The Middle of Somewhere (5 page)

L
eaving Lyell Canyon should have been harder than it was. She was loaded down—by her pack, by her guilt, by the heaviness in her heart. But when the river gave up its meandering and shrank to a creek, and the open meadows gave way to the forested slope, Liz felt strong. Her legs had been thick with soreness all morning, but now, in the middle of the afternoon, they were ready to climb again. Maybe she was gaining strength. Maybe her body had given up fighting the commands delivered by her brain. Maybe she was relieved Dante was no longer behind her, pulling her thoughts in his direction, derailing them. Maybe she was happier this way.

Despite the elevation gain, the temperature climbed into the eighties. She mopped sweat from her face with her sleeve and drank a liter and a half of water over the course of five miles. Remembering she could no longer simply filter and drink, she stopped to fill the empty bottle. The tablet would work its magic, and the water would be clean by the time she needed it. It would taste metallic and sour, but those were the breaks.

Switchbacks led her from one side of the mountain to the other and back again, winding through pines standing close, like soldiers amassed for battle. Finally, the trail straightened and the trees thinned. She emerged onto an open slope of low, smooth rock, punctuated by small clusters of trees. A few were snapped off at head height, perhaps by an avalanche. Others had been struck by lightning, charred trunks roughly broken, leaving black fingers pointing at the sky. At nearly ten thousand feet, exposure was a fact of life.

And with it came views. She stopped and gazed across the valley through which she had walked. The canyon floor seemed impossibly far away, and so changed from a few hours before. The mountains had seemed larger when she (and, for a length of it, Dante) had traced their base. Now they were mere hills, the true mountains arising from behind, soon to overshadow the lower ridges as the sun fell. The river was no longer a gently flowing body of water, varied in color and course, but a uniform ribbonlike trace, as an idle child might make in a meadow that could have been sand.

Perspective, she thought, requires distance. And she continued up the trail, which, that day, only went higher.

She arrived at Donahue Lake at four o'clock. She checked the map and considered continuing on to the tiny unnamed lake above this one, but she was too tired and footsore. The emotional and physical exertion of the day had finally caught up to her. Besides, the small, scattered clouds from earlier had coalesced above the mountains. Too risky to climb nearer to them, especially because the higher lake might not afford a protected campsite.

A handful of hikers were already encamped at the lake, including the older couple she and Dante had seen near Tuolumne Meadows early that morning. Liz figured the couple must have passed unnoticed while she and Dante were arguing. She gave them a self-conscious wave as she skirted their site. They were talking and drinking, and lifted metal cups to her in salute. She heard them share a laugh as she proceeded to the east end of the lake. There she found a site with a solid windbreak, and a view of the lake and of the glacier on the north slope of Donahue Peak.

Crouching behind a large boulder, she changed into shorts, then hurried barefoot to the lake edge to wash before the sun lost its strength. The spot appeared to be private, but there might have been occupied sites she hadn't noticed, so she stripped down only to her sports bra. She stifled a scream as she stepped into the nearly frozen water and rubbed the dirt off her legs. She already had a sock tan even though she applied SPF 70 sunscreen several times a day, and her hands bore red patches from the pole straps. As she washed, her feet became numb—a wonderful sensation after a punishing day inside boots. She splashed water under her arms and onto her face and neck, no longer shocked by the cold, but invigorated. It amazed her she could feel so hot and exhausted and burdened one minute, and so refreshed the next. Carrying a backpack up a mountainside was similar to beating your head against a wall.

She was hammering a tent stake in place with a rock when she heard footsteps.

“Hey, Liz.” It was the younger Root brother, Rodell. He wore a hunting jacket over a red wool shirt, and his knitted watch cap met his eyebrows. No Patagonia for him. He carried a dish out in front of him like a collection plate.

“Hi.” She set the rock down and stood.

“I brought you some fish.”

“Fish?”

“Yeah. We had all sorts of luck down in that creek. Too much for just us.” He patted his stomach with his free hand.

She remembered Payton's misdirection and strange looks. Not the sort of people she wanted to be indebted to. But she saw no reason to be rude.

She smelled the trout as she came around the tent, and her mouth filled with saliva. In the dish lay two small orange-fleshed fish, already boned. What had she eaten today? Oatmeal, nuts, a granola bar.

“It smells amazing, but I've got plenty to eat.”

“Dante told us you like trout.”

Her antennae twitched. “You saw him today?”

“Yeah, down in the valley. He told us about his feet.”

She waited for him to elaborate on the conversation.

“This is getting cold.”

Her stomach growled and her hands reached out for the plate before she knew she had decided to take it. “Thanks a lot. Really.”

“You got a fork?”

“Spork.” She picked it up from where she'd left it next to her bowl and cup, showed it to him, and took a bite. “Oh, boy.” The fish tasted of the river itself.

He grinned, showing teeth that hadn't seen braces. “Go on. Finish it. I need my plate for breakfast.”

She took two more bites, then stopped in midchew and fixed her eyes on Rodell. “Did Dante ask you and your brother to look out for me?”

“Look out for you? No. Nothing like that. Can't see why he would, to tell the truth. Any fool can see you can take care of yourself.”

She nodded and went back to her fish. Maybe Dante was right. Maybe these guys were all right after all. She quickly finished, and after she returned the plate and thanked him, he left.

•   •   •

The clouds, it turned out, gathered not for the purpose of producing rain, but for adding drama to the sunset. Liz had brushed her teeth and moved her bear can away from the campsite. Wearing all her warm clothing except her gloves, she sat on a fallen log and watched the world grow dark.

Whatever colors the landscape had lacked during the day—this time of year mostly gray granite, dark green pines and tan grasses—were painted across the mountains and sky in the twilight. Magenta clouds rippled across a lavender background, setting off the indigo peaks. The display was mirrored on the lake, twin lava lamps spilled above and below. The colors deepened with the encroaching darkness, as if an unseen hand were squeezing the last drop of beauty out of the day. She'd paid a high price to witness this, but didn't see how it could have been otherwise. Dante had turned back, hurt and confused, in surrender to her wishes. If the choices were indeed all hers, as he had claimed, she would bear the consequences.

The mountain slopes lost all texture, but the ridgeline lay firm against the heavens. Between the clouds, a star appeared. Like a hole punched in a postcard held to a light, it shone from another world, and another time, reminding her of why she had come. Here, at the edge of this lake, on the broad flank of this mountain range, under the boundless sky in the middle of nowhere, she was small and bare and completely inconsequential, as was her past. Water, rock, air—it cared nothing for her and would judge her not. On this journey, she would travel deep into the indifferent wilderness to discover what was possible for her, and what could not be undone.

A cloud winked out the star. Liz was limp with exhaustion. The cold moved inside her, blurring her edges. She shivered and rose.

While she could still find her way, she returned to the tent and crawled in. She stripped off her outer layer, folded her jacket into a pillow and lay down, zipping her bag closed. A faint breeze luffed the tent fly. Her toes tingled as they warmed. Soon, she slept.

•   •   •

At eight the next morning, she was finally ready to go. She'd been reluctant to leave the toasty confines of her sleeping bag that morning. Once she'd braved the cold, she'd taken an hour to make breakfast and break camp. She vowed to not be such a pansy about the cold in the future. Once she got moving, she generated her own heat quickly enough.

She hoisted her pack, which should have felt lighter than yesterday, but didn't. When preparing for the hike, she'd taken pains to pack lightly, and selected only the essentials for safety and comfort. She enjoyed the game, carefully considering each item, not only because she would have to carry it, but because the exercise of deciding what she needed mattered to her. Rain pants and fleece pants? (No, thermal leggings and rain pants would do.) Headlamp and flashlight? (Yes. They were backup systems, and if she had to work with her hands in the dark, the headlamp was indispensable.) She discovered her decisions were more about what she didn't take than what she did, and did not carry a phone, a GPS or an iPod. She wasn't wedded to electronics in her normal life, so unplugging wasn't a shock. But she also brought no books, no folding chair, no pillow, no razor, no jewelry and no booze. And, as it turned out, no boyfriend.

She scanned the site to ensure she had packed everything. It looked exactly as she had found it. “Leave no trace,” the wilderness permit insisted. Well, she'd abided by the rules. No one would know she'd been there.

Within an hour she was at the pass, the first on the John Muir Trail to afford three-hundred-sixty-degree views. She snapped a couple of photographs, drank some water and started down the other side. On the trail below Liz recognized the couple who had also camped at the lake, and admonished herself for failing to get a jump on these nearly geriatric hikers. She wondered whether Rodell and Payton were ahead of or behind her, not that she wanted to race anyone. Rather, because she was hiking alone, it was prudent to have a sense of where the closest human beings were. Ranger stations were few and far between, and at this time of year more likely than not unmanned.

She'd been excited about the day's hike—the first on her own—but the trail conspired against her. Now that she had left Yosemite National Park and entered the Ansel Adams Wilderness, she could plainly see which organization had more money for trail maintenance. The footing was rough, even dangerous in places, and absorbed so much of her attention that she could not enjoy the walk. In places, stone steps had been cut into the slope but were sized for mules, not people. She was forced to use her poles as crutches, bracing before each long step and lowering herself down. On other sections, the trail consisted of grapefruit-sized rocks with sharp edges, which shifted and ground against each other as she trod on them. She worried about twisting an ankle.

The poor trail persisted all morning. She stopped at midday above Thousand Island Lake to eat and give her feet a short break.

The trail might have been brutal, but the scenery did its best to compensate. The lake lay at the base of Banner Peak, the most glamorous mountain Liz had seen so far. Unlike the pale gray granite predominant in the Sierra, this mountain was dark as charcoal, dialing up the contrast on both the deep blue sky and the white of the snow traces along its ridge. The peak and the lake, sapphire blue and dotted with rocky islands, reminded her of those drawn in the final chapter of a storybook, the land in which the heroine finds the object of her quest.

You're not going to complete your quest sitting on your ass, she thought.

As she closed her backpack, a bearded man approached, heading the way she had come. He was about her age and moved with the steady gait of a seasoned hiker. They exchanged greetings, and he asked where she was going.

“Mount Whitney.”

“Yeah? I'm doing the whole thing, too. In the other direction, obviously.” Nearly everyone who attempted the JMT traveled southward, as Liz was, to avoid climbing the highest mountain in the continental U.S. on the first day.

“That's good. Because the trail's going to wear funny unless people walk it both ways.”

He laughed. They chatted for a few minutes about trail conditions and campsites, then the man pointed over her shoulder. “Looks like there might be weather in our future.”

She pivoted. Sizable cumulus clouds had gathered to the north, some with bruise-colored undersides. Overhead were just a few small clouds, but she reminded herself to be vigilant. She asked the man if he would attempt to go over Donahue Pass today.

“Not if those clouds mean business. I'm not in that much of a hurry.”

As if to punctuate his meaning, a gust of wind pushed past them with a low whistle. The surface of the lake turned dull. Liz wished him a safe hike and, strapping on her pack, resumed her descent toward whatever patch of ground she'd call home tonight.