Lost Canyon

by Nina Revoyr

  By now, Oscar and Gwen had joined them. They both looked crestfallen. Tracy glanced at them, then back at Baxter, and said, “That might be a bit too much.”

  “Well, where have you been sending other people?” Gwen asked. She sounded disappointed but maybe a little relieved.

  “Honestly, most people have just gone home. They’ve had their hearts set on Cloud Lakes. But that’s a shame, if you ask me. There are plenty of other beautiful places to go.” He paused, fiddled with a knob on the walkie-talkie. “Those who have decided to stay have done one of the trails I suggested. They’ll probably be pretty crowded this weekend.”

  “All the more reason not to do them,” Tracy said. “Isn’t there anyplace else?”

  The ranger stood up and pulled on his scraggly beard, looking thoughtful. “There might be one more place you could try . . .” he said, half to himself. Then, shaking his head, “No, it’s probably not a good idea.”

  “What?” Tracy asked, leaning over the counter.

  “Well . . .” He looked at them, lifting one eyebrow and then the other. “There’s a real off-the-beaten-path kind of trail just outside of the park. It’s the right length trip for you—about thirty miles. It’s gorgeous, and you’ll get the same variety of landscape as the Cloud Lakes trail—river and meadow, some alpine lakes, then a couple of high passes. And what I believe is the prettiest canyon in the whole Sierra . . . The thing is, no one’s hiked the trail in years. It’s not even marked on this map.”

  “How do you know about it?” Todd asked.

  The ranger spread the map out with his hands again. They were big, gnarled hands, twisted and aged by years of living in the mountains. “I’ve been up here a long time—over forty years. I’ve been to places that aren’t marked on the Forest Service map or any other. This trail, I hiked it with a buddy once almost thirty years ago. It was one of my favorite trips ever.”

  “Well, if it’s so awesome,” Todd asked, “why doesn’t anyone do it?”

  The ranger smiled, and his expression was complicated. “It’s real remote, and the road to get to it is a killer. The Forest Service doesn’t maintain it anymore.”

  It sounded like there was more to the story, but Tracy was clearly intrigued. “Well, what do you think, guys?” she asked, turning to the others.

  “I don’t know . . .” Gwen said. Then to the ranger: “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Oh, absolutely! I mean, there is a trail; it’s just not been maintained. The most you’re likely to find, though, is some overgrown brush and fallen trees. But it’s beautiful, I promise. Well worth the trouble to get there.”

  They all looked at each other. Oscar sighed. “Well, it would be a shame to go home after we’ve come all the way up here.”

  “We could at least go check it out,” Todd said.

  Tracy turned to Gwen. “How about you?”

  “I don’t know. But if the rest of you think it’s okay . . .”

  Tracy beamed. “Great! Let’s do it.” Now she turned back to the ranger. “So—where would we be going?”

  Ranger Baxter took out another map, which showed the park and the surrounding wilderness area. All four of them crowded the counter to look. “Here,” he said, taking a green highlighter and marking an X in one corner, “is where we are, at Redwood Station. This,” he hovered over a line with his pen but didn’t touch down, “takes you to the end of the road where the Cloud Lakes trail begins. Here,” and now he set the point of the pen down and traced a solid line and then a broken one somewhere north and west of the main trailhead, toward the edge of the map, “is where you’d be going. There’s a primitive campsite about eight miles down at the end of this dirt road, probably a forty-minute drive from the main road. About halfway down there’s a turnoff to the left—but don’t take that, just keep heading straight down. Once you get to the end, there might even be an old fire ring. Trailhead should be right there too.”

  Now he stepped away from the counter and ambled over to a small desk, where he opened a drawer and looked through some files before pulling out a single sheet of paper. He came back over and placed the paper on the counter. It was a color copy of a hand-drawn map. There were shaded little triangles for mountains, blue arteries for rivers, stick trees, and pebble-like boulders. There were small notations in blocklike print—Good campsite, Many switchbacks, Lots of fish!—and simple drawings of a deer, a hawk, a bear. At the top of the map were the words Lost Canyon.

  “Now this is the best I’ve got as far as a map,” the ranger said. “It’s what I used when I did the loop myself. It was drawn by an old-time ranger.”

  The map looked whimsical, cartoonish, which actually gave Todd some comfort. If this earlier traveler created such a charming representation of this route, how hard could it actually be?

  “This is all you’ve got?” Oscar asked.

  “It’s all you need,” said the ranger. “That, along with a topo map of that area. If one of you guys knows how to read one, you’ll be fine.”

  “I do,” Todd said.

  “Me too,” Tracy added.

  “Great! Then let’s get you set up with your permit and bear canisters.” Baxter smiled. “I’m happy for you guys. There’s so much out here that most people never get to see. But you seem up for doing something different.”

  “We are,” Tracy said.

  “Honestly, as unofficial as this map looks, it’s probably pretty accurate. Some of those old-timers knew every inch of these mountains. Who knows?” The ranger laughed. “A few of them may even still be out there.”

  “I’ve heard about some of them, actually,” Tracy said. “Guys my grandfather knew, who came in from the eastern side.”

  “Well, be careful out there,” the ranger said. “These mountains are tougher than people think. We have to send out rescue teams every year. So watch yourselves, all right?”

  They promised to watch themselves, and the ranger handed over their pass. Then he gave them four bear canisters—cylindrical, drum-shaped containers of black plastic that would hold all their food and toiletries. They returned to the car, and Tracy swung out onto the road, back in the direction they’d come from. They were all quiet for a few moments, watching the same landscape they’d just passed through nearly an hour before.

  Oscar broke the silence. “Did you say your grandfather knew people who lived in the mountains?”

  “Yeah, he did,” Tracy answered. “People who snuck out of Manzanar.”

  “The internment camp? Really?”

  “Yeah. Mostly they just left for a day or two to go fishing. They’d crawl out under the barbed-wire fence at night and hike up to the rivers at the foot of the mountains, then sneak back in the next night. My grandfather went with them a couple of times. The more adventurous ones would travel farther up, to the lakes, and stay out for three or four nights. Finally the guards wised up, though, and people would get beaten if they were caught. So a bunch of my grandfather’s friends just up and left one night and never came back. Mostly men but a couple of women too. For all I know, they’re still out there.”

  “That kind of sounds like the Maroons, the escaped slaves in Jamaica,” said Gwen. “They built their own new society in the mountains.”

  “Exactly. People fleeing bad situations, and starting over, fending for themselves in the wild.” Tracy paused for a moment. “My grandfather was always jealous that they didn’t take him with them. But he had a family—my mom was five years old and my uncle was just a baby—so maybe that’s why they left him behind. After the war, though, he’d go hiking up here; I think he always hoped he would find them.”

  “Did they ever come down?” Oscar asked.

  Tracy shook her head. “I don’t know. Not that my grandfather heard . . . I like to think they’re still up here, you know? I’d love to do what they did. Chuck everything and live in the mountains.”

  There Tracy went again, off on a tangent. But it was okay, Todd thought—they were back on course. They cont
inued on the road that ran beside the river, winding back up out of the canyon. The sky was noticeably hazy now to the east from the smoke of the fire, and Todd was glad they were driving away from it.

  After half an hour they turned right on the small spur road the ranger had pointed out. They passed a sign that informed them that they were leaving the park. Twenty miles farther on they found a jeep road. It wasn’t marked, but there was a big rock formation directly across from it, with a half-circle of big Jeffrey Pines framing the entrance. The turnoff itself was barely visible, overgrown with weeds between the faint tire grooves, and they drove past it and looked at it three or four times before deciding it was in fact the right place. Once they turned, there was a quick, steep climb, and then a bend behind some trees, and just like that they were out of sight from the road. They were truly in the backcountry now, apart from civilization. The road bumped left, right, winding through trees and then reaching a clearing that yielded a glimpse of the peaks to the east. It was the single worst road Todd had ever been on. The potholes seemed to have potholes, and big rocks jutted out, like living creatures poised to rise up and tear through the bottom of the car. Tracy drove a bit too fast for his comfort, negotiating the truck around the rocks and in and out of the potholes, jostling and jolting her passengers.

  “No wonder no one comes back here,” Gwen said.

  They’d all rolled up their windows to block out the dust, and held on to parts of the interior—dashboard, headrest, handle—to keep from bouncing all over the car.

  “Yeah, wow,” Tracy said. “This isn’t fun.” And yet everything about her relaxed posture, the ease of her hands on the wheel, suggested that it was fun, that she was enjoying this bad road, this test of her nerve and skill. You better know what you’re doing, Todd thought. You better not be getting us into something we can’t handle.

  After twenty minutes they reached a turnoff to the left.

  “That must be the road the ranger mentioned,” Todd remarked.

  “Right,” Tracy said. “It looks even worse than this one.”

  Just past the junction a small log had fallen over the road, and the two men got out to move it aside.

  “I hope we make it,” said Oscar when they were back in their seats. “And I hope the car’s okay. It would suck to be stuck out here, especially if other people don’t come back here much.”

  “We’ll make it,” Tracy assured him, and then they were quiet, feeling every bump and jolt as they headed steeply downhill again, trying not to get carsick, maybe hoping their collective fears would keep the car safe until they made it to the end of the road.

  Which they did, finally—one last dip and bend and they were there. A break in the trees, a small flat area between the walls of a narrow canyon. There was a clearing and, to their delight, an obvious fire pit. When Tracy cut the ignition, they all just sat for a moment.

  “That was something,” Todd said.

  “How long did it take us?” Gwen asked, sounding queasy. Todd was on the verge of getting sick himself.

  Oscar looked at his watch. “About thirty-five minutes from the turnoff.”

  “And how far did we actually go?”

  Tracy looked at the odometer. “A little over eight miles, just like the ranger said.”

  “Well, at least we know we’re in the right place.”

  Then Todd became conscious of another sound, running water—steady and continual, alive. “Do you guys hear that?”

  “A river,” Gwen said.

  “Sounds like a small one, more like a creek,” he said. “But still. What a perfect spot to camp.”

  Todd jumped out of the car and walked through the trees, and after forty feet or so, there it was—a creek running gently through the floor of the canyon, flowing around rocks and under fallen logs. It caught little bits of sun and reflected it back, sharp and bright like shiny jewels. The water was a beautiful blue-green color; it appeared as pure as if it flowed from the center of the earth. He looked up and saw a row of pine trees, their branches all on one side, extending toward him as if holding out their arms in welcome. He felt joy rising in his chest, and his heart and breathing slowed, as if his body was matching the rhythm of the creek. Now he missed his kids terribly and wished they were here—scrambling down to the water’s edge to pick up a shiny rock, or standing on the bank with fishing poles. They needed to do this, he thought, instead of play dates and video games. He’d bring them back up later on this summer.

  He returned to find the others unloading the car—they’d taken out the cooler, the firewood, a couple bags of food, the camp chairs that Tracy had brought. Tracy suggested that they pitch their tents upwind from the campfire, and so she drove with their gear over the rough rocky ground and the others followed on foot. About thirty feet beyond the fire pit they came upon the bottom of a huge fallen tree, its root system unearthed and perpendicular to the ground, its intertwined roots flat but intricate, like a Jackson Pollack painting. Behind the tree, sheltered from wind, was the perfect spot. Todd unloaded his pack and set it on the ground. Then, the happy business of making camp—pitching their two tents about ten feet apart, blowing up their sleeping pads and placing them and their sleeping bags inside, leaving their packs in the tent vestibules.

  By the time they were finished, it was almost five. The sun had moved beyond the canyon wall, leaving them in shade, and between that and the elevation—reported by Oscar as 6,728 feet—it was suddenly cool. Todd dug his fleece jacket out of his pack and put it on. But before he walked back to the fire pit, he looked at their campsite. It was a pleasing sight. Two tents, his green Mountain Hardwear and Tracy’s orange Big Agnes, against a backdrop of the Pollack tree, the tall shading pines. The canyon was maybe a quarter-mile wide; the steep granite walls must have risen a thousand feet. Behind him, the rippling creek. They were tucked away in a little fold of the Sierras, and he liked how this setup looked, and also how it felt. They were out in the wild, unreachable, and no one except the ranger even knew where they were. He tried to imagine the guys from the country club in this setting, and couldn’t.

  By the time he reached the fire pit, Tracy and Oscar had already made a pyramid of logs and stuffed twigs and newspaper into the cracks between them. Tracy struck a match and touched the paper in several places; it blackened and curled, smoke risking quickly, and then the paper and the kindling lit with flame. There was a rusted grate just over the flame, strong enough to hold a pot full of water and pasta. For a moment Todd thought the fire pit was a little too intact, too functional, for a place that hadn’t been used in many years. But he let the thought pass. Tracy tended to the pasta, and then to the sauce, while everyone else retrieved their plates and utensils and set up their camp chairs. When the food was ready, Tracy used a sweatshirt to protect her hand and carefully lifted the pot. After dumping the water thirty feet from the fire, she set both pots on a large flat rock and served everyone their meals.

  “Last dinner not out of a bag for three days,” Tracy noted.

  Gwen groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Last beer too,” added Oscar, taking a swig from the bottle he’d pulled out of the cooler.

  It seemed to Todd that this was the best meal he’d had in months. Tracy’s pasta and sauce tasted wonderful, but even better was the setting. They were surrounded by forest, beside a pristine creek, on a small patch of land hugged by canyon walls, which were dark and looming now, like sleeping giants. Through the canopy of trees they could see the first-quarter moon, so bright it was as if what they saw at home was a poor imitation. He felt happier than he had in a long time.

  “Cheers,” he said, raising his bottle. “Here’s to our first night in the mountains.”

  “Here’s to Tracy for making dinner and driving,” Oscar said. “And for organizing the trip.”

  Tracy leaned over and hit him on the knee, and he struck back at her, laughing. “Well, here’s to all of you for stepping out of your normal lives. Out of the gym too—and int
o the real world.”

  “Here’s to getting home safely,” Gwen said.

  Todd could hear her nervousness. Would she be able to do this trip? “For sure,” he said, reassuringly. “We’ll get home safe.”

  They ate hungrily and washed their meals down with more beer—all except Gwen, who drank Sprite. Then Todd broke out his own surprise—fixings for s’mores—and they roasted marshmallows on switches, slid them between graham crackers that were loaded with squares of chocolate, and ate. With some beer in him, away from the city, Oscar wasn’t so bad, Todd decided. Oscar told stories of his real estate exploits—the times he’d shown houses and walked in on people having sex; the bitterly divorcing couple who’d only speak to each other through him; the mysterious person who frequented open houses and shit in all the toilets. He had them rolling, and even Gwen finally started to relax.

  Around seven thirty, Tracy said they should clean up for the night, and so they took some water from the creek and washed their dishes, dispersing the water away from the fire and tents. They stuffed all their food into their bear canisters and covered the empty cooler with jackets in the back of the truck. Tracy reminded them to put their toiletries in the bear canisters too, and Gwen, wide-eyed, asked why.

  “Because bears are drawn to anything with scent,” Tracy answered. “Even toothpaste, even deodorant.”

  Todd remembered a show he’d watched with the kids on the Discovery Channel, two black bears ripping a car apart as easily as a beer can to reach a discarded Snickers wrapper. “It should be fine,” he assured her. “If no one’s been out here for a while, the bears have no reason to visit.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Gwen said gamely. “Besides, if a bear comes down from the mountains, he’ll get to your tent first.”

  Todd laughed, happily surprised. “I see how it is. So much for teamwork, huh?”