The Middle of Somewhere(82)

John Muir had crossed these mountains again and again with nothing more than a hunk of bread in his pocket. Of course, he had God with him and, he believed, all around.

She turned her back on the trail she had already walked and headed south, as always. She could not undo anything by retracing her steps, and her legs itched to climb. For two miles and two thousand vertical feet, she hiked without rest across talus, welcoming the ache in her thighs and the stab in her lungs. The tarn fell away behind her and the fog on the peaks evaporated. A trio of men in their early twenties passed her halfway up. She said hello and carried on. A few times she tried to discern where the trail found the pass, but as before it remained a mystery. Only the increasing proportion of sky to rock—and the decreasing availability of oxygen—told her she was near.

She came at last to a small level area surrounded by a scramble of boulders and marked with a sign: ENTERING SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK. FORESTER PASS, ELEVATION 13,200 FEET. Liz felt light-headed and glanced at her watch. Quarter to ten. She considered stopping for a snack but a frigid wind pushed at her chest. As from so many other passes, the southern vista was striking, if barren. To her left, a massive wedge—Diamond Mesa—spilled from the back side of Junction Peak. Two royal blue lakes lay at its base. Framing the scene to the right was the Great Western Divide, a wall of mountains that appeared to be a world unto itself. In between the Mesa and the Divide was a wide plain, broken only by low rock ledges. The tree line was miles away.

Liz started down and wondered how the trail engineers could possibly have chosen this route. The switchbacks were tight and rock-strewn, some cut into solid granite and others built atop stone walls. One foot in front of the other. A pole, a foot, a pole, a foot, as she had done for so many miles. She braced herself with her poles to relieve the stress on her legs, and caused her shoulders to ache. Somewhere soon she would rest.

A falcon appeared, tracing an arc against a dark cliff. She stopped to see where it would go, what it could possibly desire here where there was nothing. She lost it in the shadow of an enormous outcropping, and thought it possible it had flown through the mountain. But then the bird materialized against a white cloud, at a distance farther than she imagined it could have reached. She strained to see it, and tipped sideways, jamming a pole into her armpit. She cried out, and the cliff ricocheted the sound back to her.

She lowered herself onto a stone and slipped off her pack. She pulled her knees to her chest, bent her head and began to cry. She was alone, exhausted and afraid. Earlier in the trip, the overwhelming scale of the wilderness had seemed a blessing; she paled to insignificance. Her secrets and fears and desires could fall upon the hard rock and into the deep blue pools and fly away into the endless sky without notice. But now that she had confessed, she was open, exposed. The indifferent wilderness was now harsh and she longed to be comforted. She thought of Valerie and the ease of their friendship. She thought of Muesli and the simple happiness they shared. Neither her friend nor her cat was enough, but she longed for them, for someone.

After a time, hunger and thirst brought her around. She pulled a bag of almonds from her pack and tossed a handful into her mouth. Four more handfuls and half a liter of water, and she was ready to walk again. Somewhere ahead of her was Dante, or so she hoped.

The switchbacks gave way to open, sandy terrain. Liz headed across the basin, a dot in an empty Euclidean space marked by a single vector, the trail. Over the course of an hour, she passed the twin lakes and the edge of Diamond Mesa. There, to the east, far in the distance, was Mount Whitney. It presented a strange profile, a massive cylinder sliced at an acute angle, and didn’t conform to any template for a Sierra mountain that Liz’s mind had developed. She’d seen pictures, of course, but was struck anew at how unlikely, how unimpressive it appeared. It was high, no doubt about that, but not magnificent. Still, to see where she was going, to have in her sights the place where the trail ended, moved her. She continued walking—she would have to leave the mountain farther behind in order to approach it—but glanced at it frequently. She wondered if Dante had seen it, if he even knew which peak it was.

Before long the tree line was in sight. She spotted what appeared to be a person a half mile or more ahead, but the shadows from the pines complicated her view. As she neared, she became more and more certain it was Dante. He stood in the trail without his pack, looking her way. At first she was cheered to see him. He had waited for her. She was under no illusion that he would have forgiven her so quickly, but perhaps he was opening the door. His position in the middle of the trail, however, seemed odd. She slowed. Now she could make out his face, and his worried expression.