Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

by Aspen Matis

  When he asked me directly if I was coming, I said no. He ignored Icecap, who was squatting, packing his food. “No, we’re going to try to hike it through,” I answered him.

  He said I would need an ice ax and mountaineering crampons and snowshoes to attempt “such a foolish thing,” and, even then, there was no guarantee. “Probably freeze,” he said to me. “Probably worse.”

  I noticed Chuck and Tigger’s white van-home parked out on the dirt road. Hikers tossed their backpacks into the back. Was I making the right choice going into the High Sierra so early? I tried to drop the thought that I could be walking toward my death. My third package contained gloves, a fleece, a windbreaker, and an ice ax—I did at least have one necessary tool. I lifted it. It was smooth matte steel, yet light, with a beaked head. Icecap held his own, stoic. I could tell he was listening to the men deciding to go with Monty. He was scared, too.

  The other hikers loaded up into Chuck Norris and Tigger’s van. They were actually doing it: skipping the High Sierra. As much as I knew I had to fear those mountains that rose against the sky, I still couldn’t understand it. After enduring seven hundred miles of desert, how could they finally arrive at the gateway to the High Sierra and bail, not even try to go on?

  Icecap and I said goodbye to BoJo, a computer programmer, to Trout Lily, the only girl in Monty’s pack. Mystic, a sweet stoner from New Hampshire. Goodbye, very best luck. Hikers I’d just met, leaving. In jest, they called themselves the Donner Party.

  The van rolled up the high desert road. The dust puffed, a long drab cloud.

  I stood there with Icecap. I felt scared, nervous and excited, as if I were about to jump off a bridge either into water or onto rock, no way to know.

  There were 239.6 trail-miles from Kennedy Meadows to my next resupply point, Tuolumne Meadows. Not one road transects that expanse of wilderness, the longest uninterrupted stretch of wilderness left in the lower forty-eight. I was about to cross it on foot with my boyfriend and our one shared tent, using our one shared map.

  “Ready for it?” Icecap asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Just let me just buy some Jolly Ranchers at the store.”

  “Waste time for this, for candy?” Icecap asked, annoyed. “We don’t waste time for this. It will be dark.”

  The sun glared high in wide sky. Pale clouds, brown at their edges, lay flat and low, storm clouds, maybe. On my whole walk through the desert, it had rained just once. I tried to press away the threats the bearded men had whispered. I’d subtracted my options down to just this one. The only way through was to stay together.

  We left Kennedy Meadows and walked over the hills of sand until they became a sparse pine forest. With time, the trees grew stout and the footpath became granite slabs. Where we were going there would be no trail magic, only a two-hundred-mile expanse of snowy peaks.

  We trudged into the high, white mountains, tense, hardly talking. It was June first. I thought again of that single month that makes the difference in these high peaks between skinny dipping and napping by a creek in evergreens’ inky shade and getting lost in a whiteout blizzard. We were bundled up in all our clothes, bracing our slim, tired bodies for relentless cold.

  By late afternoon, the light had vanished. The sky was the silver color of fur, dim as shadow. More immediate than the snow, there was another threat we’d ignored. My hair was light with static electricity. We were walking up into a lightning storm.

  We decided to stop and make camp. I pitched our tent while Icecap built a fire. The air was charged. The sky had not yet broken. In the chalky light, Icecap sat, lit from below by the orange flicker of fire. He was emaciated. A gust of wind swelled the fire, illuminating the bottom of Icecap’s nose and the bones above the hollow of his cheeks. I thought: Icecap hates the wind. I smirked. The air was frozen; I could see it, my breath like smoke.

  That night in our new tent, when I again told him no, he rolled over, his spine arched at me. His delicate backbones were more hostile than the stony ridge of peaks spread black on the electric northern sky. Through his thin goose down sleeping bag, I counted his vertebrae: bone, bone, bone, bone, into sleep.

  JUNE 4, THE SOUTHERN SIERRA, MILE 731

  The early sun lit the morning fog and backlit the twisted trees. Their silhouettes intertwined against the pale sky. Icecap trailed me. I walked through the gray-white morning, the ice-crusted soil crunching under my running shoes.

  My ears rang; absence of sound made my forehead ache. Snow began to accumulate on the ground. Against the white air, I hadn’t noticed it was falling. With each mile the trees thinned. Everything was scraped with frost, the glittering snow piling higher. Soon we smelled pinewood burning. Fifty yards off-trail we noticed a campfire glowing, amber through the willow-gray, with three bundled male hikers crouching around it. We climbed the hill to join them.

  I hadn’t met any of these hikers before, yet I recognized each name when I heard it. One man, Slim, was not a thru-hiker; he had skipped the first five hundred miles of desert and hopped on-trail in the Mojave. He was hefty and very loud. The other two men, Buckwheat and Puck, were quiet and slight. Buckwheat was shivering; his lips were pale as wax.

  I told him he looked freezing.

  He grinned and nodded, “Yes,” he said, “we might die.”

  I leaned closer to him. I thought I’d misheard. “We’ll die?”

  “Yes, might. The snow’s going to keep on coming,” he said. His voice was so quiet, it annoyed me, and I was still unsure if I’d heard him correctly. “Supposed to snow five feet tonight, I think.” He described me walking through a field of snow up to my nose. “You’ll burn every calorie you’re carrying and only go ten miles.”

  I ignored him. I asked Icecap if he was warm enough.

  Icecap mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

  I felt very cold and agitated, anxious to leave this new strange crew. Yet we couldn’t keep walking to stay awake and warm in this snowfall; we could hardly see through the downy flakes. We’d walk off the route and get lost. Searching for our way back we might eat too much, run out of food, and fulfill Buckwheat’s prophecy. We agreed we needed to stay. Icecap and I excused ourselves, shivering, our hands shaking, stumbled fifteen feet though gleaming powder, and built our tent. We made camp early, after only nine miles.

  I bundled in my sleeping bag in the tent, looking at Icecap; he looked different. He told me I was very pretty when I was cold.

  “You look older,” I said. With his face chilled stiff, he did.

  He pulled his arms out of his bag and wrapped them around me. He peeled my bag down. He pressed his two cold hands against my bare hips and squeezed. I was freezing. I knew he wanted to have sex.

  I stared up at the tent’s olive green rainfly, listened to the frozen flakes clicking against it. I leaned against him and stroked his cold soft hair, his neck. It was too cold. I was not feeling turned on. I looked at his pale eyes and told him, “Hey, there. Let’s just kiss tonight.”

  He pulled away and pulled his sleeping bag up, zipped it up from the inside, all the way up, swaddling himself. He rolled so his spine was arched at me, like a mad cat, just like the night before. He said, “I don’t actually like kissing. I hate it. I just only do it because you always want to.”

  “You hate kissing,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I wasn’t even shocked. He was cold and I was numb. It wasn’t tolerable, seemed impossible to me. I thought about all of the things that Icecap hated—beaches and wind, trains and resting, kissing. So many of the things I loved. I pictured: kissing on trains, windswept mountains, white-sand beaches. I imagined a beautiful world composed of things Icecap hated. I loved more than he did.

  I felt maddeningly lost. I thought about my brother Jacob, maybe he would understand. As a kid, five years younger, insecure and unsure, I would often ask myself, What would Jacob do? What would he say? How would Jacob act? I wanted to talk with him. His advice was always good.

  I bundled up in all of the
clothes I carried, zipped zipper over zipper, and crawled out into snow-furred light. I had talked to Jacob only once since I’d begun my walk. He had no way of calling me on the trail. And I hadn’t called him. But I needed him now more than ever.

  I dialed my brother’s number, shivering, and he picked up.

  “Jacob? How have you been?” I wanted Jacob to tell me the gameplan, the answer, to tell me the thing to do so that I would be okay. I didn’t see a safe way through without Icecap. But I couldn’t see a way through with him now, either.

  My brother answered, “Debby?” and I immediately started crying. I was scared. I had gotten myself stuck. Jacob’s familiar husky voice made me feel catastrophically alone.

  I wanted to tell him about how I had been hiking with a guy, how we were out of pace and I’d stupidly bought a two-person tent and let him move in, and now I was stuck with him. For at least another 240 rugged snowy miles. Miles through which I’d wanted to walk alone. How I’d finally arrived here, in the Range of Light, in the land of Muir, and I couldn’t be alone with it. I couldn’t even enjoy it.

  I thought all this, and yet I couldn’t speak it. He was silent through my sobs.

  “Hello?” I said. “You there?”

  Tears had frozen slick on my cheeks. When he spoke at last, his voice was gravelly, low and stiff. “You’re nineteen. You shouldn’t be alone this much.”

  “I—” I told him, “What? I’m not alone. I’m with a boy.”

  Jacob explained that normal nineteen-year-olds don’t go off alone for six months. They have fun with other college kids. They’re kids. “It’s one thing to forsake people and decide you hate everybody and you’re all fed up with it when you’re seventy. But you’re nineteen. Now’s the time to live your life.”

  Snowflakes spilled down in thick white sweeps, intricate flakes. They caught on my black fleece gloves, delicate stars shiny as metal. Clinging, not melting. I didn’t know what to say. His concerns were irrelevant. I was with people; of course I was. I was one in a tight community of nomads. Trail angels were supporting me. I was one in a pack, surviving, migrating north. This was me living my life—it was back at school that I’d felt lonely. Here at least I had hope.

  “No, I mean,” I said, “I am.” I didn’t know how to explain that I’d made closer friendships out in this wilderness than I’d ever made in Newton. “I hike with people,” I said. “They’re really nice.”

  He cut me off. “This whole thing is self-indulgent.” He explained that walking alone in the middle of nowhere serves no purpose. “It doesn’t help anyone. What Dad does as a lawyer helps people. Playing ball is entertainment for people, and I’m part of something larger than me. Baseball gives fans a good time. I’m on a team with people, interacting, learning how to be a team player. Being alone all the time in the woods doesn’t contribute anything.”

  I said nothing. I could see Icecap’s headlamp click on inside the tent.

  Frost burned my lungs. New tears froze over the cold trails of the last. “Indulgent,” I repeated back to him. “Alone,” I said. “You think I’m too alone?”

  I’d actually only been alone three nights of this whole hike. Only just three. All other nights, I’d slept by Icecap. In fact, I hadn’t been alone nearly enough.

  I had needed his sound advice—should I go on with Icecap, unhappy, or should I go on, mapless and alone? I had needed his faithful big-brotherly wisdom. But instead he’d ignored everything I said about my problems hiking with Icecap and insulted the value of this walk. He’d insulted me. He could not understand, and I couldn’t make him.

  He was silent for a long cold moment, and so was I, and then he suggested I go to India with his girlfriend. She’d be doing some important community-service-type stuff there. It would give my summer purpose.

  I told him I had to go back to my boyfriend—my boyfriend—“I’m never alone”—and clicked off the phone and crawled back into our tent. I wanted to say, This is important work, This is important work, This is important—but I couldn’t find the words to explain how.

  Back in the tent that night Icecap didn’t kiss me. We didn’t cuddle. I tried to explain to myself that I’d already known that we were over. I had to end it. Regardless of snow’s danger. Because of it. I had to do this alone. Tomorrow I would.

  But tomorrow came and went. I remained with him.

  JUNE 6, UPPER CRABTREE MEADOW, MOUNT WHITNEY SUMMIT ATTEMPT, THE HIGH SIERRA, MILE 766

  One cold dawn, my running shoes frozen stiff as wood, Icecap and I packed, painfully cold. Wind bit my chapped fingers, my throat burned. We were to climb Mount Whitney today, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight, a seventeen-mile round-trip detour off the PCT but worth it, everybody had said. Icecap was confident we would summit. I wasn’t. I was losing faith in myself. I still hadn’t left him.

  We were in a rush. We pounded our tent stakes deeper into the frozen ground, pulled tighter our rainfly’s cords, retied the knots, and then slipped all our belongings inside of our tent to keep them safe. He and I dusted frost off our knapsacks with gloved hands, packed granola bars and cheddar cheese, and filled all of our water bottles in the snow-rimmed creek. Ice rested like delicate fingers spread open on the water. We double-checked everything. We had secured our basecamp. Our tent would stand firm in snow or wind. With our ice axes strapped to our limp packs, we abandoned our shelter and food, hopeful we’d be able to reach the summit and find our way back through the mountains before dark.

  I trudged through the foot-deep powder, dry snow sifting through my shoes’ mesh, Icecap behind me. Mount Whitney did not, from here, look attainable; it looked like a tall mountain, far away. I tried to wiggle my toes but couldn’t. They’d gone numb. The blanket of snow that draped the mountains’ contours gleamed. With clear blue sky over us, it seemed like a good day to summit. Icecap strode fast, passing me, and the gap between us widened. Two, three, five switchbacks above me, he became a dot fading away.

  I thought about everything but the danger of my situation. I forced my mind toward pioneer stories and Blood on the Tracks songs. In running shoes and spandex, I traversed ice-crusted snowfields, some so steep that a slip would be fatal—three thousand feet of elevation lost in a moment, ending on jagged rock. My ice ax was still strapped to the back of my pack. I wasn’t using it precisely because Icecap wanted me to.

  “Use your ice ax!” Icecap called down to me, again, again, a weak echo of a voice. I didn’t answer. “Use. Your. ICE. AX.” He must have thought I couldn’t hear him.

  “I don’t need it,” I whispered back to him, to no one. “I’m in balance. I’m in balance. Go fuck off.”

  He screamed something unintelligible, loud, and I didn’t respond. I just trudged on, kicking steps through the ice crust, into snow like biscuit crumbs, and breathed. The air was empty, thin. The valleys of the High Sierra receded and the lakes became petals the pale color of sky. The Range of Light expanded, outward, bright and boundless, a low blue sunlit snow-draped garden of trees. I kick-stepped across snow slopes, over chutes to abysses. Not stopping. Not using my ice ax.

  The summit hut poked out from low clouds. I ran up, through snow as deep as my knees, kicking my feet free. The world opened to me, glittery white and vast. I collapsed on the rock of the wind-scraped summit, next to Icecap. He stared straight outward.

  He was furious. I hadn’t used my ice ax. I was irresponsible, reckless, idiotic. He spat these words. He sounded fluent. He said it was horrifying to watch me. “If someone slipped down a slope and broke a leg, and she had an ice ax but did not use it, I would have to think twice,” he said to me, not looking at me, “about risking my life to save her.”

  I hadn’t asked him to risk his life. I didn’t want him to save me. “I was in balance,” I said. I folded my legs beneath me and stood back up. I looked at the grand view, our deep footprints down the mountain, two distinct trails, and slung my pack on, ice ax still strapped to it. Fuck it, fuck him. I began to descend.

/>   I descended the way I’d climbed, plunging my heels into the hard snow, run-slipping down the mountain. Icecap behind me always. He was patronizing. Who was he to tell me I would fall? He was not my father. I was out ahead, down below, when Icecap called down to me, “Wild Child, wait!”

  He caught up and told me he had somehow lost a glove. He yelled it at me, as if it were my fault. He had lost one of his gloves somewhere on this big white mountain. I thought we’d freeze trying to find it. In three hours it’d be death dark. “Look for it,” he said to me, looking back up the mountain. “My hand will freeze off.”

  I was annoyed. He’d been acting like he knew what to do to make me safe, but staying on the peak to look for his glove was foolish and dangerous. I told him I’d help him look for it for a minute, but then we needed to get down; we needed to get back to our tent before dark or we’d freeze.

  “You’re a bitch,” he said. He said it loud; his voice echoed.

  I was a bitch, I was a bitch. I was so done. I left him there, looking for his glove, and trudged down the snow to our camp, fuming and sad. I strode at last back into the openness of Upper Crabtree Meadow; in the dusk I saw that a tent city had sprung up. The next day’s wave of hikers had caught us. I hadn’t known so many hikers were so close behind us. The registers tell you who’s ahead, but who is behind you is always a mystery. Our seventeen-mile day-long detour had stalled us just long enough to crash us with a new wave of hikers, mostly new faces, and I was ready. Ready to get to know who was who. To make new friends. To leave Icecap. Today. Right fucking now.

  I was enraged by him. Mad, so mad, and why? I was in a quandary of my own making, created by my passivity. I’d purchased a two-person tent for me and Icecap. I’d done it after I already knew I didn’t want to be trapped with him, night after night. Day after precious day. I’d been unable to speak up, to say what I’d wanted, and that inability had once again trapped me. I was incapable of escaping my infuriating silence. Despite my new muscle tone, my tanner body, this new big tent was proof I hadn’t purged one cell of my old psyche. Since Mexico, since fucking Colorado, I hadn’t changed one molecule.