The Middle of Somewhere

by Sonja Yoerg

  The poor trail persisted all morning. She stopped at midday above Thousand Island Lake to eat and give her feet a short break.

  The trail might have been brutal, but the scenery did its best to compensate. The lake lay at the base of Banner Peak, the most glamorous mountain Liz had seen so far. Unlike the pale gray granite predominant in the Sierra, this mountain was dark as charcoal, dialing up the contrast on both the deep blue sky and the white of the snow traces along its ridge. The peak and the lake, sapphire blue and dotted with rocky islands, reminded her of those drawn in the final chapter of a storybook, the land in which the heroine finds the object of her quest.

  You’re not going to complete your quest sitting on your ass, she thought.

  As she closed her backpack, a bearded man approached, heading the way she had come. He was about her age and moved with the steady gait of a seasoned hiker. They exchanged greetings, and he asked where she was going.

  “Mount Whitney.”

  “Yeah? I’m doing the whole thing, too. In the other direction, obviously.” Nearly everyone who attempted the JMT traveled southward, as Liz was, to avoid climbing the highest mountain in the continental U.S. on the first day.

  “That’s good. Because the trail’s going to wear funny unless people walk it both ways.”

  He laughed. They chatted for a few minutes about trail conditions and campsites, then the man pointed over her shoulder. “Looks like there might be weather in our future.”

  She pivoted. Sizable cumulus clouds had gathered to the north, some with bruise-colored undersides. Overhead were just a few small clouds, but she reminded herself to be vigilant. She asked the man if he would attempt to go over Donahue Pass today.

  “Not if those clouds mean business. I’m not in that much of a hurry.”

  As if to punctuate his meaning, a gust of wind pushed past them with a low whistle. The surface of the lake turned dull. Liz wished him a safe hike and, strapping on her pack, resumed her descent toward whatever patch of ground she’d call home tonight.

  Liz had hiked and backpacked in the southern Sierra—near Mineral King and all around Kings Canyon National Park—but never here in the north. She had been avoiding Yosemite and the area she was now traversing because of crowds, and because, when she’d lived in Santa Fe and Los Angeles, the southern hikes were closer. As she skirted the shore of Thousand Island Lake, ever more scenic with clouds casting dramatic shadows, she realized that places this gorgeous were crowded for a reason.

  She had first planned to hike the JMT seven years ago, when she was married to Gabriel. They had done a few short backpacking trips together while they were dating, but nothing approaching this marathon. Gabriel postponed the trip several times for one reason or another. Two seasons went by before she realized it would never happen, and it had nothing to do with hiking. By then their marriage was unraveling, without discussion or argument. To this day, she didn’t know whether Gabriel had seen the end for them coming. But this was clear: the day he knew for certain was also, and not by coincidence, the day he died.

  Until late June, when she and Dante attended Gabriel’s sister’s wedding, Liz thought what had happened with Gabriel was behind her, like Tuolumne Meadows and Donahue Pass. She had believed, or at least hoped, that if she kept walking, the past would disappear beyond the horizon, and she could carve a new path, with Dante. She had been wrong. She’d lost her bearings, and twisted in on herself, entangled and bound tight, unable to gauge the direction of the wind or the magnitude of the coming storm.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first raindrops fell as she arrived at Garnet Lake. A group of young Japanese girls huddled around their GPS unit, which was powered by a solar panel the size of a magazine attached to the top of a pack. Liz almost asked if they needed help, but decided against it. The trails were well marked. The only reason she consulted her map was to assess her progress and learn the names of peaks, rivers and passes.

  The wind had picked up and, with the sun mostly occluded by the clouds, the temperature plummeted. She rounded the corner. The lake was streaked with whitecaps, and she ditched the vague idea she had to camp on the shore. Instead, she continued south, crossing the wooden bridge at the outlet and heading toward the next rise. Halfway up, rain began to fall steadily. She put on her waterproofs and drew the rain cover over her backpack.

  It was a long three-mile slog to the nearest water source, Shadow Creek. She didn’t mind the rain per se. She hadn’t expected to spend eighteen days outside without some discomfort and inconvenience. Rain was only water. She could deal with rain.

  What she couldn’t deal with so casually was a thunderstorm. She’d been terrified of thunder and lightning since her father took her camping when she was nine. He came to Santa Fe, where she lived with her mother, two or three times a year. Her mother called it visitation, although Liz found out later they had no legal agreement. To Liz, her father’s visits felt like kidnapping. He was a virtual stranger and took her away against her unvoiced will. They never went to his house in Virginia, where she knew he had a family—a complete one. He claimed he enjoyed camping with her so they could be alone. But even as a child, she knew better. Camping was what he could afford, at least for her. She imagined his other family never had to sleep in a tent. She imagined he took his real kids to Disney World, and stayed in a hotel with a pool.

  But Liz had no choice in the matter—not at that age—so camping it was. The spring she was nine they went to Bandelier National Monument, a short drive from Santa Fe. As soon as they arrived, they set off on a hike. Either her father got lost, or he misjudged the distance, because when the clouds gathered and the air smelled of tin cans, they were nowhere near the car. They were, instead, on the exposed ridge of a canyon. The skies opened as thunder rumbled. Raindrops fell, attacking her bare skin like darts. The nape of her neck tickled. A loud crack made her jump, and rang in her ears. The first bolt of lightning struck close by. Fear gripped her insides. She wanted to run. She wanted to disappear.

  Her father moved to pick her up. But she knew what every kid knew about lightning: you didn’t want to be the tallest. Let him be the tallest. She threw herself on the ground, flat as she could, pressed her cheek into the gravel and shut her eyes tight. Her father tried to pull her upright, but her arms found a rock and she clung to it with all her strength and kicked at him, screaming. Thunder boomed in her ears and rolled through her chest. She saw her death: a bolt of lightning sliced through her like a giant sword. Terrified of the pain, and the empty unknown that would follow, she writhed against the dirt to burrow in.

  Eventually, the storm relented and they found their way back to the car. Her father took her home the same evening, filthy and shaken. At the door, he said to her mother he had no idea why Liz was so scared of a little lightning.

  In early summer, when she was first planning to hike the JMT, Dante asked her how the weather would be.

  “Mostly clear, and cold at night. But it could rain, or even snow. Probably a thunderstorm or three.”

  “You do remember that you hide under the bed when there’s a thunderstorm? Last time you shook so hard it rattled the frame.”

  “It’s bad enough without you exaggerating. But I’m not about to spend my whole life burdened by an irrational fear.”

  “Why not? That’s my plan.”

  “Do you even have an irrational fear?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I’m afraid you’ll never have sex with me again and I will die a sad, lonely and very frustrated old man.”

  They’d laughed, and made love on the couch. That was months ago.

  By the time she arrived at Shadow Creek, the rain had become drizzle. She put down her pack and searched for a campsite. After following several rabbit trails off the main path, she found a small site with an established fire ring not far from the river. She suspected there were other campsites downstream—the terrain was leveling ou
t—but after nearly fourteen miles, half of it in the rain, she was more than ready to quit. She wasn’t going to quibble about where she pitched her tent.

  The tent would have been up quickly except she drove a stake into a tree root, which gripped it tightly. She spent twenty minutes digging, pulling, twisting and cursing before she got it out. When the tent was erect and secure, she threw her pack inside and climbed in after it, leaving her boots, pack cover and rain suit in the vestibule. She blew up her air mattress and became light-headed. She’d not eaten nearly enough today. Tempted as she was not to bother with the stove and eat her next day’s lunch instead, hot food sounded better. She set up the stove in the vestibule and ate an entire packet of instant mashed potatoes which, to her surprise, actually did taste like a loaded baked potato, as advertised. She washed it down with water and realized she’d forgotten to fill her second bottle. Back out into the rain.

  By seven o’clock, she’d organized her gear and stashed the bear can outside the door. If a bear wanted to play with the can in the rain, he could come over here and get it. Other than what falling water had accomplished, she hadn’t washed or bothered to brush her teeth. Her limbs were leaden. She wanted only to lie inside her sleeping bag, close her eyes and wake to a sunny morning.

  In her dream, she stood alone aboard a tall ship on a high sea. Tattered sails whipped around her. The ship groaned and pitched, and the mast snapped in half with a deafening crack that startled her awake.

  Her heart was racing as she sat up. It was pitch black. Rain pelted the fly and wind shouted through the trees. Her mouth went dry as she realized the breaking mast in her dream had been thunder. Her fingers searched along the inside surface of the tent until she found the mesh pocket and pulled out the flashlight.

  A low boom sounded in the distance. She froze. A loud burst of thunder, like wood splintering against rock. She dropped the flashlight. As her hands scrambled to find it, the thunder growled twice more, louder each time, as if it were coming for her. She grasped the flashlight and turned it on. It didn’t provide the comfort she’d hoped for. The shadows in the tent, combined with the undulating movement of the wind against the fly, brought only another dimension to her fear. She turned the flashlight off, but kept it in her hand.

  Liz closed her eyes and pulled her hat over her ears to muffle the sound of the storm. She wriggled deeper into the sleeping bag as her mind struggled to rein in her emotion.

  I’m not in the open.

  I’m not the tallest thing around. (Thank you, trees.)

  I’m not at the top of a pass holding a forty-foot metal stick in the air.

  I don’t have to go anywhere.

  She realized it had been raining long and hard enough that water might be streaming under the tent. Her mattress was waterproof but the rest of her gear remained vulnerable. She cursed herself for not digging a trench around the tent to divert the flow. A couple of inches deep would have done it. She sat up again and shone the light across the tent floor. A two-foot section in the corner was dark with moisture. If it kept raining, the whole tent would be soaked.

  Shit. Time to put on your big-girl panties.

  Liz’s hands trembled as she crouched in the tent opening and put on her rain suit and boots. The zipper on the fly jammed. She took a deep breath, backed the zipper up and tried again. Success. Not wanting to see more than she had to, she kept the flashlight focused on the ground. She circled the tent, stepping over the guy lines, and found where a rivulet flowed toward it. Using her bootheel, she scraped a shallow trench. The water flowed into it obediently.

  She had almost completed the trench when a rolling boom made her stomach clench. She slammed her heel harder into the earth, determined to finish the job and seek refuge. An explosive crack startled her. Her foot skidded on the slick mud. She threw her arms out to regain her balance, and the flashlight sailed out of her hand, landing ten feet away, pointed uselessly at a boulder.

  Liz moved to retrieve it. A flash of lightning lit the sky. The silhouettes of the trees and boulders appeared for an instant. Ten yards away, a shape, the head and torso of a man, was framed between tree trunks. She screamed. She darted for the flashlight, her boots slipping with each step. As she picked up the light, she fell onto one knee, pushed off the ground and wheeled around. She held the flashlight in both hands and shone the beam where the figure had been. It was gone. Her breath came in gasps as she jerked the light from place to place, searching. A peal of thunder rumbled up her legs and into her gut. She ducked into the vestibule of the tent, crouching like a rabbit under a bush, and turned off the light.

  When she was once again in her bag, she told herself nothing would happen to her that night. She told herself the person she saw standing in a thunderstorm at two in the morning was probably a hiker camped nearby who’d gone out to pee, or to solve a problem with his tent as she had. This area wasn’t particularly remote and would attract backpackers doing shorter trips, not just JMT through-hikers. (She pushed aside the competing thought that someone hiking for the weekend surely would have seen the forecast and changed their plans.) She made the argument that it could have been the older man hiking with his wife, since Liz’s pace matched theirs, or even Brensen the actor. He had been behind her, but could have churned his anger into speed and caught up.

  Liz told herself all these things, and many more, as she lay awake, shivering and hoping for dawn. But neither the logic nor the repetition of these lectures could alter her feeling that the man she had seen was Payton Root, and that whatever business he had outside in the middle of a thunderstorm had everything to do with her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As soon as she left the tent in the morning, she searched the vicinity for other hikers. She found no one, and began to question whether she had seen anything at all. In the dark, in the rain, while freaking out over the storm, it could have been anything. Or nothing. It’s not as though she had seen the figure move. Now the storm had passed, the sun was out and, more to the point, she was unharmed. It wasn’t much, but after a harrowing night, she’d take it.

  While she drank her coffee, she studied the map and got more good news. Red’s Meadow was a little over ten miles away, mostly downhill. A piece of cake. She’d arrive there a full day ahead of schedule. The thought of what awaited her at Red’s cheered her. Not only would she be reunited with her bucket but, compared to camping, Red’s was a Marriott. It had a store, a restaurant and showers.

  She packed the tent wet and hit the trail.

  A half mile along the older couple were storing gear in their backpacks. Liz called good morning to them, and they waved her over. Closer now, she judged they were in their fifties. Their names were Paul and Linda. “Like the McCartneys,” Linda said proudly. They chatted with Liz about the storm (“We were hoping you were all right”) and their previous long hikes (in Chile and the Pyrenees). Linda was talkative and perky. Paul, a Brit, was tall and slim and more reticent, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Liz enjoyed them both. She left them to finish their packing.

  “See you at Red’s!” Linda called after her.

  “If you beat us there, don’t drink all the beer!” Paul added.

  She arrived at two thirty, dropped her pack and entered the store to claim her bucket. The man behind the counter accepted her receipt with a heavy sigh and brought the bucket out from the store room. She paid him five dollars for a shower, two dollars for a towel and two more for a small bottle of shampoo. If Dante had been there, she’d have bought a razor for her legs, but he wasn’t, so why bother? She carried everything outside, and returned for a Häagen-Daz chocolate-chocolate ice cream bar. Carpe diem.

  Humping both her backpack and the twenty-five-pound bucket the half mile to the campground was harder than the ten miles she’d covered that day. Last night had caught up to her. Too little sleep and too much adrenaline. Her shoulders ached and her feet felt as if they’d been run over by s
tudded tires. She put her sodden clothing and gear in the sun to dry, then dragged herself along the footpath again to grab a shower and a burger.

  She let the hot water pour over her for an ecologically incorrect amount of time, and had to agree that cleanliness was right up there with godliness.

  The café, like the store, was decorated Western style with knotty pine paneling, deer and bear trophies mounted behind the counter and an ancient upright piano in the corner. There was a short counter with red stools and six tables covered with plastic red-checkered tablecloths. Brensen sat near the piano and waved her over. Tanner and thinner than when she’d last seen him, he was working his way through a six-pack of Sierra Nevada.

  “Sit here if you want.” He pulled out a chair. “You look surprised to see me.”

  “Well, the last time I saw you, you weren’t exactly in the spirit of things.”

  “True, true.”

  The waitress delivered his burger. The smell of it made Liz realize she was starving. She ordered one.

  Brensen opened a beer and handed it to her. “I got up that morning with my ass frozen to the ground. But there wasn’t anyone around to complain to, so I started walking. Got to Tuolumne Meadows in time for the party and thought maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Of course that was before all the rain. Christ.” He paused as if remembering something. “Where’s Duncan?”

  “Dante.”

  “Dante. Yeah.” He glanced out the window. “Having a shower?”

  She traced the pattern on the table with a finger. “His blisters were killing him. He went home.”

  Brensen put down his burger and studied her. “Maybe he wasn’t exactly in the spirit of things.”