by Pam Withers
“Eight hours?” I echo in horror.
“Kidding about the campfire singalongs and eight hours. What did you do for outings in New York City?”
“Took down muggers and ordered out for pizza.”
He laughs, a big laugh for his compact body. But I’m well aware he’s still trying to figure me out.
We jolt for half an hour on backroads that would take out the exhaust systems of most vehicles. My stomach goes as tight as a Yankees pitcher’s grip. I pull off my beret and lower the window beside me as my gut contracts. Taking deep breaths, I try to picture something that’s still — the Empire State Building in morning sunlight — to keep my stomach contents in place. But as the bus continues to jounce about, that bitter sensation crawls up my throat. Even as I clamp my mouth shut, I’m thinking, Into the beret or out the window? Beret or window?
“Hey, close that window! It’s cold,” Cole complains.
I half stand and vomit out the window and down the side of the bus. No way I’m going to spoil my favourite hat.
“Eeeew,” chorus my busmates. Min-jun, Cole, and Dorothy all cover their faces and lean away from me.
“Sorry,” I gasp.
“You can wash it when we get there,” Cole grumbles.
When the bus finally shudders to a stop, I stagger off and use my water bottle and a spare T-shirt to clean up my mess. Shivering in the chilly May air, I stand beside a sign with an arrow indicating the way to Forest Service Campsite 78.
Memories of a long-ago early-spring camping trip with Granddad and one of his hunting buddies make me shiver as I hoist the rough canvas bag to my shoulder. My left ear burns like a red-hot brand. That’s something it has done occasionally since “the event” happened when I was five. Placing a cooling hand on it under my beret, I start walking behind Min-jun and Cole, ignoring the getlost glare that Cole delivers. My face probably reflects the white scattered clouds above. I turn once to stare at the back of the retreating bus, using all my willpower not to run after it as the woods seem to swallow us.
I can do this, I tell myself. Bear bells jingle on several students’ packs.
I watch Cole drop back to place himself beside Dorothy, his face alight as he tries to draw her into conversation. She gives one-word answers, her face neutral, and soon pulls back to giggle with girlfriends.
“Camped much?” Cole asks me, surging forward again like he needs a target for his annoyance at being rebuffed.
I dodge his question. “With my granddad.”
“And with an outdoors and bike club in New York City,” he adds, studying me with a frown. His words sound more like a challenge than confirmation of our first conversation at school. “What kind of bike do you ride?”
I should speak up right now, come clean: tell him that I don’t bike, camp, canoe, or walk more than I have to. That I hate woods and dangerous animals and snarky Outdoors Club members, and that I’m here only because I can’t live under the same roof as my granddad if I don’t somehow get through this day.
“None at the moment, but I’m looking forward to this trip, and learning more about the area. Nice air up here.”
“Nice air?” he says, mocking me. “Compared to what, a smoggy city?” He picks up speed and resumes his place at the head of the line, beside Min-jun.
“Your granddad is quite the famous outdoorsman in this valley,” some guy behind me comments, as if to make up for Cole’s rudeness.
“Yeah, I guess he is.” If only outdoorsiness were genetic.
“Are those shoes for real?” He points to my silver running shoes, then moves away. What, fashion police even in the Outdoors Club?
Hey, I have Granddad’s pack, his tent, and his sendoff — “Don’t get eaten by a bear or make too much a fool o’ yerself.” So what could go wrong? All I have to do is survive twenty-four hours of cold and misery to become a card-carrying member of the Outdoors Club. Extra credit if I impress Dorothy or avoid making a further fool of myself, both highly unlikely. I sigh and daydream of encountering Hank, who allows me to capture him and return him to the clinic.
Dorothy glides along the trail effortlessly, an orbit of chatty students — both male and female — hovering around her. She hasn’t favoured me with so much as a glance since our earlier exchange. Waiting to see how I fit in. Which doesn’t stop me from watching that long hair swing and wondering what it would feel like to run my hand through it. Huh? Get real, Ray.
Since no one’s trotting near me and my attempts at starting conversations are getting me nowhere, I pull my binoculars out of my pack and pause occasionally to check out nearby tree branches and mountaintops, hoping to impress someone with a cool discovery — or to spot Hank. Fifteen minutes of on-and-off squinting later, I’m rewarded with a reddish dot catching the sun at the bottom of a nearby lush valley that runs down to an ocean inlet. Maybe it’s a stop on our tour, an oceanfront hotel with hot chocolate and saunas? I picture sitting in a sauna beside Dorothy, and the chill air warms around me. But a closer look reveals the peeling red paint and glassless windows of a complex involving maybe twenty slumping buildings with holey roofs. They are covered in graffiti and surrounded by the remnants of paths filled with ferns and fallen trees. It’s all beside a wooden pier held up by aging logs driven into the saltwater bay. My binoculars pick up a fisherman in a tiny camouflage motorboat drifting under the rotting dock.
“What’re those ruins?” I ask the boy beside me.
He doesn’t even bother looking through the binoculars. “An old cannery. Shut down ages ago.”
So much for the sauna scenario. Huffing a little, I’m now at the very tail end of the line.
It feels like my bag has sheared off half my right shoulder by the time Mr. Mussett halts us in a clearing beside a small stream. “This is our camp, kids. Min-jun and Ray, you’re on supper duty.”
The flattest spot I can find is beside the stream at the near edge of the clearing, so I dump my stuff there and, with one eye on everyone else erecting their shelters, spill the contents out of the tent bag and try to fit the poles together like a 3-D puzzle. On the far side of the clearing, Min-jun puts his tent up in seconds. Cole, busy erecting his as close to Dorothy’s as he can, is taking his time.
Long after the others have gathered around a crackling fire, Min-jun takes pity on me, points out that my tent pack is missing one pole, and helps me haul a sturdy stick from the forest floor that will finish the job.
“Your tent is almost an antique, bro. Your granddad’s?”
“It’s the same tent I camped in with him when I was five,” I boast, then think to add, “He wouldn’t let me use his nylon one.”
“Sounds about right,” he says, but I’m not sure I hear sympathy.
A giant pot of chili and foil-wrapped packages of cornbread are on the campfire by the time I arrive to help.
“You’ll do dishes with Cole,” Mr. Mussett says, raising one eyebrow.
After scooping some excellent-smelling chili into my tin bowl and chowing down on the cornbread while perched awkwardly on a fireside log, I decide things aren’t so bad. We’ve done the worst bit, right? And although the woods are dark now, I’m surrounded by people, including an adult leader. When I catch Dorothy watching me, I nod, and I’m startled to get a high-wattage smile in return. Which earns me a glare from Cole.
“Most of you already know how to hang food bags from trees,” Mr. Mussett is saying to the group, his eyes on me. “Three metres above the ground, a metre from either tree. That’s to keep bears from getting into them, of course.”
I may hate the outdoors, but I probably know as much as this instructor, given how many vacations I’ve spent here over the years. Granddad and Dad were always sharing such info with me.
But I’m not about to say so when Mr. Mussett takes me aside and launches into a lecture on camping basics, from starting a fire to getting lost to avoiding or handling a bear encounter. “Stop and listen every five minutes or so,” he instructs. “Talk if you’re
going around a blind bend. If you run into fresh tracks or scat, ripped-apart logs, or claw marks on trees, back away.”
“How do you tell a grizzly track from a black bear track?” I ask, playing along.
“Grizzlies have long, straight claws, and black bears have shorter, curved ones,” some smartass looking for a gold star responds.
“Exactly,” Mr. Mussett confirms. “And if there’s such a thing as a safe distance from a bear, it’s seventy-five metres. That’s the wingspan of a 747. Get any closer than that and it may feel threatened enough to charge.”
I smile grimly and use all my energy to block memories of a certain incident in my past. I’ve heard that enough from Granddad over the years.
Mussett points out the different trees around us: Douglas fir (“the easiest to climb”), lodgepole pine, red cedar, hemlock, birch, and others. “Many of the fir and cedar trees are two hundred to five hundred years old. The Nuxalk people, as many of you know, have been here at least ten thousand years. They’ve traditionally used cedar for clothing, mats, baskets, canoes, totem poles, and planks for houses and boardwalks.”
I see Dorothy smile proudly, and I raise an eyebrow as Mussett points to a red cedar with strips pulled off for these purposes. How cool is that? Definitely not the kind of thing Granddad ever pointed out.
“There are also trees rubbed smooth by bears deliberately leaving their scent behind for interested females,” Mr. Mussett continues.
That gets a few giggles, but it starts my pulse pounding. No bear encounters here, please.
An hour or two after we’ve eaten supper and done the dishes, as we’re still sitting on logs around the campfire, Cole asks me, “Singing campfire songs with us, new boy?”
“Thanks anyway,” I reply, as I’m sure he hoped. Of course, no one starts singing songs. He was teasing.
“So what animal heads has your granddad mounted?” asks a freckled girl.
I smile appreciatively at this person who’s actually trying to make me feel part of the group. After naming them off the best I can, I find myself engaged in chit-chat, including questions about the new vet clinic. No one asks about New York City. I guess for people here, it’s as remote as the Amazon. But hey, some people are actually talking to me!
I mostly sit and listen, trying not to stare at Dorothy, who is cooking popcorn over the fire. She grants me the first helping and says, “Welcome to the club, new kid.”
Though hoping to be promoted to Ray at some point, I nod and thank her. Half an hour later, when she says good night and leaves for her tent, Cole leans over and says in a low voice, “Don’t even think about it, New York. She’s mine.”
“Mmm,” I reply, yawning.
“Night everyone,” Min-jun says, and I feel unexpectedly abandoned as he retreats to his orange pup tent in the far shadows. Time to traipse in the other direction and crawl into my leaning heap of worn canvas.
I’m running my headlamp batteries down by reading Granddad’s wilderness survival manual when I hear Mr. Mussett say, “Time to turn in, everyone. Good night.”
Poking my head out a little later, I note that a bunch of making-out couples have taken over the logs by the fire. Not including Dorothy, at least. I watch the sparks, hear the giggling and soft chatter, and ache for my friends and hangouts in New York City.
Arlo and I are teaching some kids droning on Saturday mornings, Koa wrote me recently. We’re earning good money. Don’t know why the three of us never came up with the idea before. Could really use your help, tho! Get your butt back here? Nice pics of your new drone in progress. Will send you some of mine next time. Seriously, Ray, hope things are going okay for you out in the Canadian boonies.
Halfway into the night, with my body chilled and my back as warped as a curly fry, I wriggle out, grab my can of bear spray and headlamp, and stumble away from camp to pee. So uncomfortable, camping! Then I decide to drag my tent a few feet to a flatter surface, which happens to be closer to the swollen stream. No longer sleepy, I walk around the quiet campsite to unstiffen my legs, even though it’s totally creepy among the trees at night.
Just as I’m about to head back to my shelter, I hear something big rustling in the trees at the far end of camp. Adrenalin shoots through me. A grizzly? I glance at the fire; neither a wisp of smoke nor a sign of lingering lovers remains. Listening carefully, I judge that the creature is bigger than a raccoon, but smaller than an adult grizzly. Maybe.
“Anyone there?” I whisper. It pauses. Insanely, I picture Hank.
Clutching my bear spray, fighting my lifetime terror of the woods, I make my way toward the noise, wearing only my red brand-name boxers, unlaced silver shoes, and City That Never Sleeps hoodie.
I hear the snapping of cedar boughs and the crunch of twigs and pine needles just ahead in the forest. The creature is not stealthy enough to be a cougar, I’m guessing, and whatever it is, it’s moving away from camp. A deer? Coyote? Apparently out of my mind, I follow it down a trail for perhaps ten minutes, half-terrified, half-determined, knowing I’m being totally, utterly stupid because there’s no way it’s Hank.
I’m ready to turn around when my beam picks it up: a ghostly white body almost floating through the woods, angling down a steepening trail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A SCREAM IS strangled in my throat when the form turns and looks at me with unseeing eyes. “Min-jun,” I whisper, half registering that he’s sleepwalking in his white pyjamas. “Min-jun?”
He turns and ambles on like I’m not there, accelerating his pace on the uneven ground. It seems as if he’s headed for the bottom of the deep valley I saw earlier.
I should lunge forward, tap him on the shoulder, and wake him before he trips headfirst into a ravine or some dangerous animal jumps us. Instead, I keep following him like a mesmerized sleepwalker myself. Normally I’m scared at even the notion of being in the woods at night, but following the Outdoors Club leader puts a strange calm in me. I tell myself if anything happens, he’ll wake up instantly and handle it for me. Anyway, what harm is there in putting one foot in front of another after him, for just a few more yards, ’cause I’m curious to see where he’s going?
Ten minutes later, where the trail begins to switchback more steeply downwards, he pauses in front of a barbed-wire fence and stares across it into the darkness. I stand a few feet behind, hoping he’s not going to try going under it, since it obviously marks private property. Finally, I open my mouth to shout at him. That’s when he lifts his head and stares intently above us, like he has heard something. He raises an arm slowly, rotating his head and body while pointing a finger, like he’s signalling a galactic starship.
I look up at the incredibly clear array of stars, nothing like you’d see from a city. I identify the Big Dipper, which I remember is part of Ursa Major: Great Bear. How appropriate, here in the Great Bear Rainforest. Then I notice tiny white dots that don’t look like they fit in. Falling stars? A soundless airplane with lit-up windows? I switch off my headlamp and stand as still as my sleepwalker friend. Then I hear it too: the buzz of a hummingbird. But hummingbirds don’t fly at night. Hardly any birds do, Dad told me once. Only owls and nighthawks. And the object is flying way too high to be a bird. Wait! I know that sound! It’s a drone! A stealth drone with low-noise propellers, hovering high overhead, observing us. I’d never have heard it if Min-jun hadn’t looked up and pointed. How did he hear it?
Squinting into the night sky, I hardly breathe as it lowers, very slowly, until it’s something like ten stories over us, an otherworldly UFO. It’s a big-money, super-high-tech drone. The kind only a government spy agency or criminal gang might have. A red light on its sensor flashes rapidly like someone is taking pictures.
Is this seriously happening?
A crunch close at hand breaks the spell. It’s Minjun sprinting off-trail, stumbling in a panic, crashing through brush.
The drone’s camera flicks out and it floats up and away quietly, as if it were never there. Or maybe like
it just realized we might’ve spotted it? I watch the dark form skitter away like a giant bat against a universe of luminous dots, headed at breathtaking speed for the depths of the valley in front of us, or the bay beyond.
A scream jerks my head around, and I leap off the trail and switch on my headlamp.
“Min-jun!” I shout and I step off trail with arms in front to ward off branches, shivering now in my boxers, shoes, and hoodie. I hear splashing and more screaming. He must have reached the stream and tripped in! It’s too shallow to pose a danger, but cold enough to chill someone who’s plopped in it. My fault! Why didn’t I nab him earlier? I sprint, ignoring thorns and salal leaves whiplashing my calves. I wade in and grab his hands as he sits hip deep in the running water.
I brace myself against a boulder and pull till he’s on the bank. Then I put my face in his. “I’ve got you, Minjun. You’re okay. You were sleepwalking.”
But his eyes are still black hollows, and his bluish lips are smacking, smacking, smacking. His teeth clamp down on his tongue till it bleeds, and his hands jerk from side to side, like he’s trying to swim.
My mind flashes back to an afternoon in my parents’ New York City clinic when a French bulldog with a white studded collar had an epileptic seizure. I know instantly now what to do. I roll Min-jun onto his side to prevent fluids from getting into his lungs and make sure his tongue isn’t blocking his airway. Then I launch myself on top of him to keep him from hurting himself and to warm him as much as I can. Though his teeth continue gnashing, I remember not to insert a stick or finger, which can cause vomiting and make things worse. Episodes are over quickly, right? Is it the same for humans as for dogs? I wish my parents and their vet cabinet were here.
Where are Mr. Mussett, the late-night couples, and the mystery drone when we need them?
Min-jun calms within minutes, as I hoped he would. But he’s groggy and a little incoherent — if he’s like the bulldog he will be for about half an hour. I peel off his wet pyjama top and remove my warm sweatshirt to put it on him. His dripping bottoms will have to stay on till we get back to his tent. Ignoring the squish of water in my favourite shoes, I pull, push, tug, and coax Min-jun uphill back to the trail. Helping him is all that keeps me from freaking out in this darkness. What was I thinking, following him? But good thing I did. He pauses as we step back onto the trail, obviously disoriented.
