Lily's Mountain

by Hannah Moderow

  I’m tossed on my belly, then my back, but at least I have air.

  Then I wash up on the rocky river bar, skidding on the gravelly shore. I shimmy my body up on the sharp rocks, choking. I grip the shore with my fingers to avoid getting swept back down.

  I look at the river channel just in time to see my backpack—​a speck—​whip around the corner and disappear.

  Sophie. Where is Sophie?

  I look upriver, and she’s not there. Downriver? No.

  I choke for breath. Where is Sophie? I’m coughing and shivering, but it’s thinking about Sophie that makes it worse.

  Where is she? Have I lost her, too?

  When I look upriver a second time, there she is. Sophie. She’s running down the gravel bar toward me.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. She’s as soaked as I am.

  “Yes,” I say, but I don’t feel okay. “What about you?”

  Sophie sits down beside me on the rocks. “I thought you were a goner, Lily,” she says. We’re shivering so hard that we’re having our own human-quakes.

  “This was such a bad idea,” she says.

  I nod and shiver some more.

  “Where’s your pack?” Sophie asks.

  “It’s gone,” I say, and that’s when I start thinking about it rushing downriver.

  “Better than you or me,” Sophie says, but I can tell by the look on her face that she’s thinking about our lost food and gear.

  What about Dad’s map? I touch my vest pocket. It’s zippered shut. Good. I still have Dad’s map, Dad’s journal, my tiny flower book, my Sharpie, and my raven feather. They’re soggy now, but at least I have them.

  Sophie rummages through her pack to find some dry clothes. The problem is that nothing is dry after a river plunge.

  “What should we do?” I ask.

  “I know one thing,” Sophie says. “We’re not crossing that river again right now.”

  Sophie and I huddle under her damp sleeping bag for a while. I’m tempted to start a fire, but fires aren’t allowed in the backcountry of Denali National Park. Plus, my matches are gone, floating downriver in my pack. We couldn’t start a fire even if we needed to.

  I should have been more careful when I packed our bags. Good mountaineers know to split up all the essentials between backpacks—​just in case you lose a pack or get separated from your partner.

  Doubt creeps in slowly at first, and then it rushes into me, taking over along with the shivers.

  “You don’t think we’re going to die out here, do you?” I ask Sophie.

  “We better not,” she says. “Mom will kill us.”

  “Very funny,” I say, but talking about getting killed isn’t funny at all after everything that has happened.

  It’s almost two a.m. Home sounds pretty good right now, but home without Dad is not home at all.

  Sophie and I sit in a shivery huddle. Dad’s words play in my mind: The only thing worse than being cold, wet, and hungry in the wilderness is to be in a hurry.

  We’re really in trouble now. All strikes against us.

  Shivering burns extra calories, so shivering isn’t going to help. Warming up is essential, and we need to do it quickly. We only have one sleeping bag, a rain tarp, one ration of lunch, a can of pepper spray, Dad’s rescue bag, and a clock ticking as fast as the current of the river.

  “Let’s get a move on,” I say. Movement will help.

  Sophie squeezes me tight. “Yes. Onward,” she says. She’s knows it’s true—​that we need to keep going.

  “I’m glad it was your pack and not mine,” Sophie says while she’s rummaging through her gear.

  “Thanks a lot,” I say.

  “No, it’s because . . .” Sophie says, and she pulls something out of her pack.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t going to show you these until later,” she says, teeth chattering. “But while we’re stopped here, I might as well.” She pulls out a brown paper bag and tosses it to me.

  I flip over the bag. Two model birch-bark canoes slip out onto the rocks.

  “How do you have these?” I ask. No doubt, these are Dad’s birch-bark canoes.

  “They were on his workbench in the garage,” Sophie says. “I think he made them for us to race this summer when he returned from the mountain.”

  I can’t believe Sophie found Dad’s model canoes. Every summer, Dad spends days gathering bark and soaking spruce roots in the creek near home. Then he laces the bark into canoes for our races. He makes them watertight by melting tree sap onto the seams of the boats.

  Dad says that making things with his hands helps him write stories in his mind—​and then on paper for his newspaper column.

  I hold a canoe up to my nose. Mmm. Fresh and woodsy. The smell of Dad and words and hope.

  “We should race them,” Sophie says.

  “But then . . . they’ll be gone forever,” I say. That’s the thing about Dad’s model canoes. They’re beautiful, but once you set them in the river, they disappear for good.

  “He made them for us to race, Lily.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to lose them.”

  “Maybe on the trip back?” Sophie asks.

  I nod. Yes, by then we’ll have Dad to help us, and he’ll be able to make us more canoes when he gets home.

  Sophie lays out all the contents of our lunch bag on the river bar: four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on pilot bread, two bags of gummy bears, four fun-size Snickers, and a bag of trail mix. Not much fuel to get us to the mountain and back, but it will have to do.

  “What are we going to do about our food?” Sophie asks.

  “Ration it,” I say. What else is there to do?

  I wish the blueberries were ripe. Or that I’d put extra candy in my pockets.

  Rationing candy makes me extra nervous.

  Sophie shakes her head when she lays out Dad’s rescue supplies. “Food would be a lot more useful than all this,” she says, eyeing the rope and crampons.

  “We lost both water bottles too,” I say, changing the subject. “They were in my pack.”

  Sophie smiles. “Good thing Dad made his canoes watertight.”

  Yes. Model canoes will make perfect cups.

  “You think there are beavers around here?” Sophie asks, and I know why she’s asking.

  “I hope not,” I say, and take a long swig of water from the stern of my model canoe. Beaver fever. Giardia. Dad got the illness a few summers ago from drinking unfiltered water. He was miserable, running to and from the bathroom for weeks. The only way to prevent beaver fever is to filter, boil, or put purification tablets in the water. We have none of those three options today. There’s not much to do but drink the water—​and hope.

  Hope. We’ve been doing a lot of that. I’m not sure it’s helping, but I’m not about to stop. Dad better be right that hope knocks the socks off fear. Especially since I can’t eat my way to the mountain with candy anymore.

  I pull out Dad’s map. There’s a tiny star in a circle next to the McKinley River. I guess that was Dad’s warning—​a circled star means danger. I trace my finger up to the next star. It’s a sloppy star in Dad’s signature scrawl. Turtle Hill. There’s no circle around it, so I think it’s just a place where Dad spent the night.

  Yes. I flip to his journal entry from Turtle Hill, and this is what it says.

  TURTLE HILL:

  NO BETTER FEELING IN THE WORLD THAN MY BACKPACK PACKED AND THE MOUNTAIN IN FRONT OF ME. SOFT TUNDRA SLEEPING ON TURTLE HILL TONIGHT.

  “Let’s try to get to Turtle Hill before we nap,” I say. There’s something nice about going to Dad’s camp spot. It sounds safer there, like if Dad was once there, we’ll be okay too.

  “Sure,” Sophie says, but I see the tired in her eyes, and I hope it’s not too much farther.

  Sophie stops to retie her sneakers on a tundra knoll above the river bar, and that’s when I see it: a gray animal moving along the rocks below.

  At
first I think it’s a caribou.

  But it’s not.

  I grab Sophie’s binoculars from the top flap of her pack and zoom in.

  “Wolf,” I whisper. Just saying the word gives me goose bumps.

  “Yeah, right,” Sophie says, knowing how rare it is to see a wolf.

  But it is a wolf. I trace his path and his slow, easy trot. He wears a thick, scruffy gray coat, and his nose swings low to the ground.

  I follow his path with the binoculars and wonder: What has he seen out here? Did he watch us fall in the river, or is he just passing through?

  It’s a beautiful sort of silence—​Sophie and me standing statue-still on the tundra, watching the lone wolf. He’s just below us now, and I lose track of him when he comes to the edge of the tundra bank.

  There for a while, and now gone.

  I’m starting to think the wolf has trotted away into the night, but then the tundra rustles, and I know he’s close.

  I see his gray face first, shaggier and scruffier than the binocular view. Golden eyes. He stops and whimpers once—​the first of us to speak.

  Just as quickly as our eyes connect, the wolf turns and lopes back down to the river.

  “He must not think we’re a threat,” Sophie whispers.

  “I think he’s a messenger.”

  I lie back against the tundra for a quiet moment. I squeeze my eyes shut to try to remember the scene. I need to describe it—​every little magical detail—​to Dad when I find him.

  Easy trot. Golden eyes. One whimper.

  There’s something about the wolf that makes me feel so much closer to Dad.

  “Ready to go?” Sophie asks, interrupting my reverie.

  I’m not ready to move on, but I know we must. The clock doesn’t stop ticking, even for a wolf.

  Blisters on my big toes sting as my wet feet rub against wet socks in wet boots. My body aches all over. Staying up all night is the least of it. Powering forward into morning without food is when the real exhaustion sets in. Sophie must feel the same way, because she doesn’t bother to bend over and retie her sneaker laces, and she’s limping.

  A flash of worry crosses my mind when I think of Ranger Collins. Will she look for us before her hike? If she notices we’re gone, then what?

  “Keep. Eyes. Open,” I say as I walk. Several times I land on my knees on the trail when I fall asleep on my feet.

  Gear. Tallying up my gear will keep me awake. What exactly was in my backpack?

  All the food, except for our lunch bag.

  My sleeping bag.

  Extra set of dry clothes.

  Two pairs of dry socks.

  Camp stove and fuel.

  Matches.

  Two water bottles.

  Knife.

  Ugh.

  “Can I take your pack for a while?” I ask Sophie. Maybe if I carry the gear, I will feel more prepared. Maybe the weight of the pack will keep me awake.

  “No,” Sophie says, and I get it. The backpack is her only security.

  We bushwhack our way up Turtle Hill. Sophie might say that Dad’s dead, but that stride in her gait makes me wonder what she really believes.

  “Do you think Dad knows we fell in the river?” I ask.

  “Maybe,” she says, “but I hope not. Dad always says ninety-nine percent of wilderness accidents are preventable.”

  “Yeah, but we’re still alive, aren’t we? He’d be proud of us for that.” As I say it, I wonder: Would Dad be proud? I also wonder about his 99 percent rule. Was his fall on the glacier preventable? Where was his rope?

  Talking to Sophie takes my mind off my blistered toes, my wet and tired body, and my increasingly grumbling belly. Sophie and I vow not to eat any food until lunchtime. But it’s only six thirty a.m. now, and I’m not sure I’ll make it until then.

  I can’t stop wondering about the rope. If Dad had been roped, he would be fine. Why would he have been so reckless?

  The top of Turtle Hill isn’t a grand destination, but we find a trail there—​a real trail that leads from Turtle up to McGonagall Pass and the base of the mountain.

  A trail is just what we need for quick and easier travel, and it’s reassuring to know we’ve arrived at Dad’s camp spot.

  Dad put a tiny star on the map for a reason.

  I curl up in the tundra and push away the things that I know are true: Time is the enemy when

  you’re wet,

  you’re hungry, and

  you have many miles to go.

  Yes, we qualify for all three.

  But sleep feels more important than anything right now—​more important than warmth, food, and the miles that separate us from Dad. Sophie sets her watch for our thirty-minute catnap. When we wake up, we’ll press on.

  Sophie shakes me. “Time to get going,” she says.

  I force my eyes open, and that’s when I realize how cold I am. Beyond goose bumps and shivers. Cold on the outside and deep on the inside.

  “You warm?” I ask Sophie.

  “Not exactly sweating,” she says, stealing a line from Dad. “Too cold to sleep.”

  I pull my body upright. The hunger lump in my stomach is like a jagged stone scratching at my insides.

  “Twenty jumping jacks. Go!” Sophie says. She’s right. Jumping jacks are the quickest way to warm up.

  I start my twenty jumping jacks, and blood begins rushing back through my body, but the stone of hunger worsens. I’m really, really hungry. I’ve never been this hungry because I always pack extra food—​and candy.

  As I do the last two jacks, I notice Sophie sitting on the tundra changing her socks. When she pulls off the wet socks, her feet are bloody and swollen.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Blisters,” she says, and pulls a fresh pair of socks right over her bloody feet.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, and I can’t believe how bad they are.

  “What were you going to do, Lily?”

  She has a point, but at least I could have felt sorry.

  She continues: “Plus, I know better than to wear my high-tops out here.” Sophie crams her feet back into the shoes, reminding me how tough she used to be. How tough she is becoming again.

  Being out here has brought back that old tundra-loving Sophie I haven’t seen in a while.

  “Onward,” Sophie says, and we set off. Progress is the only thing that feels useful, but the trail from Turtle Hill is muddy and brushy and slow going.

  I would pay twenty dollars for a cheeseburger with fries right now. Fifty dollars, even. Heck, I’d pay sixty dollars if I could get a milkshake, too—​a strawberry one with whipped cream and sprinkles on top.

  I hear the water before I see it.

  “We don’t have another crossing, do we?” Sophie asks.

  “Yes,” I say, inspecting the rushing water. I’ve known it was coming for a while, but I pushed the knowledge to that part of my mind where the words dead, crevasse, and gone live.

  I unfold Dad’s map and, sure enough, he put a tiny star next to Clearwater Creek. A star with a dark circle around it.

  Sophie sits down on a rock beside the water, stalling.

  I flip open Dad’s journal, and on page three there’s a clue:

  CLEARWATER CREEK CROSSING HARDER THAN MCKINLEY. WATER UP TO MY KNEES. SHOULD HAVE WAITED UNTIL EARLY MORNING WHEN WATER IS LOWEST.

  Great. What could be worse than our McKinley River crossing?

  “Soph, I don’t want to cross this creek right now,” I say. Actually, I don’t want to cross the creek ever, but especially not now. My nylon pants are finally starting to dry, I’m slightly warm, and all I want to do is eat or sleep or both. We’ve been at it for more than twelve hours straight, and it’s almost noon.

  Sophie motions for the journal, and I hand it over.

  She reads slowly and then says, “We better follow Dad’s advice. Let’s get across the river while it’s technically still morning and the water’s low.”

  “Wh
at about sleep?” I ask, feeling the pull of it.

  “We can sleep when we’re dead,” Sophie says. It’s another one of Dad’s lines, but I really don’t like thinking about dead.

  Sophie’s still carrying the pack, but she doesn’t strap it tight across her chest for this crossing. She must want an easy escape if she falls in the creek. I don’t have my pack anymore, of course, but I turn Sophie’s sleeping bag stuff sack into a makeshift pack. I feel safer with a pack, like the extra weight will keep me stitched onto the earth. I carry two of the fun-size Snickers in my pocket, just in case we get separated. Spare candy is my only backup survival plan.

  My boots are finally damp instead of drenched, but I leave them on for the crossing. It’s worth it to have extra grip on the creek bottom.

  “Ready?” Sophie asks. I don’t feel one bit ready.

  “One, two, three, go!” she says.

  Sophie holds on to my arm so tight that I’m afraid she’s going to pull me over. Pull me in.

  The water is bone-numbing cold, just like the McKinley River: a shock to the body.

  Slow and methodical. The first two steps are only calf-deep, but on the third step I yell, “Ack!” as my foot reaches for the creek bottom. My body tips to the right, but I reach bottom in time to steady myself.

  “It’s okay,” Sophie says, but I can tell by her grip that she’s not certain we’re okay.

  The fourth and fifth steps knock the breath out of me—​the cold water flash-freezing my bones—​but I focus on the far shore.

  The dizzying cold brings back Dad’s words: “Stay calm, Lily. Calm chases away fear.” Dad’s voice is real. Real until Sophie yanks my arm. “Keep coming. Keep on coming, Lily,” she says.

  I’m stepping and the cold water is gripping and the sky is spinning, but I keep on going because Sophie’s tugging on my arm. When we reach the far bank, I’m relieved to plant my boot up onto the tundra. Even if Dad isn’t here waiting for me.