I have to make a decision. Greenleaf Hut is only a mile away. I could go down to it instead of continuing on the trail. It’s warm and safe.
But I said I would see Denver and Sean at the shelter, and that’s what I’m going to do. I tell Moose to follow me, and we set off in the growing darkness.
IT GETS COLDER and colder. Earlier, the wind had been cool and pleasant in the midday sun. Now it feels crueler, carving away at my body’s heat minute by minute, making me squint so my eyes don’t dry out. Without the sun, the mountains feel like they’re turning against me.
This is the first time that I’ve been caught without shelter after sunset. Even snug in bed, I hate the dark. But now, with no protection, anything on the mountain can attack me.
After a half hour, even the dim twilight is gone. Night creeps up around me. All I have is the light of the stars—the moon hasn’t risen yet. I can barely see the trail, and I constantly trip over rocks jutting up from the path that would have been easy to see in daylight.
Coyotes howl in the distance. It sounds like there are dozens of them. I start to panic, thinking about how easy it would be for them to surround me, rip open my pack and eat all my food, then gnaw on my arms for dessert. My breath becomes noisy shallow gulps. Every whoosh of wind, every falling rock that clatters down the mountain makes my heart jump. I swear I can see zombies moving down below.
But then Moose whines, and I know that I can’t freak out. I put a hand on his trembling head. “I’m right here, buddy,” I tell him. I will my voice to be steady. Both of us can’t be scared. One of us has to be brave.
“Zombies can’t climb this high,” I whisper to myself as I descend below the tree line. The trees block out the wind, but they also make it impossible to see more than a couple of feet ahead. The thick dark presses on me from all sides as I trudge along.
I start telling Moose stories to keep my mind from going crazy with fear. “Once upon a time there was a zombie. He saw a nice juicy boy and his dog walking along a mountain and climbed up to eat them. But then a pack of coyotes surrounded the zombie and ate it instead. And the boy and the dog were safe.”
Moose whimpers. I keep on talking, trying to keep both of us from being paralyzed with fright. When I run out of stories, I make up songs. “The dark is stupid; the dark is stuuuuuupid,” I warble. My voice sounds small and tinny.
Moose starts to howl. “My singing isn’t that bad,” I tell him, but he doesn’t stop. I peer into the darkness. I can’t see a thing now. It’s too dangerous to keep going.
I’m doomed.
Toe, your headlamp. It’s Lucas’s voice. In my head, saving my butt once again. Duh. I had forgotten that one of my most important pieces of equipment is sitting in the top pocket of my pack, just waiting to be used. Fear has turned my mind to mush.
Moose is still howling as I dig out my headlamp and pull the strap around my head. Even if I’m bone-tired, as long as I can see my way forward I can make it to the Garfield Ridge Shelter.
Moose is barking now. “Stop making so much noise!” I snap. “I’ll get you more treats when we get to the shelter.” I switch on my light and in the glare of the sudden beam I catch two dark wide-set eyes coming straight at me.
“AAAAAAAHHHH!!!” It hits me all at once—the sharp, musty smell; the coarse-haired, lumbering body; the flash of wet teeth; claws scraping the dirt. I scream again as the bear rises onto its hind legs. It towers over me and Moose, and for a second I think we are both goners.
And then the bear tips onto its back and paws at its eyes. It snorts and shakes its head, then rolls back onto its feet and crashes into the bushes, sniffling and snuffing the entire way.
I’ve scared a bear. My terror drains away, and I start laughing as waves of relief wash over me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Moose. “I swear I will pay more attention to you next time.” In the light of my headlamp, I feed him half the Milk-Bone treats right then and there on the trail.
It is close to midnight by the time we reach the shelter. No one is inside—Sean and Denver must have set up their tent elsewhere. I’m too tired to pitch my own tent, so I lay my sleeping pad onto the wooden floor and curl up in my sleeping bag.
Moose pads wearily into the shelter. He circles a few times before collapsing next to me. He lays his head gently on my chest. I reach out and put my arm across his skinny side. He smells like rotten eggs, but I don’t care.
As I drift off, I make a promise to myself to never again get caught on the trail after dark. If that bear had decided to attack me and Moose, we would have been toast. I would have never finished the trail and kept my vow to Lucas.
And even if it had just been Moose that had gotten hurt, I wouldn’t have known what to do. I don’t know the first thing about treating big injuries on myself, much less a dog. I probably wouldn’t have been able to save him.
I can’t be that irresponsible. I have to protect Moose, and that means being smarter than I was today. I should have swallowed my pride and stayed at the hut instead of charging ahead into the dark. But I wanted to prove to Sean that I could keep up with him, and it had almost ended in disaster.
Moose begins to snore. I smile and give his stinky head one last rub. “Good night, buddy,” I whisper.
That night I have a dream about Lucas. We are standing at the bottom of a waterfall, but there’s no water coming down. Suddenly rivers of clear marbles ribboned with blue cascade off the top of the falls, twinkling bright globes that crack into tiny pieces as they hit the rocks next to us. I feel a wave of grief hit me at all these broken pieces, but when I look at Lucas, he is laughing.
As the shattered marbles pile up, they turn into a river of glittering light, and I realize that even broken things can turn into something beautiful.
When I wake up, for the first time in a long while, I am smiling.
LATE-MORNING LIGHT is pouring into the shelter by the time I open my eyes. Everything aches. Even my hair hurts. I shuffle out of my sleeping bag and walk around, looking for Sean and Denver, but they aren’t there. It’s probably for the best. They’re too fast for me, plus Sean kind of hates me. I shouldn’t be following them, anyway.
But I feel a little sad at the thought of not seeing those two guys again. They saved me from the storm, maybe even saved my life. I realize I never really thanked them for doing that. Even though the chance of our paths crossing is pretty slim, I hope we get to meet one more time so I can tell them how much they helped me.
I return to the shelter and feed Moose a couple of Clif Bars that don’t have chocolate in them, then chow down on two Snickers bars as I look over my map. I need to hike at least ten miles a day if I’m going to finish the trail before school starts. But I want to finish sooner. I’m starting to miss Gran. It’s been a while since there’s been a dog in her house, but she loves them. I can’t wait for her to meet Moose.
I tap my finger on my goal for the day—Ethan Pond Shelter, a little over fifteen miles away. It’s ambitious, especially considering the long night Moose and I had gone through, but I think we can do it. And if it starts getting dark, the terrain looks flat enough in the last couple of miles that I could pitch a tent anywhere along the trail.
After tucking away my map and stuffing my sleeping pad and bag into my backpack, I call to Moose. He comes trotting out of the bushes, ready to go.
First there’s a steep hike that goes down past Galehead Hut. I avoid going into the hut and keep on trekking, passing a family of four slowly making their way up in the opposite direction, and letting a fast-paced group of college-age kids go by me. Beyond the hut, the trail goes straight up. Moose matches me step for step until we come to a smooth granite slab, steep-angled and slick with water. I think it’s no problem until I’m halfway up it and my foot slips. My shin bangs into the rock, and I slide to the bottom of the slab. I try again, being more careful this time. Even using both my hands and feet, I can barely make it up. Moose noses to the right, then to the left of the trail, tr
ying to find an alternate path, but short, thick spruce trees block his way. He whines uneasily.
I drop my pack and scramble down to the base of the slab. I call to Moose. He stiffens when I wrap my arms around his torso, and I wonder if he will let me pick him up. But he does not try to wriggle away. I lift him so he can reach a tiny ledge in the rock about four feet high.
My heart jumps as Moose scrabbles and slips on the nearly vertical rock, but finally his nails hitch on to the rock, and he hauls himself clear. I scramble next to him and pull on my pack, breathing a sigh of relief. We made it. Andy’s lucky marble must be working.
We break above the tree line and summit South Twin and Guyot. Clouds and mist have engulfed the mountains, but as I reach the top of Guyot, the sun parts the clouds like a veil and clears the whole of the White Mountains and beyond. I turn in every direction—north, where I swear I can see Canada; south, toward the Adirondacks of New York; west, to the Franconia Ridge, from where I had come; and east, to Maine.
I’m already feeling stronger. Happier. Like I’m breaking free of my rotten luck back home. “Hey, Lucas,” I whisper. “I wish you were here.”
A gust of wind wraps around my words and blows them out across the mountains. Moose licks my hand, and in that moment, I am convinced that Lucas is here, grinning at the view with me.
Moose and I descend into the trees, and a few miles later we are hopping across small stream crossings. I know the next hut, Zealand Falls, is near when I hear a steady mechanical whirring and see a red-painted well pump handle moving up and down all by itself next to a large drum of a water tank.
The trail spills out next to the hut, which has a stunning view of the valley. There are two weathered front porches, divided by the front of the hut’s dining room, which sticks out in between them. Each porch has a door that leads to the dining room.
I plan on passing by, but as I walk along the trail past the front decks, I hear a loud shout.
I tell Moose to stay, and jog up the steps to one of the hut porches. As I approach the door, I hesitate. Angry words are bulleting out of the hut like rapid machine-gun fire.
My heart jitters into my throat. I don’t want to walk into an argument or a fight. I’m about to turn around and hurry past the hut when six words come sailing out the kitchen, hitting me straight in both ears.
“What am I going to dooooo?”
It is a cry of despair. I need to at least know what is going on. I peer in through the small rectangles of glass on the door but can’t see anything.
I lean over and peek through the front window of the hut. Past the empty dining hall I can see a guy standing in the kitchen, hopping up and down in the middle of a spreading puddle of hacked-up vegetables and soup water. A fallen cooking pot lies sideways under the sinks next to a broken wooden spoon.
As the soup water runs down the wooden floorboards into the dining room, he makes a beeline for a mop in the corner of the kitchen. He picks up the mop just as his foot slips. He goes sailing backward, and his head hits the floor with a thud. “Ow,” he moans.
He needs help. I swallow my shyness and barge into the hut. I drop my pack on a dining room bench and run into the kitchen. It appears as though the cook has given up on the whole situation. He tries to sit up, winces, and decides to lie back on the floor. His Carhartts and red plaid shirt and dirty-blond hair drink up the soup water.
I walk over to his head and peer down. “Hi,” I say.
“Mmf,” he says.
“Do you need help?”
“Nah, I’m good. Just gonna hang out down here and look at the ceiling and count some spiderwebs.” The guy darts his eyes to the corners of the room, but he doesn’t move his head. “Do you see four? I see four.”
I look up. “Yeah, I see four.”
“Good.” The guy rolls slowly onto his side and gingerly pulls himself up to sitting. “Means I don’t have double vision.”
I pick up the fallen mop. “Hey, why don’t you stay there for a second. I’ll take care of this.” The guy doesn’t protest, and I wipe up the soup water, wringing out the mop in a drainage tub underneath a line of dish sinks. The guy goes up a narrow flight of stairs behind the kitchen to change out of his wet clothes while I find a broom and dustpan and sweep up the celery and onions, dumping them in a compost bucket on top of the sink. By the time he comes back down, in a fresh blue T-shirt and jeans, there is barely any evidence that a disaster had taken place.
The guy sticks out his hand. “Hi. I’m Jake. Thanks for helping out.”
“Tony.” I shake Jake’s hand. “How’s your head?”
“Not so great, but I don’t think I have a concussion. I need to get cracking, though. I’m already behind on my cook day.”
“Would you like some help?” I know I should get going, but part of me wants to stay here a while longer. Hiking until midnight the night before is beginning to catch up with me. I can feel exhaustion tugging at my legs and eyelids. Right now, cooking for an hour sounds a lot better than getting back on the trail. Plus, there aren’t any guests in the hut. I don’t feel like I could get found out at any moment. I straighten up and try to look more chef-like. “I’ve been helping my grandma in the kitchen since I was nine.”
Jake furrows his eyebrows. It looks like he’s about to say no, but then he sighs and hands me a cutting board and a knife. “That would be awesome, actually. I would ask another crew member to help, but they all just left for some long day-hikes, and I don’t think any of them are going to be back until dinner. Can you dice onions and celery and carrots?”
I SET UP the cutting board on one of the kitchen counters and get to work while Jake hauls out frozen balls of ham to defrost, then sets a soup pot on one of the stove burners and pours a quart of olive oil into it from a two-gallon jug. He switches on the propane flame, and I dump chopped vegetables into the soup pot when my cutting board fills up. Soon the air is filled with the sounds and smells of hissing, cooking onions. Jake adds some frozen minced garlic, then fills the pot with water, pours in a few gallons of beans, and sets the stove flame low. Before he puts a lid on, he drops a handful of metal spoons into the pot.
“Keeps the soup from burning,” he tells me. “Now we let that simmer until dinner. Meanwhile, want to make some oatmeal honey bread?” Jake digs into the fridge and pulls out a three-pound bag of industrial yeast held closed with a bright green plastic clothespin. He asks me to measure out a half cup of yeast into a large bowl, and then adds a generous dose of honey, a handful of salt, and some carefully measured warm water.
I watch the yeast form little bubbles as it gobbles up the sugar in the honey. My mouth starts to water as the soup’s delicate smells waft through the kitchen. All of a sudden a wave of homesickness hits me. I want to be back in Gran’s kitchen, smelling soup on the stove.
“Hey. You okay?” Jake is looking at me curiously.
I nod. “Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking about how my grandma would have loved this kitchen.”
Jake smiles and pulls out two twenty-gallon rolling bins from underneath a stainless-steel island. One bin contains oatmeal; the other is full of flour. He measures out sixteen cups of flour while I measure out ten cups of oatmeal, and we dump them into the bowl. Jake kneads the dough just until it holds together, then flours the island and upturns the dough onto it. He splits the dough in two pieces and nudges one of them over to me. “And now comes my favorite part of baking,” he announces. “Kneading.”
Jake shows me how to work the dough, sliding his fingers under the bottom of it and lifting and folding it in half, then using the heels of his hands to push the dough back into itself. I can see why he likes it. There is something soothing to the rhythm of kneading, and how a sticky mess of unformed dough, with time and care and patience and work, transforms into a silky round ball.
Once the dough is smooth and elastic, we transfer it back to the bowl and let it rise while we make dessert. Jake decides on chocolate brownies with mint icing. He melts choco
late and butter while I beat together confectioners’ sugar and milk with a dash of peppermint extract. Before long, the brownies are in the oven and we have gone back to the oatmeal honey dough, dividing it into six pieces and tucking them into oiled bread pans.
We let the bread rise a second time while we pull the brownies out of the oven. Once they’re cool, we drizzle the icing over them. After a round of dishes, the bread goes in the oven, the kitchen is shipshape, and Jake and I are ready for a sit-down. Before our break, I go outside to see how Moose is doing. He is fast asleep under the porch. He’s earned a nap. I give him a gentle pat and tiptoe back inside.
Jake leaves out a little bell at the front desk for guests to ding if they need him, and we head upstairs to the crew quarters.
At the top of the steps we reach a dark, tiny landing and duck through a hobbit-sized doorway. Crew rooms are off-limits to guests, and I feel like a VIP as I enter a sunlit room filled with traces of the current crew and crews past. Handwritten notes, photos of people doing handstands on hut roofs at sunset, drawings of elephants on skates and clowns riding unicorns, a poster of Han Solo marked up with pink hearts that float around his face, plus a number of battered road signs only hint at countless stories that the crew have been part of and created over the years.
Jake picks up a Calvin and Hobbes comic book and settles down on the top of a bunk bed, one of five beds in the room. There is a hammock rigged up in the center of the room, and I sink into it.
Lucas would have loved this. He would have been asking a million questions, starting with the pink hearts around Han Solo. I start to ask Jake about the Star Wars poster when something else catches my eye.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a cup of spoons. It is perched below a window that opens up into the dining room and has a few coils of fishing line wrapped around the cup handle.
The Trail Page 6