Backcountry Read online

  “Jesus, what a morbid place,” she said.

  “That’s nature for you,” he said. “The circle of life and all that.”

  He started whistling a few bars of the song as she scrambled after him.

  The next few hours were the hardest Jenn had experienced so far on the trail. The path continued to slope uphill, and she felt her calves burning as the day wore on. They stopped every hour or so, but neither of them wanted to make camp before they reached the lake, and Alex assured her that they would be there in plenty of time to relax and get their camp set up while it was still light. Jenn didn’t argued; she just wanted the walk to be over and she knew that wouldn’t happen until they reached the lake. She figured that she may as well get it over with as quickly as possible. Still, after having nothing for lunch but a muesli bar and a mouthful of water, she started dreaming of being back home, with all the comforts of modern society. Alex could sense that she was starting to reach the end of her rope.

  “We’re almost there.” He pointed up the trail to where they could see a rocky ridgeline. “Right there, honey. Keep coming, babe.”

  The ridge was only about fifty yards away, but for Jenn it might as well have been miles.

  “I need a second.”

  She pulled off her backpack and sat down in the middle of the path. Caught up in the anticipation of finally reaching their destination, Alex failed to notice and kept walking. He paused just before the top of the hill and turned to face Jenn, finally noticing she had stopped. He watched as she dragged herself to her feet and slowly, painfully, pulled her backpack back on. She slowly started up the hill, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.

  “Coming,” she said wearily.

  Alex walked down the track, meeting her halfway. He grabbed her hand and helped her as she navigated the rocky path.

  “I want us to see it together,” he said softly.

  Hand in hand, they kept walking, within steps of the top of the ridge. Alex was grinning with excitement, and even in her exhaustion, Jenn found herself grinning back. A few more steps and they crested the ridge, finding themselves on a flat shelf of rock, bare of trees and elevated over much of the hill. In front of them, where Alex had led her to expect a lake, there were only trees. Everywhere they looked, the forest stretched out for miles and miles, with no sign of any trails or even the lake. The treeline dipped slightly, as if it were running down into valley, but even there the greenery was unbroken by water or a road.

  Jenn saw Alex rub his eyes, hard, as if somehow he could make the view go away. She shaded her eyes, trying to make out the telltale glimmer of power lines or one of the fire observation towers, knowing that once they found one of them Alex should be able to pinpoint their location. But there was nothing, just the unbroken green and orange and red of tree after tree laid out before them.

  Alex was staring off into the distance.

  “Alex?”

  He didn’t reply, but kept looking out over the forest with a look of bafflement on his face.

  “Alex?” she repeated, louder this time.

  His only response was to walk away from her, taking off his backpack and half dragging it by one strap, looking like nothing more than the world’s biggest toddler.

  “Talk to me,” she demanded. “This can’t be it, right?”

  “I can’t believe this,” he said in a small defeated voice.

  “Look at me.”

  He ignored her, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. “I was sure.” He looked around and up at the position of the sun. “I was one hundred percent sure.”

  “Look at me.” She was almost begging now. “Please.”

  Alex finally looked at her, but his eyes were distant, almost glazed, as if he were in his own world.

  “Stop talking for a second and let me think.” There was no malice in his voice, just confusion. “I need to think.”

  Jenn threw her bag to the ground. She started to speak, but thought better of it and decided to let him think. Hopefully, he would find a solution to their problem.

  “I can’t fucking believe this.” He kicked a rock with his good foot. “Goddamn it.”

  Jenn looked right and left, taking in the expanse of trees stretching as far as the eye could see, trying to pick out a landmark or anything that might help. No matter where she looked, the forest went on forever.

  “Please tell me you have a map in your bag,” Jenn said.

  Alex turned to her with a helpless look on his face. “I’ve never needed one before.”

  “We do now.”

  “No, I don’t have one.”

  Jenn gave him a disgusted look. “Oh, my God. So where are we?”

  “I obviously don’t know, right?”

  Alex had a sullen expression on his face that Jenn knew well. It was the one he wore when he felt cornered and thought she was being unfair. She hated it with a passion at the best of times, and it was even worse now.

  “You come up here all the time.” She wasn’t yelling, not yet.

  “I come to the park but not to Blackfoot Trail,” he admitted, not meeting her eyes. “Not since high school.”

  “What?” She was yelling now. “You said a few years.”

  “Well . . . it was.”

  Before she could say something she really regretted, Jenn quickly turned and started to look in the side pockets of her backpack. She continued to search her bag, frantically going from pocket to pocket, pulling out clothes and toiletries and throwing them aside. Her frustration built. What she was looking for wasn’t there and she needed to find it.

  “I put it here,” she mumbled to herself. “I know I fucking put it right here!”

  She heard Alex move up beside her and take a deep breath. “It’s not in there.” She upended the bag, spilling the contents all over the rocky ground. “I took it out.”

  Jenn stared at him, sure that she hadn’t heard him right.

  “What?” she asked in a very carefully controlled voice.

  “Your phone. I took it out.”

  “Where is it?”

  He took a step back from her and stared at the ground. “Back in the car. In the glove compartment next to mine.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “I didn’t want you on that thing the whole time,” he said defensively.

  “I didn’t reach for it once! I just wanted to have it in case we needed it, that’s all!”

  There wasn’t only anger, but also hurt at his lack of trust in her voice, and she saw Alex flinch at the sound.

  “You can’t get reception here, anyway.”

  “I would love to check that for myself right now!” she yelled. She took a moment to calm herself down. There was a long, awkward pause between them.

  “Give me some water,” she said tersely.

  He angrily grabbed the bottle from his bag and handed it to her. She took a sip and started biting her nails.

  “I’m sorry about the phone.”

  Jenn just ignored that. “When did you stop being sure of where we were?”

  Alex sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Think. When was it?”

  He thought for a moment. “Since the fork in the trail.”

  “Which one?” she asked. “The last one?”

  “The one before that,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Are you serious?” Her voice was thick with anger and a touch of fear.

  “Don’t freak out!”

  It was probably the worst thing he could have said. Jenn’s face went red and she clenched her fists by her sides.

  “Don’t freak out? We’re in the middle of the woods
and we have no idea where we are. We don’t have a fucking map or a cellphone thanks to you. We have no food or water! All I have is my stupid iPod!”

  “Jenn . . .”

  “We don’t have anything!” She was almost sobbing now. “We haven’t seen anyone all day!”

  “Yeah, I know, okay?”

  She was scared, exhausted, and, her normal coping mechanisms failing her, close to panic.

  “Why? Why did we have to go this far out on my first trip? Why couldn’t it just be a regular camping trip? Why did you need to show off? Should I be impressed? I would have been happy just to stay in one spot!”

  “I was—”

  She kept talking over him. “You know, Alex, honestly—let’s be honest for once. I wish I’d never come. This whole thing was a mistake. We were supposed to be going home tomorrow, for Christ’s sake!”

  Jenn took a deep breath. The stress and physical exertion were hitting her all at once.

  “I never would have put you through this! This trip had nothing to do with me, right? It’s been all about you! And I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to hurt your massive ego!” She stopped and wiped away a tear, then said, more quietly, “I don’t even know why we’re together sometimes.”

  “Ah, come on Jenn—”

  She didn’t let him finish. It was like a dam was breaking and hours, even days, of pent-up emotion were suddenly spilling out.

  “You always do this! You fuck up! You fuck it all up! You fucking loser! Tell me, tell me why it was so important to go there? Huh? It’s just a stupid lake, right? Why? Why?”

  The torrent of words came to a shuddering end and she stared at him, waiting for some kind of answer.

  “I was going to propose to you there, that’s why,” Alex said.

  He turned on his heel and walked away from her, stopping just inside the treeline and hunkering down on his heels, facing away from her. Jenn could see the hurt and dejection in the hopeless slope of his shoulders, and she wished desperately she could take back the words she had just spoken.

  “Oh, Alex,” she said.

  All the anger ran from her, leaving her drained, even more exhausted, and full of regret.

  Sunday Evening

  They had been sitting apart for almost an hour, lost in their own thoughts, neither wanting to be the first one to speak, and not knowing what to say anyway. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows were creeping up around them.

  “We’re not going to find our way back sitting around.”

  Alex leaned forward and held out his hand to Jenn. After a brief moment, she reached out and took it, and he pulled her to her feet. She stood there for a moment, rubbing the tears from her eyes, which were bloodshot and inflamed from crying.

  “Alex,” she hesitated, “I’m so sorry.”

  She leaned in and hugged him, holding him until his stiffness gave way and his body relaxed. He wrapped his arms around her in return.

  “I had no idea—”

  “It’s okay,” he said emptily. “Just forget it. We should make camp—we’ll find our way back in the morning.”

  She was still wiping away tears, but she gave him a tremulous smile. “Okay, sounds good.”

  Alex grabbed the tent and started setting it up, Jenn helping as best as she could. Racing against the sunset, they put together the poles and ran them through the loops. Alex hammered the pegs as best he could into the rocky ground, hoping they would hold.

  The crash of thunder woke them both. It seemed as if it were right over the tent. Lightning flashed again and again, each time followed by another crash of thunder. Jenn held on to Alex tightly enough for him to be uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything, simply letting her take what comfort he could give. Suddenly, rain began to drum against the tent roof in an almost torrential downpour.

  “Don’t touch the side of the tent,” Alex yelled, trying to be heard over the noise. “It’ll start to leak!”

  “Too late,” Jenn yelled.

  Water was pooling around the bottom of the tent’s entrance.

  “Shit!” he yelled. “Get your feet away from the bottom.”

  “They’re wet!”

  They curled up as far away from the rising water as they could, but moisture began dripping from the top of the tent. As the night wore on, Jenn started to shiver. Alex tried as best he could to keep her warm with his own body heat. It was a miserable night for them both.

  Monday Morning

  If not for the wet ground underneath and their own soaked skins, when the next day dawned, the storm might never have happened. The sun was bright and warm and the breeze would have been gentle and pleasant if it weren’t blowing through wet clothes. Nothing seemed able to lift their despondent moods. Alex was the first to leave the tent, but the sound of him swearing brought Jenn following quickly behind. She found him standing next the food bag, looking down at its scattered contents.

  The bag itself was still hanging at eye level, but it had been torn open and everything in it was strewn all over the ground.

  “Ah, shit,” Alex said.

  He ran his fingers along the ragged tears in the plastic as if trying to divine what had caused them.

  “Was it a—”

  “No, no,” he said quickly, not letting her finish the thought. “A raccoon got to it.”

  “Tell me the truth,” she said in a small voice.

  “No, really. I heard the little shit last night.”

  He rummaged frantically though the remains of the food. Nothing had been spared; cans had been pierced and torn up, wrappers shredded and mangled. Even his Thermos had shattered from the fall; coffee leaked into the dirt. None of it was salvageable, none at all. Alex shoved it all into the bag and angrily threw it into the trees.

  “Damn it!”

  Jenn was uneasy.

  “Alex, I—”

  “We’ll find our way back today.”

  He said it with the tone of someone trying to convince himself of something. Jenn didn’t trust herself to reply and simply walked back to the tent and started to pull out their bedding. It had soaked up the rain and was a sodden, dripping mass. After a moment, Alex wandered over and together they spent some time wringing the water out of their sleeping bag and pillows as best they could. Neither had much to say. Exhausted from lack of sleep and still chilled to the bone, it was all they could do to focus on packing up the camp. It didn’t help that the rain had completely extinguished the fire; not even coals remained to give them any warmth. Hoping to dry out their gear a bit faster, Alex tried to build another fire, but the shower of the night before had left everything soggy, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get a flame to catch. His cursing had been so inventive that Jenn had had to walk away before she started laughing, knowing that would not have helped at all. She could see how frustrated he was, first with getting lost, and then his inability to start a fire only adding to his sense of failing her. Her heart went out to him and she wanted nothing more than to go and put an arm around his shoulder, but she knew he needed a little time to himself first. All she could do was give him some space and wait.

  Jenn had assumed that going downhill would be easier than the trek uphill had been. She was wrong. It meant that gravity was not actively working against her, but this was a double-edged sword, because gravity was even more punishing. She had to be constantly vigilant about not letting her momentum take over, and the rain had left the ground slippery and treacherous. She had to concentrate on each step, and her tired state made that incredibly hard. With her mind on making sure she didn’t end up tumbling down the slope, Jenn was unaware at first of Alex’s limp and his less-than-p
erfect attempts to hide it. She considered asking him about it, but he was still brooding and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing. After the setbacks of the last twenty-four hours, he was in a defensive mood, and she knew that his pride would not enjoy having what he would see as a weakness pointed out.

  Jenn looked around, trying to find any point of reference for where they were and how far they still had to go. She wondered how Alex was judging distance and direction in this place when everything looked the same—to her, at least. All she knew was that he had promised to get them out of here, and she had to trust him. She was not so tired as to be oblivious to how much she had hurt him the day before, and the last thing she wanted to do was make him feel like she had no faith in him now. That was why, when they passed a large decomposing bird carcass and Alex didn’t say a word, it didn’t even occur to her to ask whether it might be the same one from before and whether they had just missed their turn.

  The sun traced its course in the sky overhead and hours passed. For Jenn, the hike had become an exercise in putting one foot in front of the other and repeating the process ad infinitum. Alex was slightly ahead of her, and she was following his lead. As they pushed on farther and farther, though, she started to feel more and more uneasy. Despite her resolution to simply trust Alex, she couldn’t help but feel that they should have been back on one of the main trails by now. She looked around, trying to remember the trip up and to match what she was seeing against her memory, but try as she might, she couldn’t find anything obviously familiar in the scenery around her. Finally, she reached a decision and came to a halt.

  “Is this right?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. His voice was strained, whether with pain or tiredness, she wasn’t sure. “We just need to take a turn on that overgrown trail.”