Lily's Mountain

by Hannah Moderow

  We need to get going soon so we don’t meet her on the trail.

  “What time are you hiking?” I ask, trying to make it sound like no big deal. “Just in case we change our minds.”

  “Around seven a.m., in the cool of the day before the mosquitoes come out in full force,” she says.

  About seven. That could mean before seven or after seven, and there’s no way to tell.

  A rush wells up inside me now. Sophie and I need to get a move on. Right away. We can’t be running into the ranger out there. She’ll stop our mission for sure.

  Sophie changes the subject, which seems good at first.

  “So, tell me when exactly you saw Dad on the expedition?” she asks.

  “I saw him when he was on his way to the mountain,” she says, “and then I was also part of the team that ​—”

  “So you gave up on him?” I interrupt.

  The ranger takes off her hat, eyes wide. She doesn’t respond at first, like she’s frozen in shock.

  “I’ll leave you two to some peace,” she says, after an awkward silence. “Enjoy your time, and let me know if you girls need anything . . . anything.” Her words might be nice, but all I hear in them is her belief that Dad’s forever gone.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Sophie says, once the ranger has left. “What’s up?”

  “I just can’t deal with her,” I say. “She’s like everyone else who has stopped believing.”

  “You can’t blame her for that,” Sophie says.

  “Well, I do.”

  Sophie shakes her head.

  “We need to depart by ten,” I say. “This is your last chance for a catnap.”

  “Can’t we just start early in the morning, before seven a.m.?” Sophie asks.

  “No,” I say. “Too risky. It’s now or never.”

  Two hours later, the campground is eerie, the air thick with fog and drizzle. It’s so cold that my breath creates its own cloud. Not the best weather to start our adventure, but it’s dismal enough to scare the other campers into their tents for the night.

  A raven feather sits on the trail leading to the outhouse. It wasn’t there when Sophie and I went inside the tent, so the bird must have circled us during our catnap. I slip the feather into my pocket for good luck. It’s not shiny like Sophie’s silver necklace, but it’s from a real bird, which gives it an extra chance of a lucky kick.

  It’s a little scary to be the only person up and walking around the campground, but it reminds me of one of Dad’s favorite sayings: “Sleep is for weaklings.”

  I am not a weakling!

  Dad told me that his best ideas come to him from mountaintops. Mom said that her best ideas come to her in the shower. And Sophie said, though she made me promise not to tell, that her best ideas come after kissing boys. Yuck. I don’t want to think about Sophie kissing boys.

  For me, outhouses do the trick. They’re simple. No mirrors. No lights. All I need is a little outhouse on a piece of tundra for good ideas.

  When I reach the outhouse door, I knock.

  No answer. I pull open the creaky door and step inside.

  It’s clean, but cold. Really cold. The seat feels like a ring of ice. Eek!

  When I’m done with my business, a wave of hurry passes over me. Tonight’s finally the night.

  A part of me wishes this outhouse were a hot air balloon and it could lift me up off the tundra to float into the sky. Up. Up. Up. From above, I could see everything from the raven’s-eye view. I could float over to the base of the mountain and find Dad. I could even float up to Denali’s summit and catch the view from the top.

  When I find Dad, he could join me in my floating outhouse, and we could hover back to the campground and surprise Sophie.

  Sophie could tell Dad that she loves him . . . and we could bring him home to Mom.

  Feet patter on the trail outside the outhouse, interrupting me. I’m not the only one awake.

  The pattering doesn’t exactly sound like human feet.

  “Hello,” I say.

  No answer. Spooky.

  I peek out. A red fox trots down the path toward me. Blood drips from his jowls, and that’s when I see it. A freshly dead ground squirrel chomped in his teeth.

  My stomach somersaults and I almost vomit. It’s not the blood. It’s not even the limp squirrel. It’s the reality that death happens so quickly around here. I can’t help but wonder if Dad is like that little squirrel, chomped in the jaws of the Muldrow Glacier.

  No, Lily. Don’t give up hope.

  I shake the thought away.

  I take a deep breath. Dad’s a fighter. He’s predator, not prey.

  When I step out of the outhouse, the rush to get to the mountain is in me. Like a bear knows when to crawl into her winter den to hibernate. Like a crane knows when to migrate. Like a tree knows when to drop her leaves. I know it’s time to go.

  No more dawdling around.

  “All set?” I ask Sophie. Our bags are finally packed, leaning against the inside shelves of the bear locker. I’ve packed plenty of food for a three-night trip—​and I even brought enough food for Dad when we find him.

  Sophie still looks half-asleep, but she’s up. Although it’s ten p.m., there’s plenty of light in the gray sky.

  “One quick trip to the outhouse,” she says, “and then I’ll be ready.”

  Sophie walks down the trail toward the outhouse, and that’s when I notice the graffiti on the walls of the bear locker. All sorts of messages scribbled inside. Mary loves Joe. Denali Rocks. Wish you were here, Ted. I love Willie. M+R=love. It’s crazy to think about all the stories etched into the wood. I wish Dad had left a message saying I love Lily.

  I pull out the Sharpie from my vest pocket. I know I’m not supposed to write on walls, but everyone else has, and I can’t stop myself.

  I need to get the words down to make them real.

  See you soon, Dad. Love, Lily

  Sophie returns just as I snap the lid back onto the pen and stuff it into my vest pocket.

  “Ready?” she asks, eyeing the message but not mentioning it.

  “Yes.”

  We hoist our packs onto our backs.

  Ready at last.

  Next stop—​McGonagall Pass, the footstool of Dad’s mountain.

  Dad doesn’t like the word rain. He calls it cloud water. Cloud water smacks our raincoats when we get to the trailhead. I’m grateful for some rain, because it keeps the mosquitoes away, but then again, too much rain can get miserable in a hurry.

  Stay calm, Lily.

  At the trailhead, a hand-carved wood sign says MCKINLEY RIVER BAR. 3 MILES. There’s no sign that says DENALI. APPROX. 20 MILES.

  Sophie motions for me to go first. “This was your idea,” she says.

  Wildflowers line the trail for the first mile of gently rolling tundra. The purple flowers catch my eye. Monkshood and Jacob’s-ladder. Dad taught me that monkshood is poisonous, as if the name monkshood weren’t eerie enough. And Jacob’s-ladder used to make me think of the Bible story in which Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven. Tonight I hope that these purple flowers will lead me to Dad, not heaven.

  We have been walking about a mile when I see the tracks. Fresh, with prints just starting to fill up with cloud water.

  One paw, five pads, and five claws. Grizzly bear, for sure.

  I’m all of a sudden really glad I brought the pepper spray. We might need more than bear bells for this long journey.

  “What are you looking at?” Sophie asks.

  I point.

  “That’s no porcupine,” she says.

  Following a grizzly is no good. Turn around—​that’s what anybody with a brain would do. But if we turn around, then what? The clock is ticking, and this is our one chance. Ranger Collins will be here in a few short hours, and we need to be far ahead of her.

  “Hey bear, hey bear!” I holler, and continue down the trail.

  “Hey bear! Hi bear!” Sophie yells behind me. Sh
e doesn’t tell me to turn around.

  Squish. Squish. Squish. I set my boots hard into the mud, covering up the bear tracks as I go.

  It’s a relief when the trail opens up into a swampy meadow. Wooden boardwalks run through the center of the meadow, and there’s better visibility. No bear in sight. There are some new patches of blue sky above, so maybe the fog and drizzle are lifting.

  I turn back to make sure Sophie is still there, and my right boot slips on the slimy boardwalk. Wham! I hit the wood hard.

  “You okay?” Sophie asks.

  “Fine,” I say, lying on my side, and I am totally fine. But nothing about chasing bear tracks through the mud in the middle of the night to find Dad feels fine or okay.

  “If we’re going to go, Lily, then we need to get going,” Sophie says. Fair enough. Sophie doesn’t want to linger too long with the bears, and I can’t blame her.

  The trail quickly enters a black spruce forest. It’s narrow, and the grizzly tracks are still fresh in front of us. I’ve walked down this trail before without a single worry in my world—​Mom and Dad leading the charge. But tonight everything rustles in a spooky Halloween kind of way.

  Squirrels? Birds? Bears? I’m hoping for porcupines this time, because I know the trick—​get out of the way.

  Along with the rustling, the rush of the McKinley River gets louder. I’ve been to the river many times before, but not in the middle of the night. And I never noticed how loud the river rush could be.

  Sophie’s leading now, and she’s walking so fast that I pretty much have to gallop to keep up. She’s on a mission. I can’t tell if she’s in a hurry to get to Dad, or just to get out of the grizzly forest. We don’t play In My Grandma’s Dogsled today. It’s all business.

  “Hey bear, hey bear!” we say, over and over and over again.

  After nearly three miles of walking, when our voices are hoarse from hey-bearing and our legs are finally in a good rhythm, the tall-tree forest spits us onto the McKinley River Bar. The sky is gray, but the tippy top of the mountain is out above the clouds, as if she’s peeking at us in a game of hide-and-seek. And the top of the mountain is beautiful, all shimmery, sparkly white—​a little slice of hope against the stormy night sky.

  The McKinley River runs in braids, small channels of water weaving together on the rocky bar. This river is much wider than the Savage; the gravel must stretch nearly a mile across before reaching the tundra on the far side.

  There is no trace of humans except for a tripod—​a landmark made out of three logs tied together in a teepee formation—​to mark the place where the trail meets the river. Dad would have encountered this tripod on his way back to Wonder Lake after climbing the mountain.

  Sophie scans the river, the glimmering stretches of water that weave across the gravel. Pretty to look at, but difficult to cross.

  “Lily,” she says, “this is not going to be easy.”

  She’s right. I know how deep the water can be and how cold and fast-moving.

  But crossing the McKinley River is the only way to get to Dad.

  Sophie doesn’t say anything while we eat granola bars beside the river. She stares at the braids of glacier water and holds her silver feather up to her chin. We both know how Dad feels about river crossings. He always says they are the most dangerous thing in Denali Park, worse than bears and mountains and crevasses—​worse because water channels are so cold, murky, and unpredictable. Water so cold you can get hypothermic in a matter of seconds. If you take a misstep, you can get swept away.

  My whole plan feels cold, murky, and unpredictable now. It would be much nicer to be curled up in my sleeping bag tonight and not dealing with this river.

  I try to push away thoughts of sleep. If I were asleep, what would that do to save Dad?

  To finish off our midnight snack, Sophie and I move on to apples. After Sophie chews her apple down to the core, she stands up and hoists her pack onto her shoulders. I choke down the last of my apple and follow her lead.

  We pace back and forth along the gravel bar for a while, looking for the best place to cross. Every other time I’ve crossed rivers in Denali, I’ve linked arms with Dad to help steady my steps. Linking arms with Sophie won’t be so steady. She’s got her green sneakers on too, and their rubber bottoms have a slippery tread.

  “Up here!” I yell to Sophie. I have a spot, not too narrow, not too wide. It’s impossible to tell exactly how deep it is, because the water is gray from glacier silt.

  I pick up a rock and throw it into the river to evaluate depth.

  Plop. Hard to tell, but definitely shouldn’t be deeper than I am tall.

  Sophie joins me. “This is a bad idea,” she says.

  I shake my head no. It can’t be bad. It’s the only way to the mountain.

  Take it slow. Don’t panic. I hear Dad’s river-crossing words.

  I loosen my backpack straps.

  “We’re really doing this?” Sophie asks, but she knows it’s real, because she’s rolling up her pant legs. No point rolling up mine. The water will come at least up to my knees.

  We keep our shoes on because every little bit of grip on the river bottom helps.

  “Ready?” I call over the McKinley River rush. I stare at the top of the mountain, not down at the water.

  “Yes,” Sophie says. We link arms, and mine trembles against hers.

  “One, two, three, go!” I say.

  The first step is the worst. The water fills my boot like liquid ice. The cold numbs my skin all the way through to the bone. Sophie pulls me closer with her linked arm, like the cold has gripped her, too.

  The second step is a little bit better.

  The river slaps against my shins, but I focus on the far side. On the third step, the water comes up above my knees. My knees!

  “Almost across this braid,” Sophie shouts over the rush of the water, and she’s right, but it doesn’t feel like it. We keep stepping. The water is almost up to my waist now.

  I breathe in and out slowly, and my head spins from the icy grip of the river. Look up, not down, Lily. I hear Dad’s words.

  “Two more steps,” I say, convincing myself that two steps is nothing.

  The water shallows, and Sophie tugs a final tug and I’m back on the rocks.

  “Phew,” I say, but as soon as I say it, the relief turns back into fear. We’ve crossed one section of the river, but we’re not even close to the other side. We’re on a little patch of gravel, and we’ll have to cross three or more braids before reaching safe ground.

  Figuring out where to cross is the hard part. Sophie and I pace along the rocks again and look for the next best channel. The narrow ones are tempting, because they’re an easy stone’s throw across—​but the problem is that they’re usually deeper.

  Sophie and I settle for a medium-length crossing. It should only be six or seven steps if we do it well.

  “Ready, set, go!” I say, and we link arms for the second crossing.

  No big deal. The water doesn’t even come up to our knees. Between the second and third braids, Sophie and I teeter on a tiny sliver of rocky shore. We don’t get to choose where to cross next. We have only two options: to move forward or to move back. It’s easy to decide what we need to do—​press on—​but harder to take that first step back into the water.

  Sophie squeezes my arm. “Let’s go for it,” she says.

  Halfway across the third braid, the sky starts spinning above me. My legs are so cold that I’m losing my balance and my ability to will my body forward.

  “Keep coming,” Sophie says, and she tugs on my arm.

  I drag my numb legs along, focusing on the far shore—​and I get there.

  “Sophie, I need a break,” I say when we reach the rocks.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “I can’t feel my legs.”

  She chuckles nervously. “Me either.”

  I rub my hands together and jog in place to try to bring feeling back to my toes and calves an
d knees. Sophie paces back and forth on our little stretch of shore. She’s scouting our next and final crossing.

  “If we can get across this, we’ll be on our way,” Sophie says.

  But this—​forging across one more stretch of glacier water—​feels impossible. My legs are like ice cubes.

  I glance down at my watch: one thirty a.m.

  What idiots cross rivers at this hour? The daylight makes it appear okay, but not even daylight is strong enough to help us ford glacial rivers in the middle of the night.

  “Ready?” Sophie asks.

  “Not yet,” I say over the rush of the water. I have never felt this unready. Shivers zip through my wet body. Wet is not what I’d like to be right now.

  I look toward the mountain, but the top no longer peeks out from the storm clouds. It hits me: If I’m cold, how cold is Dad?

  “Let’s go,” I say to Sophie. Dad keeps me going.

  The first three steps are normal. The current is swift, but the cold doesn’t feel as cold because my legs are numb. On the fourth step, when I put my right boot down, a rock turns on the river bottom. I try to catch myself with my left foot, but the river current tips me over. I don’t have time to scream. I hit the water, pulling Sophie down with me.

  River water everywhere, sucking me under.

  Ice cold.

  I choke on water and gasp for air.

  I can’t see Sophie. All I can see is how fast the land is moving by. “Help!” I scream, but there’s no help here. The shore is close, but my backpack catapults me downriver.

  Dunk. My head goes under, and the weight of the pack drags me down.

  Air. I need air.

  I gasp for it, and I get a mouth full of water. I’m choking and spluttering, flipping through the ice water. I’m tossed by the river, and it’s hard to feel up and down or side to side, but then I hear Dad’s words: Never ever give up on hope.

  I slip out of my backpack straps just in time to bob up to the surface for air.

  I get it this time—​a gulp of hope.