hat.
Aiden glanced out the window. Tied to a post was a sleek horse hitched to a market wagon. Just as he’d suspected. The man was unmistakably Amish.
The Amish man, taking off his hat, grabbed for a newspaper and strolled up behind Aiden by the cashier. His beard was newly sprouted, as if he’d recently married.
“I didn’t expect to see any Amish here,” Aiden blurted, surprised by his own boldness. But the tall Amish man was as kind as the store clerk. He grinned at Aiden.
“Ya. We’re just about everywhere these days.” He chuckled. “Somewhat of a new settlement here. Only one or two in Montana as far as I know. It’s been here about fifteen years. I just moved here last spring from Indiana.”
Reflecting back to last summer when he had ridden in the market wagon with Daniel on the way to the horse auction, Aiden remembered Daniel telling him about a fledgling Amish settlement near Glacier National Park where he’d once backpacked.
“Is this the town of Rose Crossing?” he asked.
“Ya, sure is.”
“I’ve heard of it. A friend of mine once told me about it.” He refrained from mentioning his association with Daniel and the Amish in central Illinois. There was so much emotion attached to his experiences there, to bring it up so flippantly would be almost blasphemous.
As Aiden wished them both goodbye and turned to leave, he overheard the Amish man speak Pennsylvania German with the young store clerk. Aiden then realized that the clerk, too, was Amish. His peculiar way of speaking became clear. Walking to his car, he gazed through the store window and recognized the clerk’s attire, which hadn’t stood out to him until that moment. He was dressed identically to the other Amish man; his Amish straw hat hung on a hook next to a medical marijuana dispenser behind the counter.
Driving to the park, he wondered if he was ever going to be able to get away from the Amish and put Daniel solidly in his past.
An hour later, Aiden checked in with the Apgar Visitor Center. The park ranger handed him his backcountry permit, which Aiden had reserved online the day before he left Maryland. The ranger also gave him a bear-proof canister, mandatory for all backcountry use.
“You picked a good trail to hike,” the military looking ranger about Aiden’s age said. “It’s about the only trail clear of snow. South facing most of the way. We’ve had a lot of snow this spring.”
“I heard. You think I’ll need snowshoes?”
“You’ll be okay. You might hit one or two snowfields once you get above eight thousand feet, but it shouldn’t be too deep.”
“That’s great,” Aiden said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Now be careful out there by yourself.” The ranger winked. “Make sure to make lots of noise to scare away the bears and cougars.”
That ranger was kind of cute, Aiden mused as he drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road to his trailhead. He took in all the wondrous sights along the way, feeling better about his adventure. To his left the oblong Lake McDonald, reflecting the verdant conifers and the towering mountains, most with snow still on their craggy peaks, stretched for several miles until edging against Lake McDonald Lodge. Past the lodge the road paralleled McDonald Creek. The creek gurgled with frothy white water and tea-green glacial silt that cut deep into the steely bedrock. Just before heading down his trailhead turnoff, he spotted a black bear’s rump as it grew smaller through a cluster of red alder bushes.
Aiden could hardly believe he was actually here, inside Glacier National Park. He had made his dream come true—or at least partly. He was on his way, anyhow, surrounded by some of the most pristine and vast wilderness in the contiguous United States. There were no other cars parked at the Packers Roost trailhead, so he figured he would be alone on his chosen twenty-two-mile loop trail. It was still early in the season, and the bulk of the park’s visitors wouldn’t be filling the trails and campsites until closer to the Summer Solstice.
After strapping on his seventy-pound backpack, astutely filled with all his gear, including the bear canister the solicitous ranger had given him, he signed the register at the kiosk that had important information about the backcountry: wildlife facts, fire dangers, grizzly and cougar warnings. Consulting his topo map, he traced with his finger the route for his first day’s hike. Because he knew he would be arriving at the park late his first day, he had reserved his first of three backcountry campsites only five miles from the trailhead. He wanted to make sure he still had ample daylight to set up camp. He tucked the map inside the hip pocket of his convertible hiking pants and set off for his first-time solo backpacking excursion. Curious white-tailed deer nibbling on leftover stock hay at the trailhead eyeballed him as he made his way alone into the forest.
There was a chill in the air, but soon the sun beaming through the hemlocks and firs and the healthy body heat he worked up warmed him. Nearly four years had lapsed since his last backpacking trip, but it was much like riding a bicycle. A mere few hundred yards into the trail and his muscle memory recalled every terrain he had ever traversed. The crush of earth under the weight of his sturdy hiking boots gave him a sense of verve. He inhaled, breathing in all the invigorating aromas of the forest.
He wasn’t really afraid of running into bears or cougars. Glacier, he knew, had a reputation for such encounters. But even so the chances were low. He had a higher probability of drowning or falling off a cliff—or running into the handsome ranger. Still, he heeded the thoughtful ranger’s advice. Over and over he crooned an old tune he remembered from grade school: On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed….
Within two hours he arrived at his first campsite, nestled in a small meadow surrounded by conifers. Solitude engulfed him. Hemlocks and firs and the occasional osprey yelping like a lap dog in the sky were his only eavesdroppers.
Like any good backpacker, he first set up his two-man tent (the same one he had used with Conrad), tossing in all his sleeping gear and releasing his zero-degree sleeping bag from its stuff sack so that it would regain its plumpness before bedtime. His tent erected, he cooked supper in the meal preparation area with the water he pumped from a nearby pebble-strewn stream using his state of the art micro-filter.
Dinner consisted of freeze-dried lasagna with meat sauce along with oatmeal cookies for dessert and a cup of hot green tea. He cleaned his dinnerware using biodegradable soap and stored all his food, toiletries, cookware, and garbage in the bear canister. He tucked the canister inside his backpack and rigged a urethane-coated suspension cord over a sturdy cottonwood branch and fastened it to his pack. When ready for bed, he would be able to easily hoist it up out of the reach of bears.
Before it became too dark, he collected several armfuls of dead dry white pine from the forest floor and formed a fire tepee in the designated fire pit around strips of newspaper he’d packed in. He was certain his fire tepee would have earned respect from the most ardent Scoutmaster.
Finished with his camp chores, he at last sat on a log by the fire pit and rested. As his body temperature dropped, a chill swept through him. He slipped on the woolen sweater tied around his waist. A mountain cottontail hopped into view from behind pinegrass. Noticing Aiden, it turned and scampered for a patch of alders. Aiden chuckled, then flushed like a dejected suitor, a reoccurring feeling lately. Somewhere a badger let loose a squeal so strident it made Aiden jump.
As the forest dimmed, he brought his knees to his chest and hug
ged himself. The first real stab of loneliness pierced him. Why, out here in the Montana backcountry, a place he was hoping to call home, did he feel so alone, so much like an intruder?
The sky, with the passing of evening twilight, turned pitch-black. Multifarious stars, more than he’d ever seen, emerged in the sky above the tree crowns. Darkness loomed everywhere. He set a match to his fire tepee, and soon orange flames leaped from the hissing wood and crackling sparks disappeared past the shadowy conifer branches.
With the waning full moon rising higher in the sky bringing out more murky shadows, the uncertainty of his life took on a new reality. If he didn’t belong here, then where did he belong? For a long time he stared into the flames, his thoughts like smoldering embers. The smoke stung his eyes whenever the breeze shifted. He didn’t mind. He liked it. The discomfort allowed his mind to focus on more corporeal things.
The heat on his face soon tired him. He doused the flames with his urine and hoisted his backpack up the cottonwood branch, securing the rope to an opposite tree to make sure no crafty bear could loosen it. Sighing, he climbed inside his tent for needed sleep.
Next morning he awoke to the sound of distant elk mooing. He ate a hasty breakfast of oatmeal, granola, and hot tea to fight off the morning chill, and quickly broke camp so he could get on the trail and get his blood pumping. With the rising sun warm on his naked calves, he hiked farther up the Livingston Range. Steam rose off the forest floor and the dew on the trees glistened as the sun lifted higher over the mountain peaks.
By late morning, he reached tree-line. Shortly after, he came to his first snowfield. He zipped on his pants legs and carefully traversed the sloping mass of snow, about fifty yards wide. The snow at times reached to his hips. With only a few stumbles, he made his way through.
Hungry after the arduous climb, he rested by a boulder for a lunch of granola bars and several handfuls of gorp and drank from the icy glacial water he had pumped from a nearby stream. He continued his climb and came to a vast alpine meadow where yellow glacier lily, lavender lupine, and pink monkey flower revealed their first shoots.
A herd of Bighorn sheep grazed upslope. They seemed unaware of the backpacker. Amazed, Aiden took several snapshots using his digital camera, already stored with more than two hundred photographs of his journey from Maryland. The sheep leisurely munched on lichen and lupine. About one hundred yards downslope, a wolverine stood tall on its hind legs and gawked at Aiden. It must’ve realized Aiden was human and raced off into the nearby alders before Aiden could snap a photo.
He switchbacked to the ridgeline and caught his first glimpse of the massive blue glaciers that give the park its name. He hiked alongside this showcase for the remainder of the day. By late afternoon, he made his way into his second campsite.
Alone again, he set up camp under a canopy of red cedars, snacked on more granola and gorp, strung up his backpack away from bears and other opportunistic animals. Still early, with plenty of afternoon sunlight left, he decided to take a side trail that led to what he recognized from his topo map as an old abandoned fire tower. Without his heavy seventy-pound pack weighing him down, the steady switchback climb up the side trail was easy. In thirty minutes he made it to the base of the lookout tower.
His lungs filled with fresh blood, he scampered up the rock face to the stone tower, stationed directly on the ridgeline of the Western Continental Divide. From the tower steps he could see the thin ribbons of waterfalls twisting down from the distant mountain crags where glaciers silently and sluggishly pushed downslope, and the dozens of glacial lakes that had punctured tiny holes into the verdant alpine valleys.
As he circled the tower, snapping many pictures of the impressive three-hundred-sixty degree view, he noticed the tower had been vandalized, but nothing severe. Remnants of recent hikers were visible. A broken window where someone had tried to gain entrance into the tower disquieted him, so he headed down to the high rock overlook below the tower.
He sat on a large outcropping looking west and took in the waves of green masses of hemlocks, cedars, and aspens. The talus slope swept about fifty yards to the forest edge where the lookout trail headed toward his camp, then swept back up to the purple crags and eventually down to Mineral Creek. Chilled, he pulled on his woolen sweater.
Meadowlarks and swallows twittered flirtatiously in the pines. An osprey circled overhead against the periwinkle sky, its bark echoing through the forest. He could hear a woodpecker somewhere, its erratic drilling filling the intermittent void of sound. He stared, silent, absorbing all the raw beauty that nature had to give.
For the first time since he was a boy, he prayed.
He did not drop to his knees or fold his hands. He simply prayed. There was no forethought; the prayers just came. They flowed from him as naturally as the rhythms of the wilderness, as naturally as the run of the streams and glaciers and the wind. As naturally as his own blood flow.
He prayed for his parents; he prayed for the Schrocks and all those he knew in Maryland and Illinois; he prayed for Daniel.
He prayed for himself.
Tucked in his prayers, the world seemed to open up, inviting him in. There, sitting on that outcropping with a view of the endless span of wilderness, he experienced a oneness with nature, with the universe… with God. All that mattered at that moment was to just live, breathe, allow the boundless mysteries of the universe to flow through him.
A rustling noise to his right made him jerk up. A mountain goat, no more than eight feet away, straddled the outcropping. The hoary goat sidled closer to Aiden. The animal seemed completely at peace with Aiden’s being there, its black eyes full of tranquility. It stared at the scene with him, as if they were old friends. Aiden breathed in the air, his head light. He too felt a sense of kinship and peace, sharing a moment with the animal, as if they were the only two living creatures left on the entire planet.
Aiden stayed as long as the goat did—nearly a half hour. When the goat tired and wandered farther down the talus slope, glancing up at Aiden as if to say “farewell” before leaping nimbly off the slope and into the alpine forest, Aiden hiked back to camp.
On his way down he passed a small group of day hikers. They exchanged greetings and nodded pleasantly as they passed. They were the first people he’d seen since he’d left the visitor center at Apgar yesterday afternoon.
When he reached camp, he noticed another backpacker had claimed one of the other campsites. He was napping against his bulky pack leaning against a red cedar. Things are starting to pick up, he thought with a grin.
Aiden lowered his pack from the tree and began preparing supper, Thai chicken with rice, when the napping backpacker casually strolled up to him.
“How you been?”
Aiden turned, startled. He nearly knocked over his butane stove that sat on a flat outcropping. He widened his eyes, scrutinizing the man who stood about five yards away. The man, over six feet, with a military-style buzz cut, had dark eyes that seemed to penetrate everything. His thick lips were supported by a fiercely rigid jaw line. In his hiking pants and flannel shirt, he looked like a combination commando-lumberjack.
Aiden remembered running into such men while hiking trails back east with Conrad. Sometimes these men spent so much time out in the backcountry they forgot normal social protocol. They would come across as uncomfortably familiar and hyper-gregarious—and sometimes aggressively territorial. The last thing Aiden wanted was to stir up trouble with one of those types.
Keeping his cool, he put on his best friendly face. “I just came from the fire tower,” he said, twitching a smile. Hoping to convey a subtle warning, he added, “There’re some more people up there. They should be along any minute.”
The man stared at Aiden with a knowing smile, one that suggested he harbored no fear of either Aiden or the group up at the tower.
All of a sudden, he threw his head back and laughed.
Aiden stiffened. Instinctively, he took a step back and scanned the ground for
some kind of weapon. All was fair when it came to survival in the backcountry. Gawking at the laughing stranger, the subtle whiff of recognition slowly enveloped him, as if he had sluggishly awakened from an itchy nap. “Daniel?”
“Ach, you recognize me after all,” he said, easing his laughter.
“It can’t be. How… how is this happening?”
“It’s happening; believe it.”
“How… how did you get here?”
“Same way you did.” Daniel chuckled. “On the loop trail, from the Packers Roost trailhead.”
Aiden stared, wordless. Daniel was standing before him. In the middle of the Montana backcountry. He looked so different. His moustacheless beard had been completely shaved, leaving a taut jaw line, nearly three shades lighter than the rest of his face since it had been covered from the sun for so long. Gone too was his thick bowl cut. His new military cut accentuated his strong, masculine features.
“You… you look so different,” Aiden said. So different, yet the closer Aiden studied him the more unmistakably he was all Daniel. Those dark coffee-brown eyes, firm nose, protruding lips… all Daniel’s. Taking a nervous step forward, Aiden noticed a faint scar on his forehead where Daniel had received the sixteen stitches from his buggy accident six months before.
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