Backwater (8 page)

“That’s a rough one to cross,” said a male voice.

I looked up as a medium-sized male, about eighteen, with a few days growth of beard and wearing a bold blue arctic parka walked toward me. He had brown eyes that crackled with intelligence. He had an eclipsing smile and dark curly hair. He was smiling at me now. As I began to grin back I realized I looked worse than any other time in my life. A person who didn’t know me might think I’d been raised by wolves.

“I’m Jack Lowden.”

“Ivy Breedlove. I don’t usually look like this.”

“You look like you’re having quite a time.”

I grinned adventurously. I was now.

“Are you headed toward the summit?”

“I’m sure we are.”

If we weren’t, we should be.

“You can come with us for a stretch if you want,” Mountain Mama said to him.

“I’ll hike with you a while,” Jack said. “I’ve been out here two days solo.”

He said
solo
like he wasn’t having fun.

“You’re the first people I’ve seen,” Jack muttered.

We crunched along in the snow. Walking with Jack gave me more energy. He walked lightly over the snow with an easy gait, hopped quickly over snow-covered rocks.

“I’ve got four more days to go,” Jack told us. “I’m doing this for my outdoor survival course—extra credit.”

Mountain Mama asked him if he’d just started at the local ranger college.

He bit his lip. “I guess it shows, huh?”

“Lucky guess,” she said.

“I’m trying to figure things out,” he said.

“Mountains are the best place to do that,” Mama offered.

“I’m trying to figure out if I should be a ranger. I’ve always wanted to be one, I …” he trailed off.

Mountain Mama said rangers aren’t born, they’re made.

Jack said he was counting on that. I waited, but he didn’t explain. Mountain Mama forged ahead, which I thought was insensitive. It was clear that Jack needed company and understanding. Jack saw my
NO YIELD
button and laughed.

“She put it on me,” I said. “I haven’t got the hang of the sentiment yet.”

“Where you heading?”

I told him about Josephine—how we were going to find her, how I was afraid of what I’d find, what I’d learn.

Jack said I was brave to go over that ledge.

“I’m not brave,” I assured him. “I was terrified every second. You’re brave to be staying in the mountains alone for so long.”

“I need the extra credit,” he said quietly.

Don’t we all.

“You need a B-minus average to stay in the program,” he explained.

I thought it should be an A-minus. Rangers are supposed to know what they’re doing. Lives are at stake.

“I got a D in Search and Rescue.”

“What happened?”

Jack looked down. “Every person I tried to rescue died.”

I backed off. “That’s awful!”

“They weren’t real people, they were dummies to learn on. But I either got there too slowly or administered the wrong first aid. I’d get so nervous, I’d mess up. I did great in Flora and Fauna, Orienteering, and Wild Animals of the Far North.”

“That’s something,” I said.

You don’t think about these things when you see a ranger. They should have their grade point average sewn on their sleeves so the public would see their strengths and weaknesses. If I need to be rescued, I want the person who aced the course, not the goof-up who sailed paper airplanes in the back of the room.

We kept walking, crunching snow beneath our boots.

Poor Jack.

Most guys have so much bravado about all the things they do well. Here was an honest one who was acquainted with his weaknesses and not afraid to talk about them.

“They weed us out in the first year,” Jack said slowly. “That’s why I need the extra credit.”

“I’m sure you’ll make it,” I said.

Jack shouldered his pack. This was a male you could trust—unless you needed searching or rescuing.

We parted company with Jack mid-afternoon when we began to make camp half way up the mountain ridge. I gave him three Hershey bars with almonds, which meant I had only seventeen left.

“It was really great meeting you, Ivy. I hope everything goes well with you and your aunt.”

My heart sank as he shouldered his pack and hiked off into the black wilderness to face his true self amid the jagged jaws of death.

The one decent male I’ve met all year and he needs extra credit because he almost flunked Search and Rescue.

Octavia has much better dating luck than me. It helps that she isn’t as fussy. Octavia tries to see the good in all mankind, which is one of the things I appreciate about her, but it clouds her vision for boyfriends. Her recent flame is Gib Palumbra, an insolent, unappreciative clarinet player who walks around school with a clarinet reed in his teeth.

There should be a place in the wilderness for sensitive
rangers who can walk the trails and pat the flora and fauna. Other more caustic rangers could do the searching and rescuing.

How much rescuing did a ranger have to do anyway?

Mountain Mama clapped her hands, breaking my reverie.

“The perfect campsite, Breedlove, is on level, sheltered ground with as little wind as possible.”

“Got it.”

I hoped Jack knew this. I don’t know how his grades were in Making Camp. Maybe he hadn’t even taken that yet!

We put on snowshoes and walked around the campsite packing down the area where we would put up the tent. Mama showed me how to erect the cooking platform, which was basically a raised table of snow to break the wind around the stove. Even though we had some water left, she told me to light up the small gas stove and start melting snow for drinking water. This was trickier than it sounded, beginning with getting the stove to light. My hands were freezing and pumping canned gas into the stove tank to light was close to impossible. When I finally got a flame, it took three pots of melted snow to get a half glass of water and when I complained about it, I got another of Mountain Mama’s outdoor precepts for living.

“The wilderness teaches patience, Breedlove.”

I massaged my half-raw fingers and said I’d noticed that. Then I “established” the latrine, which is a nice way of saying I found a windless place where we could go to the bathroom and bury our labors deep in the frozen terrain—the burying
part required an ice pick. Going to the bathroom outside in the middle of winter makes you think about life in a new way.

I was sick of being cold. Mountain Mama pulled out a slab of deer jerky, sliced off a hunk with her knife, threw it to me. I held it, recalling Bambi. But hunger rules all. My stomach growled. I ripped the jerky apart with my terrifying teeth. It was good, salty.

Bye-bye Bambi.

“I give that young man real credit for facing his weaknesses,” Mountain Mama said.

“I hope his teachers do.”

“The wilderness has a way of separating people, Breedlove. It’s a life that demands two things of everyone: toughness and truth.”

She sliced another hunk of jerky.

“I guess you’ve seen a lot of people who can handle it and who can’t.”

“I’ve seen my share.” Mountain Mama looked off sternly into the distance. “I’ll tell you what frosts my shorts, Breedlove. It’s when smart, strong women convince themselves they’re not tough enough to try.”

I made a mental note to not do that in her presence.

Mama wiped her knife blade with a rag. “My mother was afraid of adventure. My father and I would go off on climbs and she’d sit home. We’d come back and tell her she could do it, too—she could climb a mountain, pitch a tent and listen to the forest sing her to sleep. Pop and I would tell our stories about the bears we’d seen or the coyotes we’d heard howl
and my mother would get angry that we’d gone, angrier still that we’d enjoyed ourselves, and downright hostile that we loved something she thought was stupid. She left us because of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Life is tough, Breedlove.”

“I know, but that had to be so hard for you.”

“I’ll tell you what. I vowed to not let women give up like she did. There’s more wilderness in most women than anyone realizes.”

She spat in the snow.

“Are you going to say that in your book?”

“I’m going to shout it.”

Mountain Mama slapped more jerky in my glove, marched to her pack, and started unfolding the tent.

“Let me help, Mama.”

She waved me off.

I guess everyone’s got a deep hurt somewhere.

I went over and helped her put up the tent anyway—pounded the special snow stakes deep into the ground. Mountain Mama said without snow stakes, a strong winter wind could send the tent sailing.

I was cold and tired as we made the rice and beans and ate raisins and cheese.

I thought we had night in the suburbs, but there’s always something you can see. In the mountains, night is serious. Everything is. I felt small and big at the same time.

Mountain Mama told me about how her father took her
hiking as soon as she could walk. She did her first solo overnight camp-out at eight years of age.

“I just always loved it out here, Breedlove. Always felt more like myself than at any other moment.”

“Why do you love it, Mama?”

“It’s taught me to not be afraid of the unknown—that’s my definition of what makes a person free.”

*    *    *

I had trouble sleeping even though I was exhausted. It didn’t help that I had two bottles of drinking water in the bag with me—this kept the water from freezing.

I pictured marauding wild animals tearing apart our tent.

Thought of falling off the mountain.

Thought of something happening to Mountain Mama and how I would be left alone to die slowly.

I thought about Jack, remembering his smile.

I thought of Josephine in a cave with hair down to her ankles.

I thought of the ancestral clan moving west from New Hampshire to New York, settling in Farmington by the river, not for the view as much as for the soft green grass on the bank. Comfort Breedlove, pregnant with her ninth child in as many years, sat down by the shores of the Blue Mountain River and said that was it; she wasn’t going any further.

“Thou canst ride the wagon over my bones and slay me if thou must,” she is reported to have told her husband, “but I canst not find it within myself to journey further.” And she lay down and had her baby. Breedlove women were always opinionated.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go farther.

I felt the wilderness wrap around me in frigid darkness.

Somehow, I fell asleep.

*    *    *

“Hut, two, Breedlove, we’re moving out.”

A hand slapped my sleeping bag. I was still in it. I moved inside my warm bag, opened one eye at the pitch black and groaned.

Mountain Mama was a study in enthusiasm, rolling up her bag, putting supplies in her pack.

“What time is it?” I muttered.

“Five
A.M.
, Breedlove. I’ll get the fire ready for breakfast.” Mountain Mama crawled out of the tent.

“Five a.m.?”

“I let you sleep late.”

I struggled from my bag. It was impossibly cold. My breath looked like cigar smoke. I put on extra layers, zippered on my coat, threw on a wool cap.

I thought of my female ancestors slaving over the pot and kettle, getting up before dawn to prepare breakfast for the family, spinning yarn, making the coarse fabric called “homespun.” Women had to keep the fire going in the big open fireplaces. Everything they did took time, strength, and patience.

If they could do it, so could I.

I broke down the tent; the stakes had frozen into the ground at night. I took a pick axe, starting chipping away, yanked the first one up.

Got two more stakes free.

The wind picked up and moved under the tent, which ballooned with the air.

“You in control, Breedlove?”

“Maybe.”

I yanked out the last stake, sat on the tent until it lay flat and began the folding process. Mountain Mama helped me.

We had oatmeal and raisins and Hershey bars for breakfast as sunlight broke through the trees, beaming down on us with warmth.

We left that campsite clean like we’d found it, embracing the rule of the wild and chapter twelve—
Leave Nothing Behind But Your Footprints.

I looked to the high peak that gleamed in the early-morning sun.

Josephine was there.

I felt excitement and fear grinding in my heart.

“We’re moving out,” Mountain Mama shouted. I shouldered my pack on my very sore back and headed toward her.

“Anybody here need rescuing?”

I looked up as Jack walked toward me, grinning ruggedly.

Instantly my back was healed; my heart spun like a top.

“Can I walk with you guys a bit?”

I handed him a Hershey bar with almonds from my front pocket. He broke it in half, and handed half back to me.

When we don’t have the words, chocolate can speak volumes.

Mountain Mama waved her arm forward like a marine sergeant mustering the troops to take a hill. Jack fell in behind me, and off we marched into the vast unknown.

We had hiked four hours through the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. Mountain Mama made us stop every hour and eat and drink something because she said in winter hiking particularly, a person needed extra calories. I was thrilled to know it is impossible to overeat in the mountains.

My thighs were in agony from walking in the snow, but somehow I kept moving. With every hour, we were closer to Josephine.

We stopped by a large rock formation jutting out to a snowy cliff and looked across to the huge gray sky and distant peaks. I felt like I was on top of the world.

Jack kicked snow at a rock and closed his eyes.

“You all right?” Mama asked him.

No reply.

“Jack?”

Still nothing.

She stepped toward him. “Jack, you need to tell me if you’re—”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“We need to communicate as a team,” she added.

“I know.” He stood by the ledge for the longest time, looking down unhappily. “I messed up on this part of the mountain last spring,” Jack said bitterly. “Didn’t tie my rope right. A friend of mine fell; I couldn’t hold him. He broke his leg and his arm; he was all scratched up and bleeding. Me and another guy carried him down.”