Katie turned her back on the trucker to see the Winsome Wilderness sign. Two girls Katie knew from her Adolescent Psychology class—Jeannie and Meg, both pegged “granola-girls”—were standing behind the table. These girls were not quite hippies and not quite ragged stoners either. They wore cutoffs and cute embroidered tops, and considered ChapStick to be makeup. They were beautiful though, with their long hair, and they were always smiling. That was the main thing Katie had noticed about them.
Photos, feathers, and bundles of sage were scattered across the red-clothed card table. Twig frames showcased pictures of smiling young girls looking over their shoulders as they wound their way through red rocks. Other photos showed girls gathered around a campfire, the glow of the fire reflected in their young faces. Katie picked up a speckled brown feather lying on the edge of the table.
“Hawk,” one of the girls said.
“Huh?” Katie looked up at Meg and Jeannie.
“That’s a red-tailed hawk feather. Means wisdom.” Meg, or the girl Katie thought was Meg, said.
“Okay.” Katie smiled at both girls.
“I’m Meg,” she said. Yes, Katie was right. “We’re in Psych together, right?”
“Yes,” Katie said and glanced at the other girl. “And you’re Jeannie, right?”
They both nodded.
“Are you looking for a summer job?” Jeannie asked.
“I am,” Katie said and lifted a sheet of paper with typed facts and an attached application. “What is this?”
“A wilderness program. Aren’t you a social work major like us?”
Katie nodded.
“This is sort of like Outward Bound, but for kids who need more help and therapy and like that.”
“And like that?” Katie asked. “Like what?”
“You don’t have to do the counseling or anything crazy. You get to camp with them for weeks. You’re called a field guide.” Meg smiled and gazed past Katie as if she was imagining heaven during a frenzied religious tent revival.
“Well, then what do you do?” Katie placed the application back on the table. She was being polite. She’d already decided that this hippie-fest was not for her. Sure, she’d studied social work and, sure, she loved the outdoors, but talking to troubled kids over bonfires was not for her. Singing koombaya and sleeping on the dirt was for someone else entirely.
Katie’s mind was set until Jeannie spoke. “It’s a miracle what happens out there,” she said. “You’ll never be the same.”
Katie wanted to be something and someone different than she was—someone who didn’t sit around and wait for Jack to finish law school and pay attention to her. She wanted to be a girl with purpose and a meaning. And the words—you’ll never be the same—were a siren call.
“How so?” Katie asked.
“We’re shutting down for the day. You want to go get a beer with us?” Jeannie asked.
“Sure,” Katie said, without any nudge, whisper, or thought that this might be the very moment she thrust the pin of change into her own life.
* * *
It wasn’t until after she took the job at Winsome that Katie remembered an afternoon with her mother, a hazy afternoon that began her essential desire to be in the wild, to refuse to give in to the demands of others, or even the demands of love.
It had been an afternoon of unruffled peace, just fourteen-year-old Katie and her mom on the pier, eating their melting ice cream cones and watching the Hilton Head boats coming in and out of the marina. They’d shopped the small trinket stores, and Katie’s mom bought her a brand-new shark tooth necklace, which dangled off Katie’s slim neck. She fiddled with the point of the tooth, pressing it into the skin of her thumb as she watched the boats move in and out of the slips as easily as fish.
“I want to be like one of those,” Katie said to her mom.
“One of what?”
“Those boats. I mean, not really a boat, but something like a boat.”
Her mom had laughed, fully, sticky with ice cream. “Something like a boat?”
“You know, like all free and wild and not stuck anywhere at all.”
“Katie, dear, don’t say like; that’s a bad habit. And yes, we all want that when we’re fourteen,” her mom said, quietly. A sad tone arrived; Katie knew all her mom’s tones the way a pianist knew all the keys.
“I’ll want it forever,” Katie said.
Her mom’s ice cream cone melted down her forearm unnoticed or touched. “I hope you do. I hope that whatever it is you want that you don’t give it up just because someone else asks you to do so. Anything you want, Katie, anything, don’t let someone else talk you out of it.”
“I want another shark tooth necklace,” Katie said, grinning.
Her Mom had smiled, but with only the bottom part of her face. “Nice try.” She put her hand on Katie’s leg. “You think you love that boy, don’t you?”
“He’s not a boy. He’s Jack. And I don’t think I do, I know I do.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“You didn’t love anyone when you were fourteen?” Katie licked the edge of the cone, scooping the last of the ice cream into her mouth..
“No, I loved my Raggedy Ann doll. That’s about it at fourteen.” She handed the remainder of her cone to Katie.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, Jack is the most amazing boy in the world.”
“You’ll let him talk you out of your dreams. That’s what love does sometimes—talks you out of your dreams.”
“Not me,” Katie said. “Jack would talk me into my dreams.”
* * *
It should have been simple. Katie wanted to take the Winsome Wilderness job to make a difference in the world, to help those who were helpless, to reach out to a child who didn’t have what she’d been given. But somehow it turned complicated, like a mathematical equation Katie could never solve.
Jack begged her not to go, saying “Why do you want to be so far away from me? There are social work jobs all over Birmingham; you don’t have to be across the country to help kids.” Her dad told her she was crazy, saying “You’re too far away. The money isn’t even good.” And then there was the panicked plea from her mom, “If anything happened to you, I’d never know and you’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere.” Katie did her best to soothe their worries and promised to be home soon.
The job entailed camping out with thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls, helping them learn the ways of the wilderness while keeping them in line until their therapists showed up to counsel them two days a week. Katie and the other guides were to impart stories and lessons to the girls, but the main goal was to allow nature to do the work.
On the nights she wasn’t camping, Katie shared a two-bedroom apartment in Timber, Arizona, with five other girls and a mass of bunk beds, knowing that rarely would any of them be there at the same time. It was the perfect way to have a home base and also save money. Perfect, that is, except for the rare times when all of them had off the same week. Field guides, they were called. After one week of intense training and an assurance of her love for nature’s unreliable behavior, Katie went off into the wilderness. No cell phones. No TV. No cars. No cable. Only nature. And Katie fell in love—with the wilderness, with the girls, with the work.
The pain humans inflicted one on another, even in love, had done damage to these girls in ways Katie had never known. She watched as they arrived angry and hurt, slowly opening to nature’s erratic and tender wildness. They learned self-reliance by crafting necessary items. They took what they’d been given in the wilderness and created something out of it: a spoon, an arrow, a pouch of leather, and, most importantly, a fire. Then they took what they’d been given inside—all the wonderfulness inside—and created a new life. The creative spirit reigned in the wilderness, and each girl who graduated took a piece of Katie’s heart with her.
After three months of summer work, Katie decided to stay on with her job. She’d always thought of
work as something to fill time and make money, a nuisance that preoccupied her from greater things. She soon discovered that this work filled her up, changed her as she grew into either new Katie or the real Katie; she wasn’t sure which and frankly didn’t care either. Katie had always needed a goal, an end point, something to work toward with greedy need. But this job—and it was so much more than a job—took her to a place both inside and outside herself she never knew existed. Helping wounded young girls to heal instilled in her a generous feeling, one that extended past her own demands and desires. Meg had been right—working with these girls was a miracle. Although she missed Jack, most thoughts of self were buried under the work she was doing.
Needing to see Jack and also explain why she was staying longer at her job, Katie gathered her savings and bought a plane ticket to Birmingham. When she arrived at the off-campus apartment that Jack shared with two other law school students, a party was in full swing. A real college party with a sweaty keg floating in a trash can and girls sitting on countertops and floors.
The room smelled like sweat and old beer. Katie wound her way through the apartment until she found Jack in his bedroom, standing in front of his closet, talking to his roommate about who would pay for the keg this time around.
“Baby, you’re here!” he said, when he saw her standing in his doorway. He moved towards her and in two steps lifted her off the floor.
“I’m interrupting a party, I think.”
“You don’t interrupt anything of mine,” Jack kissed her, an unassailable kiss that made her weak and indecisive about anything and everything.
“You two are ridiculous,” the roommate said and laughed, slamming the door behind him as he left them alone.
“So,” Jack said, “Tell me that you’re here to say you are never returning to that faraway place where I can’t even get you on the phone. Please say that.”
She couldn’t.
“I committed to this year.” Katie cringed as she said the words. “You’re so busy with school, and I love what I’m doing. I thought one more year and then you’d be almost done and we would … settle in a little bit.”
He sat on the edge of his single bed, unmade and rumpled. “A year is a long time. A really long time. You’ll miss so much.”
“But then I’ll have everything else forever.” She had practiced this steady proclamation on the plane.
Jack didn’t answer.
“I have to do this. For the first time in my life, I’m making a difference in someone beside myself. There’s this girl, Sara—her dad died last year. She was the angriest person you’d ever met, and she graduated last week with a new heart. You can’t imagine the beauty out there. The mountains turning to desert to mountain again. The—”
Jack held up his hand. “I know. I know. I read it all in your letters. The feathers you collect. The things you’ve learned to make. You sound happier than you’ve ever been.”
“Not ever been, but happy, yes. Making a difference, yes. If I stayed here, I’d be passing the time waiting for you to graduate. So this seems a much better way to wait. Right?”
“You see this as a way to wait? Wait for what?”
“You, of course.”
“I would never leave you for a year,” he said.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m taking a job. There’s a huge difference.”
“It doesn’t feel like there’s any difference. What about us?”
“Us?” She kissed him. “There is always us. You’re going to be buried underneath a stack of books taller than me. If I don’t do this, if I don’t try this now, I know I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
“We made it through four years at separate colleges, now it’s time to be together.”
“I’m begging you to understand.” She took both his hands and squeezed them. She tried to explain that if she didn’t do this one thing she would never again do what she wanted, that if she could let someone—even Jack—talk her out of doing this, that she would never again follow through on anything important in her life. Never. “It’s one year. That’s all.” She wiggled onto his lap and kissed his neck. “Love is enough. It always is.”
“Sadly, sometimes it’s not enough.”
“You are so pragmatic. My lawyer, Jack Adams.”
“Please don’t go.”
“I have to. That’s the thing, Jack. I absolutely have to. But I believe in us. I do.”
At that four girls burst into the bedroom, calling Jack’s name. They stopped short when they saw Katie. “Sorry,” one tall brunette said as she shut the door.
“Well,” Katie stood and looked down at him. “I guess you aren’t going to be too lonely while I’m gone.”
“Don’t turn this around,” he said. “I’m not doing anything wrong. At all.”
“I’m not either,” Katie said.
“If I’m not doing anything wrong and you’re not doing anything wrong, why the hell does everything feel so wrong?” Jack asked, squinting at Katie as if a bright light shone into his eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said in a whisper. “I really don’t know. But I can’t fight about it, and I can’t leave with us angry.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
* * *
The camping and wilderness routine returned to Katie as if her visit to Jack had been a quick dream. She opened her eyes in the dead of night, her head lying on a bunched-up sweatshirt. As usual, the first thing she looked for in the night sky was the moon, but it was a new moon, not invisible exactly, but translucent. The arching bell of dark sky reached to touch the edges of the earth, holding its innumerable stars. A young girl next to Katie whispered. “There are a million more stars here than where I live in New York.”
Katie smiled into the dark, once again explaining. “There are always the same amount of stars, but here you can see them. Just like you’ll soon be able to see all the beautiful things in you that were there all along. It takes the wilderness to open your eyes.”
“Whatever,” the girl said in the hoarse and angry whisper they all seemed to arrive with.
That night Katie missed Jack with a deep ache. It was a feeling that snuck up on her in the quietest moments. How was it possible to both love where she was and yet miss where she wasn’t?
She’d seen the sun set and rise on the same seemingly endless terrain. She’d eaten food she’d never heard of and slept less than she knew a human body could sleep and still function. She collected feathers, which she often found exactly when she was thinking about something that needed an answer. She knew her days by the phases of the moon. The shooting stars—twenty or thirty a night—were her lullaby and passageway to sleep. What was once foreign was now familiar.
Many times Katie felt that her family was frozen in time, but much happened that year. After an early graduation from University of South Carolina, Tara had eloped with her boyfriend, Kyle; now she wrote witty columns about marriage for the local paper. Molly was in her sophomore year in high school and her letters were full of exclamation points and drama. Her parents were living a second dating life, their first cut short by marriage.
No one in the family—not one—agreed with Katie’s job choice. They believed she was running away from life when she told them over and over that she was actually not running anywhere, but maybe, just maybe, was learning a new life while touching the lives of others.
Jack wrote letters and she wrote back, long letters about everything she saw and felt in this strange terrain. In every correspondence, she told him, I wish you could see what I see. She missed him, his voice, his touch, and yet the longing for him couldn’t stand against the need to stay at her job. With every girl’s life that changed, a new young girl was beginning to see her way through a cloud of chaos, and Katie couldn’t leave her alone in that misery.
What Katie wasn’t able to explain, the phenomenon that lacked words, was how passing time in the desert was different than actual-time at home. Scientifically, of course
this time alteration wasn’t true, but in the paradox that was nature’s way, it was vivid and unerring. Ten days strung together were only two days. While at home a month passed, in the desert it was a week or less. She didn’t feel she’d been gone too long and they—her family and Jack—felt she’d been gone forever. A lifetime perhaps.
Jack’s written words filled those empty missing-him spaces until they’d be together. The delay, Katie thought, was where the love grew larger in longing.
The first year had passed and each time she was pressed to come home to Jack, she gave it a time limit, Just one more month, Katie would write. There is this new girl, Steph, and she is making so much progress. Her dad almost destroyed her, but she’s coming out of her shell. She has a month left … then … then I’ll come home.
And then, They need me two more months because they lost their best field guide. I promise, just two more—Even inside these explanations and excuses, Katie only felt as if their love was waiting, never as if it were leaving. Until the week Jack’s letter ended with, We should both be free to date others by now. But Katie didn’t take it literally, only as a hint that they could, but of course wouldn’t.
It was Katie’s mom who sent the most pleading letter, asking why Katie didn’t love them anymore. Katie tried to assure her parents and sisters that it wasn’t love’s absence, but her own love of the girls, that kept her in the wild.
Her teenage sister, Molly, responded with, You sound like those stupid boys who say, “it’s not you, it’s me.” Katie told her sister that although the adage might be stupid, it was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to come home to the family; she just wanted to be exactly where she was. And she meant it, too, until Tara wrote a quick and cryptic P.S. on the bottom of a letter: Saw Jack in Atlanta at a concert. His date seemed nice.
three
BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
2010
Mimsy Clothing had opened for the day, and Kate stood at the front counter rearranging the bracelets hanging on a dress-shaped wire. Exposed brick walls were adorned with black and white photographs of South Carolina, while free-floating iron racks were loaded with women’s clothes. Unadorned iron-framed windows allowed light to pour like lemonade into the store. Carla Bruni sang in French through the overhead speakers, and Kate sang along in words she didn’t understand but had heard a hundred times.
And Then I Found You Page 3
