Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

by Aspen Matis

  Then the trees parted. A lake appeared like a blue light, it was Crater Lake, glowing, two thousand feet below. Amid vast deep green and gray: a shock of turquoise, clearer than the sky and catching the sun, gleaming, blinding.

  I followed Crater Lake’s high rim, its yellow clay dirt trail, the pine trees’ bark brick red, air sweet with sap and soil. I walked too close to the crater’s edge, but I was mesmerized; I couldn’t turn away, leaned toward the drop.

  The water’s color seemed unreal, too intense and solid, a Crayola color, one I would have picked to draw with. Misplaced in this subdued reality. I tossed a twig over the rim and watched it fall until I couldn’t see it.

  Down on the lake, below, a small island rested. Wizard Island, according to my book. It was a forested volcano, shadowed land on Crater Lake’s expansive blue. It was the most gorgeous place I’d seen in my whole life. I imagined living down there on the island, building a life at the calm floor of a crater; this would be my island, I would be forever surrounded by vast blue like sky air, would make a wild family here. Tranquil and protected. I thought I saw a building on the island, a wooden cabin—I hoped it was—but maybe it was a mirage I’d conjured, my vision teary, wishful.

  I nearly stepped on a hand. It was a man’s. He was just off the trail, crouched, handling tiny mirrors, leaning one against a tree’s thick root, balancing another on a rock the size of a fist, carefully setting them up so they reflected the sky and the lake water in an intricate kaleidoscoped pattern.

  “Sorry,” I said. I didn’t want to mess him up. “That looks so cool.”

  He was focused, mumbled, “Thank you.” He snapped a photo of his creation, another, cocked his head up and smiled. I was struck by his distinctive face. His eyes were strange, perfectly black, his cheekbones pushed outward, upward. He was handsome. “Come down here,” he said to me. “You can see it better.”

  I squatted on the soil beside him. The woods smelled of pine and sage. The air was cool as fresh water. I looked into the small mirrors, windows of sky, the woods, the bright turquoise water far below, they reflected and fragmented everything. It was mesmerizing.

  The man said his name was Mystic.

  “Of the Donner Party?” He was one of the hikers who’d followed Warner Springs Monty north, skipping the High Sierra.

  “Yes.”

  I’d met him back at Kennedy Meadows, I remembered. I told him it was cool to see him here. I told him, “Cool project. You’re really good.” He was amazing. He collected his mirrors, zipped them safely into his knapsack, and we walked north together.

  Mystic told me the story of what had become of Warner Springs Monty’s Donner Party; at last I heard the truth. Up at Donner Pass the group had found only snowfields, vast and trackless, blue sky, the sun blinding. The mountains were as cold and white as the High Sierra, just as remote and without tracks or hiker-made signs. They’d tried to trudge north, through it, stubborn; Monty led the way, ahead, into snow. But they were without a path or clue. The snow was deep; Old BoJo fell. He broke his foot. Monty told him it was fine, to try to keep going.

  Of course BoJo couldn’t. Donner Pass was endless snow, impassible, even to hikers in good shape with good maps and two feet. BoJo had hoped to reinvent himself on his walk, to become braver, to gain new confidence and pride, to accomplish something big, and in a snap it was over. He was still only a follower, left with the consequence of his foolish choice, the hurt it caused him. Sprawled on the snow, he’d cried. The six hikers who’d followed Monty nearly froze saving him.

  But they’d already skipped, and returning to Kennedy Meadows would be costly and shameful, a logistical mess. Skipping farther north seemed like bypassing everything. They couldn’t think where they should go. They didn’t belong anywhere, felt plucked from the hiker-pack, far away from it. They’d followed Monty blindly and, arriving at more snow, believing it was impossible to cross, their continuous chain of footsteps was now broken. Feeling discouraged, each of them had to decide the next step from here. They dispersed. Most left the trail, returned to homes with roofs. They abandoned their hikes. Stranded on snow, apart from other hikers, so far off the course they’d planned, tired and broken, they quit.

  All of them but Mystic. Mystic had skipped again, back south, then way up to Oregon. This was no longer a thru-hike for him, but he kept on keeping on, regardless. Mystic told me he was the last of the Donner Party members still hiking, and though he regretted missing the High Sierra, its beauty, he seemed happy to continue on and leave that gap behind.

  The sun was orange, evening light, our shadows long, the soft earth smelling sweet and rich. Mystic hadn’t missed everything. Oregon was beautiful, too. Here he was, walking with me, my pace, and I was happy to be with him. “It’s good you kept going,” I said. I felt high, floating past dark trees, above the perfect turquoise view. “I’m glad.”

  I was feeling silly. I announced, “I want to live on Wizard Island.” I told him: “Imagine.”

  He smiled, shook his head no, “Can’t.” It was a national park, he said, illegal.

  We walked without talking, comfortably, side by side, the trail here atypically wide. It accommodated us both perfectly. The dimming woods were tranquil, the perfect turquoise of the lake now paler, a mirror to the cotton-candy sky. My father had once fostered fantasies of the same kind that pulled me now. I felt compassion for my dad, my writing blood, for his desire for life in a wilderness—a forgiving compassion—he was human and not only just my father. I smiled, remembering the father he was when he’d been wonderful to me. I felt my strong alliance with the man he used to be and wished he saw how close we were connected.

  Daylight faded. We skirted Crater Lake, passed Wizard Island, my own mad dreams of far-flung woodland refuge.

  The woods were soundless, dark now. Perfect turquoise: glassy black. Mirror to nothing. The sky colorless but for a yellow and pale pink smudge at the western horizon, becoming fiery red, becoming coal.

  That night in the pines I sat at a fire with Mystic and the guys he now hiked with. Blackfoot, Buddha, Deep, Einstein, and Ass-Scratcher—thru-hikers whose names and notes I’d seen. It seemed remarkable that I didn’t know them. After he’d skipped north, Mystic had joined them and they’d formed a pack—six young male hikers who called themselves the Thirty-Eights. They were exuberant and fit, loudly made known their ambitious daily mileage aspirations—but they were also easily distracted, sidetracked by lakes and towns and beer. They had fun. This was a pack of wild men, but a kind one; I felt at ease with them. I sat with them around the dying fire; branches glowed, burned out, charred wood and weightless pallid ashes remained, cold.

  My place around the fire had shifted, I could feel it. Somewhere in the quiet miles between Mexico and this fire pit, the social anxiety that reached back through my childhood had left me. These were friends—I’d finally found a tribe in which I effortlessly fit. I felt secure with them, affection for them—exciting hope that I could sustain this confidence, this was how it would be for me from now on. I was no longer on the outside.

  Mystic captivated me with his stories. He was twenty-nine, a pizza delivery boy in a small town in the real world, though he had aspirations of being a musician and photographer. He lived in Keene, New Hampshire, the same town he’d grown up in. I liked him. He was gregarious and bubbly. But then he said, “I miss Sarah. It’s killing me.”

  So that was why he was so happy. The reason he couldn’t stop smiling was Sarah, a girl he met at Crater Lake, right before me. He’d only spent two days with her—she was a firefighter at the national park and had to stay—but he was sure something sweet and enduring would blossom from their brief connection. He was sure. And life was fantastic.

  Mystic’s good humor was infectious; Buddha laughed. Soon I grinned too. And then I laughed because we were all preposterous. We had walked nearly two thousand miles from Mexico, I’d walked thirty-one miles today to keep up with Mystic, and I was dizzy with fatigue. I couldn’t s
top thinking of Wizard Island. I wondered if that house on it was real.

  My vision split. I stared at Mystic, his eyes so dark his pupils looked fully dilated, his firelit eyes floated, hovered by the charred log. He looked at once attentive and vacant. Our eyes were meeting, smiling, completely adjusted to the darkness. “Do you love Sarah?” I heard myself say to him. I didn’t know why I’d asked it, it was a crazy question.

  He didn’t flinch or blink. Our eyes held each other’s gently. “I do,” he said to me.

  Morning broke, pearly light fractured by trees, split into bars. I felt gloomy, as if I’d been drunk the night before and now regretted something shameful I had done. Yet I’d done nothing. Mystic seemed happy, he was wide awake and chatty, packed up before I was ready, hiking away. It occurred to me that in night’s dimness we had passed the lake; the trail wouldn’t return to it. It was there; gone. The other guys were all already up and gone. “We’re camping tonight on Summit Lake’s south shore,” he called back to me, “we’ll see you there!”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, knowing that I would, though Summit Lake was thirty-two miles away. I would make it there somehow.

  Then Mystic was gone too. I checked the Data Book—I was ninety-four miles from the tiny town of Three Sisters, where I’d resupply. I broke down my tent, packed quickly, walked the trail the way he’d gone.

  I walked an hour, two, three, four, alone. The forest was gentle, flat and wide, and I hiked quickly, wanting badly to catch the Thirty-Eights. I liked them. They stuck together, and I would try to stick with them.

  I walked into a fire. Pine needles piled in mounds were ablaze, red and orange, smoking, burning. The pines were burned bare, charred, ebony skeletons of trees, their lifeless branches pointed toward the ground. The smoke was low and blue; the ground was literally on fire, orange-red; the charred trees were scrawny, weedy. I was in pure and complete shock. This burning world seemed fantastical, impossible. To think: I’d walked into a forest fire. I was inside a fire, literally, sweating in its heat, tingling in it, and it also seemed impossible, impossibly lucky, that the only ground not ablaze was the Pacific Crest Trail. It was soft damp clay.

  Maybe I’d die. Maybe I’d burn to ash in wind, or blacken like the pines. Charred skeletons, I’d add one to the count. I didn’t feel scared. I didn’t think to panic. The trail wasn’t burning. I was raw, ripe for loving. I wasn’t stopping. I was hot, wanting a man’s body pressed against me. Craving thick hands gripping me. I was no longer associating sex with fear or shame. It felt euphoric, feeling this heat of desire for sex with someone not specific again: trusting I’d find a good partner.

  Just as I was emerging from the burn, the sun still high and white, the day not half over, I caught up with Mystic. He was wandering as if lost, also emerging.

  I watched his body walk. He was tanned and stocky, his step bouncy, happy. Meeting Sarah, he thought he’d won the lottery. His eyes were black like India ink. What was he? He looked a fraction Asian, maybe Native American, his cheekbones high and protruding, sweaty, shining, his eyes dark and warm. He was warm to everybody.

  “What was that fire?” I asked him.

  “Cool, yeah?” he said, “It’s Sarah’s, a prescribed burn.” As we walked out back into refreshing cooler air, Mystic explained that forest-fire departments set fires they can control to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, decrease natural forest fires’ intensity and damages. They are cooler fires, lower intensity. This burn we’d left would last only a day or two.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “This one’s Sarah’s.”

  We walked away from the burn until it was only blue smoke.

  I walked with Mystic, devouring the stories he told, his glad-manic attitude, which was infectious. He energized me. He saw beauty in pure blue lakes, in girls, food, birds, common things. In just walking. Before he stepped onto the Pacific Crest Trail, he had hiked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. His stories of that hike thrilled me. He described the Appalachian Trail as more communal than the PCT, a moving party with nightly bonfires. Rather than using tents, hikers lay like sardines in wooden three-walled shelters deep in mossy woods. He described footpaths through forests that led above stuck towns to ancient mountains the soft blue color of ice. “It’s a fairy tale,” he said of the place where the Appalachian Trail ends, the summit of Mount Katahdin. “You get higher and higher. Everything gets beautiful.”

  I pictured the blue-green mountain summit where the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail ended. The view must have been grand, the high blinding and pure. And then you’re at the end.

  “Sounds incredible,” I said. I asked him where he went after the trail ended.

  “Went back to Keene, to work to save,” he said, “to walk again.” He was poetic and charismatic, yet he’d delivered pizzas for the same place in the same small town for thirteen years. He was happy to drift.

  I wondered why Mystic was still hiking, what he could be seeking, if he was looking for anything or if he only loved it purely.

  I thought of Muir. I thought of Shakespeare, that hostel, the old words painted on the wall burning me. Journeys end in lovers meeting, journeys end in lovers meeting, journeys end in lovers meeting, ending. One spark, flame catching; the world burning. Hard rain falling. Ashes blowing away in idiot wind.

  Dylan, Shakespeare, Muir. Alive, dead, dead. Where the hell was I walking to?

  I’d planned to resupply in the town of Three Sisters—it was close to the trail and compact, good for walking—but in the morning Mystic told me Bend was the place to be. It was past Three Sisters on the highway, a thirty-mile hitch, but worth it. He was going there. Everyone was. Wasn’t I?

  I decided that I was, too.

  The woods were gentle, uniform, bright green pines like fields of Christmas trees. It’d be easy to lose your way here. I said, “Okay.”

  Mystic smiled, looking forward at the flat footpath. He seemed excited. “Big miles,” he said. “Wild Child, bet we can rip out thirties to Bend.”

  I’d found already that a thirty-mile day in Oregon is like an eighteen-mile day in the Sierra Nevada, with its cracked, snow-crusted granite culminating in thirteen-thousand-foot-high clouds. The Oregon woods are tame: pine and damp earth. I said, “We can.”

  I kept up with Mystic until that evening when we caught the rest of the Thirty-Eights. These guys were faster hikers than I was, but I was lonely, and I wanted to be with them, so I hiked faster. I’d wake each day at first light, hike big miles; midday they’d catch me, quickly pass. On my own I passed Elk Lake, Bachelor Butte, the twin peaks named the Wife and the Husband, strode past Midnight Lake and Shelter Cove, over the Old Oregon Skyline Trail, uphill to Maiden Lake Trail junction. I walked alone through the afternoons, hoping to catch them. And I always did. I would hike into the night to reach them, their little tents already standing, fire burning. My knees aching. Making myself make it back to them. Thirty miles, Mystic, fire, happy sleep. Showing myself that I was goddamned strong. Beginning to believe that I really was. With a pack of men in wilderness, and feeling safe. Then the terrain changed. Soft pines and damp earth vanished; pocked pale stones appeared. Distant pale volcanoes rested like mountains of bone. These were cinder cones. This was the Oregon desert, dry white fields of ancient volcanic rubble, blue sky, no moss or rain.

  Even though I was starting to see that my rape was not my fault, I was struggling with whether I could trust new friends or not. The fear of being blamed for it, very strong in me, was stopping me. I didn’t want to know if they’d be cruel. I liked them too much, I didn’t want to risk losing our innocent connection. My rape was still my secret.

  Midmorning on my last day on the trail before I reached Bend, I met a Boy Scout troop. I was alone, had woken very early and begun walking in darkness and hadn’t seen the Thirty-Eights all day. I assumed they hadn’t caught me yet. The boys were twelve or so, each one with a plastic orange whistle hanging around his
neck. They were brushing their teeth, not yet packed up. I walked toward them, a girl alone in the woods. They wanted to help me. They asked if I was okay. They bragged to me that yesterday they had walked eight miles. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and I’d already walked more than eight miles. But I didn’t tell them, I just walked past.

  When I reached the highway at McKenzie Pass—the road on which I’d hitchhike into Bend—the Thirty-Eights still hadn’t appeared. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I assumed I was ahead of the guys, but I wasn’t sure. I was about to try to hitchhike into town alone when I saw that the tree by the road had a phone number stapled to it. I called it. An old man’s voice answered, “Hello,” and stated immediately that he was deaf; he told me there was no need to bother answering him. He’d be at McKenzie to pick me up in one hour. He didn’t give me an option.

  I decided that if he seemed creepy, if there were anything unappealing about him at all, I wouldn’t get into his car. The day was hot, the sky flame-blue, and I sat on my pack on the side of the highway, at the center of an endless sea of snow-white stones.

  An hour later exactly, a faded green, rusted old car pulled over. Stones crunched under the chalky tires. The deaf man waved. He looked very old and frail, friendly; I smiled at him. I dusted off my pack and climbed inside.

  On the thirty-mile drive east, into Bend, the old man explained how “shuttling” was his thing. All hiker-season, he drove back and forth, to and fro, to Three Sisters, Bend, back to the pass.

  I asked him, “How much do I owe you?”

  He said this road was repaved in 1997.

  “Oh,” I said, unsure if there was something I should grasp that I was missing. I pulled out my slim trail-wallet, just a tiny Ziploc baggie with cash and cards and my picture of Jacob, and unfolded a twenty. “For gas?”

  He swerved and wheezed, it was his raspy laugh. He did not want my money. “Save it for the old inn,” he said.