As Freulich was packing up his notes and signing a few books, most of his interrogators satisfied, Noni approached and introduced her friend.
“Sure—Mead,” said Freulich. “George has mentioned you as a promising grad student. But I thought you weren’t supposed to be out here until next year. Something about an unhelpful committee member . . .” Mead began to explain, lamely, but Freulich interrupted. “Never mind for now, I’m beat—I just flew my plane in after a killer semester, a couple of weeks in the field, and three days of speeches in Denver. Why not tell me about it on the way to Cumberland tomorrow?”
“Cumberland!” Mead echoed, his tingle rising all over again.
“Yes, Cumberland Pass. I’m leaving early to mark some Boloria populations up there. O’Leary and I would be glad to have another hand along. Are you any good with a butterfly net?”
“You bet!” Mead bubbled like a kid promised a picnic.
“Good! Be ready at six.” Mead blinked, and Freulich was halfway up the aspen-lined trail to his cabin below Judd Falls. And then the full message settled like a black bomb in his belly: O’Leary and I . . . So his rival would be coming along too. And Noni? She’d excused herself after the introduction, so he couldn’t ask her. But he’d had his first gander at Dave, who was on the short side, as was Noni, and good-looking, with a full blond mustache. “Well, hell,” Mead mumbled to himself, “at least the guy’s got good taste. Maybe I can nudge him over a cliff.” Cold under a shotgun sky of stars, and lonesome but excited, he turned in.
At five thirty the next morning Mead left the cabin, dodging the territorial rockets of broad-tailed hummingbirds that pierced the cold and fragrant dawntime air. Mount Gothic loomed like a loaf of leaden bread until the sun topped Belleview Mountain and leavened it with light. Mead had scarcely thought of Noni last night, except in the cold depth of the dark when he couldn’t sleep at all under the thin envelope of a sleeping bag he’d brought. Now, as he spent a chilly, hungry half hour waiting for O’Leary to appear from what he hoped would not be Noni’s warm bed, Mead felt the wormwood rise. He spat it out and concentrated on the day to come.
At 5:55 Freulich pulled up and said, “Hop in. Turns out all my assistants and students have to work on their own projects, and Amy’s hard at it on the next book. So it’s just you and me. I’m glad you could come, otherwise I might have bagged it.” Even better, James thought as he slung his daypack and his own lanky frame into the cab of the yellow Chevy Suburban with a Stanford U. logo on the door. A personal tutorial with Peter Freulich!
The East River meanders unwound far below as the truck followed a course as windy as the river’s but considerably faster. They stopped at Tony’s service station in Crested Butte for essentials—gas, coffee, coffee cake, lunchmeat, candy bars, and beer—and were away.
In the presence of Stanford University’s Crosby Professor of Population Biology, Mead was at first speechless. His own monumental ignorance, as he saw it, seemed to well out of his brainpan. But this feeling didn’t last. Freulich put him at his ease when he said, “You know, one of my first papers was on Erebia epipsodea. George says you share an enthusiasm for our little alpine friends.” And they went from there. Mead learned a lot that day, about biology, human ecology, and the raw politics of conservation. But Freulich had a good pair of ears as well as a mouth, and for his part he learned about October Carson. Mead told him of Carson’s love of Erebia and of Cumberland Pass, and about his disgust with the off-road vehicles he found there.
“I’m afraid we’ll see the same,” said Freulich. And sure enough, when they took a pee-and-coffee stop at Taylor Park, he pointed out a scream of dirt bikes sitting on their kickstands in front of a row of cabins. “There they are,” he said, “the alpine hackers asleep in their lairs. If I were Beowulf . . .”
Mead cupped his hot mug and breathed in the vapors of coffee, sage, and dust.
From the ghost town of Tincup on up, they saw dirt bikes in growing numbers. The route rose fast and the landscape closed in steep around it. When they arrived at the summit of the pass, Mead turned his head, owl-like, around the full three-sixty. From the get-go he knew what Carson had meant on both counts: expansive alpine beauty, heavy ecological damage. The untidy lawn of the tundra seemed endless but blemished. Mead followed the lanky prof up a rutted trail toward a high ridge. When they reached it, two sea-level dwellers from opposite coasts, they paused to look, huff, and rest.
“Carson went on about both his pleasure and his pain up here,” Mead said.
“Pain in the ass, is what it is,” Freulich replied. “Most of them stay on the roads and designated trails, but the jerks who don’t are ruining some of the best high tundra in the Rockies. The Forest Service stands by and watches—of course, they’re used to permitting cattle and sheep allotments in the high country, which can be just as bad. Only time, and plenty of it, can repair the damage.” He paused. “But at least we can kick those bastards off the mountain!”
Mead followed Freulich’s narrowed gaze toward a trio of bikers climbing a trench in the tundra toward them. Six strides of his long legs took Freulich into position above the bikers’ path. At the last moment he leaped into their path, startling them all to hell and making them brake, bunch, and fall about. He brandished his aluminum butterfly net like Little John’s staff holding back Robin Hood on the bridge. He could see himself in their visors as the bikers regained their balance. They flipped up the visors and glared as Freulich demanded, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to this landscape?”
“Who gives a flying fuck?” shot back the leader, who apparently didn’t. “And who the fuck are you to tell us what to do—some goddamn butterfly catcher?”
But Freulich kept his enormous cool, and when one of the others asked him to explain what he meant, he obliged. “Your tire marks in the alpine turf will take decades to grow in, if they ever will. This is fragile terrain, easy to scar and erode, but hard to heal.”
The third rider said everyone else did it, so why shouldn’t they, to which Freulich replied, “Not quite, only the assholes who don’t give a damn about fish, wildlife, or the future of places such as this.”
James thought it would be lost on them, but they huddled and then vamoosed the way they came. The leader made a point of churning up some intact grasses and tiny flowers with his knobby tires, flipping the bird on his way out. But the other two took it easy until they reached the road. “They know not what they do,” said Freulich, shaking his head.
“But you made them think,” said Mead. “Two out of three’s not bad.”
The day improved with a sandwich, a beer, and a magical hike among arctics and alpines, shooting stars and dryas, into the fragrant bogs of Boloria frigga. The two able netmen caught the small fritillaries, looking for marked individuals, recording then releasing them. Freulich said, “It might be this very species that Nabokov wrote of in Speak, Memory, when he went into the bogs by the Oredezh as a boy in pursuit of a dusky little fritillary bearing the name of a Norse goddess. He called it ‘the highest enjoyment of timelessness—when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants.’ ”
“I know the piece,” Mead said, suddenly not so ignorant. “ ‘This is ecstasy . . . a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love . . .’ ”
Freulich’s voice joined his, and they finished it together: “ ‘a sense of oneness with sun and stone.’ ” Then they laughed. Freulich marked a fresh fritillary, gently released it, and smiled. They both knew that ecstasy, that sense of sun, stone, plants, and butterflies. It would take more than a few dirt bikes to spoil it.
27
Steam curled around the cinnamon nipples of Noni Blue as she reclined against the smooth stone wall. Her pubescence like black moss tickled an alpine zephyr at the surface of the hot spring pool. “James, what a marvelous idea to come up here together. You were sweet to invite me, after the beast I’ve been to you.”
“No beast, Noni. No holds,
remember? Just a strong hearttug. Anyway, I’m glad you like this place—how could anyone help it?” He stretched his long body across the granite basin, meeting her toes with his own.
“I’m sorry anyway, James. But it’s just as well that Professor Freulich sent O’Leary back to their Nevada research site. True, I was feeling my heart (or something) tugged two ways. But he was getting heavier than I wanted, for sure, and I would have really regretted if we hadn’t any time together after you took the gutsy risk to come west.”
Mead hadn’t even thought of it that way, but hearing her say it, he guessed he had taken a bit of a risk. He said, “Can’t say I’m sorry the guy left. What if he’d stayed?”
“Who knows? What-ifs are never worth much, are they? Never mind, he didn’t, and that’s fine. But do you really have to go so soon, James?” Noni rubbed her dusty rose thighs across James’s knees, floated them up onto his lap.
“I do, Noni. It’s not fair to the lab for me to squat here much longer without paying for tuition or a meal ticket, let alone for the cabin, basic as it is. Anyway, without George here, I can’t really get started on a project.”
“Or are you just afraid to be here when he arrives?”
“No, no. Well . . . maybe a little bit. Maybe a lot. Anyway, I’m going to try to see Magdalena in some other habitats and see if I can’t winkle October Carson out of the hills—or at least find some fresher tracks.” He was not unaware of her sweet weight. “So, yes, as much as I’d like to stay on, I really must go. But you make it hard.”
“So I see.” Noni chuckled, wriggling into his arms. “We’ll have to do something about that. But I’d say you’re becoming obsessed with the butterfly and the bloke. Still, if my charms can’t keep you here, so be it. Guess I deserve it.”
“That’s not quite fair to either of us, Noni. It has nothing to do with deserving or charming, and I’m not leaving to spite you for being interested in O’Leary. Nor do I think I’m obsessed. You go out daily to work on your project hour after hour, rain and flies be damned. Is that obsession or dedication? Well, it’s the same with me and my ‘research’; it’s just unofficial—and unfunded.”
“No funds, no form, no function—you’re obsessed, all right. But maybe that’s just disappointment talking.”
“Well, now, that’s something I could tell you about. Okay, call it obsession . . . but my ideas aren’t strictly formless. I happen to think that Carson would have a lot to teach us, if he could be found. And as for function, I want to work out Magdalena’s ecology—find out how it lives so well in such a harsh, high habitat. I realized that when I finally saw it alive up at Copper Lake a couple of days ago. I don’t think that’s any less valuable than most of what folks up here are doing. But first I’ve got to figure out some questions that might lend themselves to experimentation. Pure description won’t hack it anymore—certainly not with a Yale committee, Griffin or no.”
Noni looked up at the stone walls around the canyon. “It is a rather intimidating environment,” she said. “Except in here.”
“Anyway, my fixation isn’t only with Magdalena and Carson. And your charms haven’t lost their power, never mind my leaving. But, Noni, don’t you think we’ve been boiling our bods long enough?”
“Yes, for sure. We’re turning into maraschino prunes. To the tent, then!”
They stepped from the steamy pool and dried off as a group from Aspen arrived, disrobed, and climbed in to many a footsore “oooh!” and “aaah!” The alpine colors faded as the sun dropped below Castle Peak, casting purple shadow smears on the Maroon Bells’ back sides. A quick chill arose with the mosquitoes. James and Noni dispensed with dinner in favor of a longer night together, likely their last for many weeks, as well as their first for what seemed like years.
Mead had already planned to leave Gothic via the Maroon Bells–Snowmass Wilderness, past Conundrum Hot Springs to Aspen and points east. All he had with him fit in his backpack, and the hike—especially with the hot springs rest stop in the middle—sounded far preferable to a repeat of his bus ride from Gunnison to Denver. Cheaper, too, which suited his anemic wallet. When Noni ended up with a couple of days free from her research, he asked her to accompany him as far as the springs, and she readily agreed.
They left Gothic early, trekking the steep old mining road past Judd Falls. Soon they entered the wilderness area, took a junction to the right off the Copper Creek Trail toward White Rock Mountain, and climbed a basin directly opposite Mount Gothic. This brought them across a broad talus to Triangle Pass, at nearly thirteen thousand feet. Mead had to concentrate on the rugged trail instead of watching for Magdalena. On top, Castle Peak sprawled and spired off to their right, more Gothic than Gothic itself. The Maroon Bells sawed the air to the north, their striated red faces no less wonderful for their familiarity from a thousand postcards and calendars.
A long valley dropped away toward where Aspen was rumored to lie. Many switchbacks led through the lushest of alpine meadows. Speckled with magenta paintbrush, cream marsh marigolds, and buttery arnicas, purpled with patches of asters and elephant heads, all against a panoply of greens, the meadows soaked up afternoon rains and turned them into this spectrum. The peaty softness swaddled both the minds and the feet of the stone-weary hikers. But the greater reward lay two thousand feet below, where natural hot springs bubbled out of the mountainside and flowed through a series of stone basins before joining the cold stream. This was Conundrum, the celebrated hot springs of the Maroon Bells–Snowmass. Noni went first, and Mead had difficulty keeping his eyes on the trail and off her shorts, which she would soon lose.
Noni and James arrived to find the place deserted. Quickly out of their backpacks, boots, shirts, shorts, and undies, they lay their sweaty, achy bodies in the whirlpool of the hills. They soaked, splashed, and played for the rest of that day. Only a handful of hikers stripped to take the waters in all these hours, and most of those were Gothic folks or bronzed, slim skiers and hikers. Thanks to the designated wilderness area that surrounded the site, no party of gawky flatlanders appeared, not a single jeeper hoisting a beer in one hand, binoculars in the other.
Running at about 97 degrees, situated at eleven thousand feet above sea level, the springs were not too hot for a long sit, especially when soaks were interspersed with brief rambles into nearby meadows and chilly snowplay in the algae-stained red snowbank at the foot of the north-facing valley walls. “Hey, I’ve never been naked in the snow before,” Mead shouted over Noni’s laughter. She lobbed another snowball that caught him smack on his not-very-hairy chest. “But I’m freezing my butt off, aren’t you?”
“I love it!” she protested, throwing another, hitting him in the alleged frigid butt. “Uh-oh, I’m getting a little close to the vitals,” she said. “That could work against my own interests.”
James dumped Noni and hennaed her shining hair with the algal-red snow. He finally had to carry her back to the spring, she loved the snow so, but she didn’t resist. Her small body made scarcely a load for Mead’s long arms.
“You’ve got a blue butt, too,” he observed, patting it with the carrying hand and almost dropping her. “We could call you Noni Bluebottom!” Noni yelped and squirmed until he set her gently into the steaming basin and slushed in beside her. They shivered with the decadent delight of it all. “A great way to leave Gothic, my first time.” He sighed.
Noni shivered, but said nothing.
Later, they lay on their ripstop nylon cloud in Mead’s tiny tent, a quarter mile from the springs. The Forest Service wisely imposed this no-camping perimeter around Conundrum Hot Springs to prevent trampling of the fragile site. They made love in the early dusk. Passion strong enough to keep the mosquitoes at mind’s bay glued their bodies together with the tangy mucilage of love. No thoughts of butterflies or tramps interloped; no sense of falling temperature or rising dew intervened between their fitted, flushy seam. James came first, and at that moment some late arrivals at the hot pool tho
ught they heard a coyote howl down in the forest fringe. When Noni followed through, they guessed they heard an owl.
Afterward, the reunited lovers felt the temperature drop, the dew rise, and the mosquitoes suck, so they pulled their bags up around their shoulders, cocoonlike. They lay on their surfeited bellies, sharing a Sierra Club cupful of red wine drawn from a battered bota borrowed from one of Noni’s new friends at the lab. Faces lifted toward a moon-through-spruce, they issued soft sounds that no one heard but themselves. Reaching one arm back over Noni’s supine curve, James stroked the cleft apple of her ass. “Not so cold now,” he said. “Not so blue.”
“But I am,” Noni argued. “I don’t want to be apart.”
“Won’t be for long. I fact, I have a rising feeling . . .”
“Already?” Noni asked, wide-eyed.
“. . . feeling that we’ll see one another again this summer.”
“Hmmm.” Noni considered that. Then asked, changing the subject, “James, do you suppose everyone who comes here looks for a conundrum in his or her life?”
“Maybe so. At least those who have an inkling of what it means.”
“It’s a riddle, isn’t it?”
“Right, but one with no easy answer. An imponderable. So what kinds of conundrums do you suppose people pose here?”
“Oh—like, whether or not to take all their clothes off in front of strangers . . .”
“Or how could there be such heavenly hot water right beside the ice-cold creek?”
“Sure, though that’s got a right answer, if we knew the facts. How about this one: Why do people leave the aforementioned heaven to jump around in a snowbank?”
“Yeah. Or, for those who come here on a weekend, why the hell did I do that?”
They both laughed, glad they hadn’t. Then Noni said, “James, here’s mine.”
“Shoot. I’ll try to play your oracle and answer the unanswerable.” Truth to tell, he had no idea what was coming and was a little nervous as to what it might be.
Magdalena Mountain Page 21
