Not a Happy Camper (15 page)

I tried to be subtle as I declared to Kenny, “I'm outdoorsy.”

“No, that's not it,” he said. “Oh, it's because I'm standing above you. You don't look so tall.”

I should have stuffed my bra.

Rather than dwell on how far away and unachievable my ultimate goal remained, I focused on climbing each individual stone, one at a time, the way baseball managers tell their players to go for singles and not homeruns. And although I was a part of a group, within a short time I envisioned myself alone, falling into a trance-like state, pulling myself up rock after rock. It went on like this until the climb began to feel effortless, as if I could go on this way indefinitely. And then, about forty-five minutes later, the spell was broken when half a dozen nuns in full habits and Converse sneakers pushed past us, mumbling something about how slowly we were moving. Shortly after that, we reached flat ground.

“Are we there yet?” Mindy Plotke asked, running out of breath.

“Yes,” Kenny replied, “we've reached the top of the Lower Cathedral.”

“Lower? You mean there are
two?
” El Mosquito asked in shock.

“No,” said Kenny. “Three. Lower, Middle and Upper Cathedral.”

There are times in your life when you just don't want to accept what you know is true, like the Beatles breaking up or your first cell phone bill.

“And then?” Julie asked hopefully.

“And then we begin our ascent to the top.”

This was one of those times.

“Am I the only one who wants to be here?” Kenny asked.

No one answered.

“Okay, I know you said there's no place to refill our canteens,” Dana noted, “but do you think we might pass a soda machine?”

We were well above the tree line and could feel the air getting thinner. As we advanced, Mindy Plotke fell farther and farther behind. Kenny suggested she climb up front with him so he could keep an eye on her, and I spent the next three hours and two cathedrals reaching the tops of boulders only to catch a glimpse of Miss Plotke's tiny butt. This meant Keith Fernbach, behind me, was spending the day watching my larger derriere breaking in Stacie's Levi's and I was thankful she'd let me ink out the waist size on the back tag.

“All we have to do now,” Kenny told us at the top of the trail, “is take the Cathedral cut-off, cross the boulder field to Saddle Trail and then go up to the top.”

“And then get back down,” Julie groaned.

By early afternoon we saw it—Baxter Peak. The highest point in Maine was just a quarter mile away. But like Dorothy and friends who could see the Emerald City yet struggled across the poppy field, the last part of our journey was the toughest. There were no more boulders to wrestle, just tiny little shards of rock to cross that made your ankles twist and turn and feel like they were breaking with each step. Everyone but Kenny slipped and tripped on the loose rocks, whining all the way that we'd never get there. Then inspiration came. I'd like to say it was in the form of the six nuns on their way back down who shouted, “You can do it, kids,” but it was really the group that came down after them. A bunch of eight-year-olds in open-toed sandals were pointing and snickering in a foreign language. Though it was not English, the translation was obvious: “wimps.” When we
reached the top, Kenny called out “Lunch!” and dumped out the backpack. It was full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the ones we'd refused on yesterday's van ride. This time, we ate them.

I was the only one in the group who felt compelled to climb the thirteen-foot rock pile.

“Doesn't anybody else want to say they did it?” I asked.

“Bloody hell, we just climbed a whole mountain,” sighed Keith. “Isn't that enough?”

“Want me to take a picture?” Dana offered.

The view from the top of Maine should have been astounding, but when I looked out, I couldn't see a thing. A cloud had blown over the peak. Kenny hadn't read us the part of the booklet detailing the mountain's sudden climate changes, hazardous conditions and the numbers of people who'd met their deaths on Baxter Peak. At someone's suggestion, we stood still until it passed, giggling in the dense, wet fog. Julie, who couldn't see her hand in front of her face, became giddy and broke into a chorus of
I Can See Clearly Now
. The cloud passed after a few minutes and more pictures were taken.

“Maybe you should take a rock from the pile as a souvenir,” Dana called out as I climbed down.

This seemed like a good idea. Maybe I'd take two, one for me and one for Hallie. Flat ones for our noses.

“What're you telling her?” Kenny asked in horror. “You can't take them. This is a national park. You can't take anything.”

“Oh, I didn't...” I stammered.

“That pile's been there since, like, 1900. If everybody who climbed up here took one, it wouldn't be here anymore,” Kenny scolded. “I swear, you girls'll ruin this mountain for everyone.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't know.”

Kenny saw me toss the rocks back, gave a satisfied look and said, “That's better,” which I interpreted as forgiveness because I
needed to believe he'd forgiven me. What he didn't see was that as soon as he turned away, Dana made a face at him, retrieved two rocks and tucked them into my canteen pouch. I let them stay there.

Had I paid any attention thus far this summer to my fellow campers' tales of Katahdin, I would have known that, after reaching Baxter Peak, you don't just turn around and go back down. Instead, we would now follow the trail connecting Baxter Peak with Pamola Peak, which required crossing the notorious mile-and-a-half Knife Edge trail.

“This part's a little treacherous,” Kenny warned us.

I didn't see what the big deal was. Yes, if you fell off it was a steep drop of a few thousand feet, but it didn't seem like a problem since the path was easily thirty feet wide—until you reached the part where it was just three feet across and the footing only half of that. Everyone stopped and looked down.

“Isn't this the cliff Wile E. Coyote keeps falling off in the Road Runner cartoons?” I asked.

Julie Printz, long since retired as our leader, screamed.

“What?” I said. “It's just a cartoon. He doesn't die.”

This was when we found out why Julie had enjoyed the cloud cover on Baxter Peak. With the exception of the escalators at Bloomingdale's, she was terrified of heights.

“I thought this trip would help me get over it,” she whimpered, frozen in her tracks. “You know, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?”

“And how are you feeling now?” El Mosquito asked.

“Not stronger,” was her quiet reply.

“Oh, come on, it's no big deal. It's not like there's bees,” Dana said and literally skipped across.

Keith Fernbach was next to traverse the narrow section, screaming his signature catch phrase. As the rest of us followed, we each
momentarily became British, yelling out, “Bloody hell!” until we'd crossed to where the trail widened out again. All of us, that is, except Julie, who was now down on her hands and knees.

“What if I crawl across?” she asked, hyperventilating.

Kenny held his hands out in front of him, making a quick measurement of Julie's body width.

“Wouldn't try it,” he said. “Right over the side if the wind blows.”

“You're not helping,” Dana snapped.

Julie was sobbing now, but I was pleased. Pleased that Dana and Kenny were not getting along.

“Isn't she, like, the counselor?” El Mosquito asked.

“Okay, that's it,” Kenny announced. “We've gotta go back.”

“No! No!” Julie called out. “If I don't get over it now, I'll be afraid my whole life! I have to do this!”

“I can do this, I can do this,” became her new mantra. She was the new Little Engine That Could. Only she couldn't, and what should have been a five-hour hike down the mountain began to feel as miscalculated as Gilligan's three-hour tour. Other groups of hikers excused themselves and walked around Julie.

“I know I can do this,” Julie told herself aloud.

“Yeah, okay, but when?” was Kenny's impatient response.

It looked as though things might get ugly until Dana came up with the musical answer: “She'll be comin' ‘round the mountain when she comes,” she sang and was immediately joined by everyone else, except for me.

We probably should have been coming up with words of encouragement for Julie, but it was more fun to come up with songs that contained the word “mountain” and the group segued into
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
followed by
Rocky Mountain High
.

“What are you doing?” Kenny screamed.

“Can't help it, pal,” Dana shouted back. “The hills are alive.”

Dana spun around in circles, giddy, reprising Borscha Belyavsky's Russian-accented version of
Climb Ev'ry Mountain
as Kenny stalked off some twenty feet, turned his back to us and sat down on a rock.

This left me in a hard place. I could go to him or I could stay with the group—and sing. With the altitude as an excuse for my limited vocal range, I dug deep down and helped belt out
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
,
On Top of Spaghetti
(which, we found out too late, does not contain the word “mountain”) and finally, the Kin-A-Hurra attempt at a soulful version of
Ain't No Mountain High Enough
.

Julie, calling out to us, still hadn't moved, but the rest of us were rocking. As we faux-Motown danced along the ridge, the sun went down on our second day at Katahdin. All of the other hikers were long gone by now.

Julie grew calmer in the dark. As it turned out, since she could no longer see the drop, her fear of heights receded. “If we'd known,” I said, “we could've blindfolded her hours ago and been done by now.”

When she finally walked across the Knife Edge and rejoined the rest of the group, we applauded her performance, hugged and broke into
Taps
.

“Day is done

Gone the sun...”

Kenny shined his flashlight our way. “Might want to save it,” he barked. “Be a good idea to get down before the temperature drops below freezing.”

We soon learned that aside from the freezing temperatures, a good reason not to climb at night is that you can't see the markers on the trail. Even with all of our flashlights on, there was a chance we might end up stranded or worse. We chose “worse.”

“I think I'm slipping...”

“What? Mindy, you say something?” El Mosquito asked.

“I said I think I'm-”

And that was the last we heard from Mindy Plotke.

I'm pretty sure we were off the beaten path when she slid on loose gravel, knocked over El Mosquito and then tumbled some thirty feet, fracturing her ankle and bumping her head on a rock before disappearing into the brush.

Kenny was an Eagle Scout, sort of, and I was certain he'd know what to do. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close. It seemed like an odd time for a first kiss. “What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” he yelled frantically.

Julie grabbed Kenny, pulled the first aid kit from his backpack and then went looking for our missing camper. I peered down the trail, not knowing what I was looking for, but found it anyway. We were a mere hundred yards from the Rangers' Station and one of the rangers was running uphill toward us. Seems we'd been reported missing hours earlier. Ranger Bob radioed for an ambulance and Mindy P., who'd landed nearby, came to shortly after the paramedics arrived.

“Well,” said Dana as the flashing lights and siren signaled the debate team captain's departure, “this was memorable. I can see why everyone makes a point of signing up for this swell trip.”

Most of the other campers fell asleep as soon as we hit the road and the trip back to camp was fairly quiet. It was dark in the van and somewhere around the town of Hinckley, I thought about slipping out of Stacie's stiff pants, only to realize that they were now fully broken in. Soft and comfortable, the best pants I'd ever worn, and tomorrow I would have to give them back.

“Mindy,” someone whispered in my direction.

It was Kenny, scrambling over a sleeping camper to sit by my side.

“You know, you did pretty good up there.”

“I did? You think?”

“You're a good climber. And you stayed really calm. You know, at the end there.”

“Yeah, well and you...” I stopped myself.

Kenny looked sheepish. “Guess the pressure of the responsibility got to me a little.”

Kenny Uber was confiding in me, admitting he wasn't perfect. This could be progress. This could be promising.

I had to ask. “You still mad Dana came along? You still like her?”

“That witch with a B? No way. You wish Philip had come?”

“Philip?”

“He's your boyfriend, isn't he?”

“For like a day. It's nothing. It doesn't count,” I told him, then worried that maybe I should have stuck with the hard-to-get routine.

“So, can you believe Jim called this ‘a fine little hike'?” Kenny laughed. “I'll have to have a talk with him.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, could you do me a favor?” Kenny asked.

“Okay.”

“About what happened back there? You don't have to tell anyone. I'm sure Dana will, but you could deny it.”

Of course I would, because he still had his pride and I still had my hopes up. I was head over heels, though not literally like Mindy Plotke, and Kenny was starting to see me as a friend. Climbing the mountain had not been a waste of time, for in the process, I had jumped a small hurdle.

Oh, and I got to sing.

to the tune of
Oom-pah-pah
from the musical
Oliver!

“

That's how it goes,
When you hear the Green Truck
Go down the road
Carbon monoxide goes right up your nose
When you hear ”