Girl in the Woods Read online

  According to the article in Backpacker magazine, they “followed voices for a while, only to discover that, in fact, they were chasing echoes.” Then they tried to head north, toward the tram, but ended up farther downhill. “The mountain forces you downward,” Brandon told Backpacker reporter Bill Donohue. “It was like Chinese finger cuffs: the more we tried to get out, the tighter and steeper it got.”

  Four days and nights passed. Gina Allen, a Catholic, prayed. Like Sea Breeze, she pled to Saint Christopher and Saint Anthony: save me. Then she and Brandon saw downhill, through the trees, a yellow backpack. Inside was a journal; an entry was dated May 6—just days before they thought. They thought someone must be nearby. They thought they were saved. But they soon realized the entry was dated one year back. The journal was signed, John Donovan.

  The couple panicked. They found inside the yellow backpack a plastic baggie full of matches, and Brandon gathered dried vines and leaves and branches and logs and attempted to light a signal fire. Everything ignited. Smoke poured in a skyward river, white and thick. It swallowed the backpack, the land, the ground and high tree branches. The trees were on fire. The sky was again feather gray.

  Yet the fire didn’t destroy John Donovan. His body lay fifty yards from the desperate lovers, downstream, in a quiet pool contained by mossy rocks, at the base of a tall, hidden waterfall.

  A helicopter emerged, low, faded in smoke. Gina blew kisses; it circled. It lowered a rope and winched them up inside, to carry them out, to save them.

  This was trail magic. Sea Breeze’s fire, his light, his heat, his life, remained, their salvation.

  It is a fact that all drainages, if followed downhill, lead to the same lowland water body. Lost and fallen hikers follow drainages down because walking ridges is harder. And so, despite the complex web of paths, waterfalls, cliffs, as a hiker wanders downhill, drainages merge, faint, abstract paths coalesce, thicken, until there is one path—the one, natural, trodden way. It isn’t a coincidence that Sea Breeze, Brandon Day and Gina Allen, and countless other hikers all wandered, lost, down the same steep slope to nowhere.

  Here I was, the same time of year, and the same place—a snowy silent May mountain day—as when Sea Breeze had first disappeared. I remembered the story. I looked ahead for the first time, really looked. Before I stepped one more step off the trail, before the promise of the Amber City had time to magnify my hope and concentrate hot light into my mind and burn my brains, I noticed something: the sourceless shadow snaking through distant trees. I breathed.

  I knew suddenly and without a doubt that the trail was not gone; all along it had been there, across the death chute, faint but clear. My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

  I craved safety now, someone supportive and protective—Icecap, maybe. I didn’t want to be alone in this danger.

  But there was just one way to go. I had to cross the snow chute.

  And so I tried to go on; I stepped lightly. My foot slipped. I gasped, swayed back upright, looked down to the treetops and white rocks. The snow here was crusted with glossy ice. The trail was buried, but now its course was clear: it contoured straight across the slope—over the tall chute. The chute I’d been so vigorously climbing beside, hoping to bypass.

  I thought: fall here, you die.

  I thought: that’s his story, not mine. I would not be him, lost, alone forever. I needed to return to the world, to find my way back into it, to find someone whom I could trust and love. I sure as dirt wasn’t going to die here alone. I was going to find my place, safe ground.

  “You got this, Debby, you got this,” I said aloud.

  I took one lunge-step out to the glossy slope. My running shoe toe punched a notch into the ice. I stood on it. My downhill leg was shaking. I could not take another step, no way. Okay, okay, I told myself: okay. I held my eyes on my forward foot, half planted, half balanced, whole leg quaking violently. I did not look down the fifty-plus-foot fall, but I could see the void. My whole right side could feel the open air.

  Ten steps across, and you’re done, I told myself. You’re one-tenth done. That’s good. Ten little steps. I lunged again. Step two!—and with momentum kick-kicked in step three with two hard strikes. “You got this, Wild,” I said, heart hammering. Just seven steps more, maybe only six. Then I glanced down. Then I leaned forward, swayed—hands left low toward the snow—and slipped, slid fast, cried out, kicked hard, stopped.

  I was halfway down the slope. I was all right. My feet and knees had lodged into the snow, through the ice sheet. My thigh was bleeding, cut in a thin slash. My blood like scarlet lichen on the ice. I was okay. My thighs were baby pink and throbbing, my shins hot and shocked.

  If I hadn’t stopped myself, if I’d picked up a little more speed, bounced off a bump, I’d have slammed into the rock beds below and I would be dead.

  I cross-stepped up, up the stripe of virgin snow my falling body had left in its wake, up the twelve or fifteen feet I’d slipped, the ice shattered away, no longer in my path. I made it back to the top of the chute—the middle—sawed flat ledge after flat spot with my shoe toe, trusted the palm-small ledge I’d made, stepped, straightened my shaking knee, stood upright, crossed back to trees, blood surging, still bleeding, safer, now.

  “Lucky girl, Child.” Thank the lucky stars.

  Shaken, I walked along the dry trail, slower. Then I stopped, sat down. I decided I’d wait for someone, whoever caught me. It only took a dozen minutes before two men emerged out of the trees. Icecap. And Edison, thank goodness. They’d never been all that far away. I’d been so fed up with them, yet somewhere on the steep snowfield what I felt had shifted. My anger toward Edison had softened since I’d last seen him—forgotten—muted by my harsh fear and solitude. I no longer hated the thought of walking with Edison; I didn’t even want to lose him, now. The trail with them felt so much safer than walking lost, alone until the end.

  Edison shoved me. “I hiked with the same two guys the whole way on the AT,” he said. “Fucking Georgia to Maine we stuck together. That’s how you get her done.” He poked my upper back with his elbow. “We’re Musketeers. For the long haul,” Edison said, now holding my elbow. I wiggled it from his grip. “In it.”

  I wondered if this meant that he’d be nice to me now.

  We walked down, down, along the Pacific Crest Trail, grateful to be back on dry-dirt ground, grateful for each other’s bodies, now, down into the trail town of Idyllwild.

  In town we all three again split a cabin, but this time one with a living room that had a pull-out bed and also a separate bedroom with a door that locked. It was spacious. Icecap seemed unsure in the roominess; he didn’t look at me but got down on his knees in the kitchenette and separated the trash out of his clean blue and yellow gear. Granola bar wrappers, the folded-up foil of his European cheese, an old plastic baggie stuffed fat with graham cracker waxy wrapper and Wasa paper. He looked intently focused, yet he was blushing. I was blushing, too. Edison had pulled his shirt off, thrown it on the couch, claiming it.

  We all knew where that left us. Icecap and I would share the bed.

  CHAPTER 10

  TRAIL MAGIC

  Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.

  —JOHN MUIR

  Icecap showered. I brushed my tangled hair. I bathed as he shaved. Though we’d been sipping red wine—I felt the happy warmth of it—I remained clear eyed. Icecap had tied a bath towel around his waist, and, through the gap between the shower curtain and the white tiled wall, I could see him leaning toward the mirror. I bent over and rubbed my hands up and down my shins, scrubbing off dirt, brown puffs in the bathwater. In a deft move I knocked the curtain so it was slightly open. I shaved my legs smooth and soaked in the bath, felt warm and safe. I waited for him to glance through the curtain-gap I’d made, but Icecap looked at the mirror, the
floor—everything except my naked body.

  Edison was gone from the cabin. I didn’t remember him leaving. Icecap was finished shaving now and back out in the bedroom unpacking. The light was gone outside—dark small-town night—and alone inside the brightly lit bathroom I wrapped myself in a towel. I was nervous, suddenly, as if I was supposed to give a speech I’d forgotten. “I’m so drunk,” I said through the bathroom door, though it wasn’t true. I’d declared it to him in my anxiety to take pressure and responsibility off myself for what I wanted to do next. I had already decided I at least wanted to kiss him, be held. Yet my desire surprised me. I felt the weight of shame not only on rape now, but on sex, too. I was confused by it. I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him.

  I stepped into the bedroom. Icecap’s dark blue nylon shirt was a small mound on the rug. His beige nylon pants were tidily draped over a chair. My little pink shorts and shirt lay on the bathroom floor, soaked in the puddle I’d thoughtlessly created. “You should want to hang those up, ya?” he’d said before, but I’d ignored him. I flicked off the bathroom light and we were together in the dark.

  Icecap was in the bed.

  “Come to me,” he said, and I wanted to, and I did. I thought I’d lost trust after the rape, questioning men always, fearing they would be kind and gentle now, if I gave them what they wanted, but that they might respond badly if I said no later. But I trusted Icecap. He had been respectful again and again, for two hundred miles now, and I finally felt safe. For the first time since I was raped, I wanted to trust a man again, maybe even have sex.

  I kissed him. He kissed me, his tongue pressing itself against mine. I’d only French-kissed three times in my life. I liked it, but I worried I wasn’t good.

  “I’m bad at kissing,” I apologized at his mouth.

  He was sweetly smiling, saying, “Don’t talk. Have fun at this, okay?”

  I said okay. Okay, okay, okay, this is okay.

  I felt the charged warmth between our bodies from those first kisses. He progressed downward, toward my neck, my knocking chest; I breathed, unclenched.

  When he tugged at my hip gently, asking, I smiled. “Yes, okay,” I told him, my eyes lit. This was the first time I would be with someone since the rape nine months earlier. I wondered how long after you’re raped you’re supposed to start having sex. I felt it was somehow wrong of me to want to be touched after I’d been raped—I thought it should feel sickening—but this felt warm and exciting.

  I felt wet. I felt his eyes, his desire heating me. I felt beautiful. He was fingering me and holding me tightly at the same time. I had never been touched like this by someone I knew so well. It felt exciting to trust. I felt safer with Icecap, like he saw me differently than other boys, better—respected me. I decided to see how far I felt comfortable going.

  His fingers were confident, playing, it felt amazing. I was safe in a bed with a boy, it was wild. Yet in that euphoric moment I knew that I wanted him to kiss me and kiss me and touch me this way, graze my waist and belly and clit so everything felt wonderful—but not to have sex with me. I was going to say stop and he was going to respect my word. I smiled, I knew it.

  At a small squeeze I pulled away. It would seem arbitrary to him, it could upset him. Yet I said: “Icecap, shh. Let’s stop.”

  He stopped instantly, and we both slept like little kids. We didn’t have sex.

  I thought I might want to do it with him someday, someday soon. It seemed incredible. I knew with certainty now—I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my “No.”

  I woke. I’d been slowly drifting from an airy dream. My cheek was imprinted with the texture of his chest hair. I fit so nicely under his bent leg. I remembered I was in a cabin in a mountain town on a long trail with a boy. The clock said that it was nearly noon. Normally I’d be sorry I’d wasted so much of the day, but not today. Time sped. I lay there beaming—heartened by last night’s magic, feeling securely bonded with a lover.

  I sat up and pulled my shirt on, still bare below the covers. Icecap was packing.

  “You look more skinny,” he said, tying his huge shoes. They stunk.

  I felt uncomfortably warm, glad, he’d noticed. “I weigh like 108,” I lied, shedding pounds.

  “No, I think,” he said. He frowned at me. “You weigh at more than this.”

  He would never lie to me, ever. Unfortunately.

  Outside in midday light, Edison was sitting on the porch beside a pile of stones. He had gathered them and had been chucking them at trees. He didn’t say hey to us or acknowledge us, and we were still and silent, shy with him now. Edison felt it. “We” was now Icecap and me.

  Yet Edison remained. He didn’t hike away, and we didn’t ask him to. And so all three of us began to walk the trail’s most hazardous stretch yet, a steep 9,500-foot decline along the face of Mount San Jacinto, the first cliffed peak we northbound thru-hikers meet. The highest mountain drop-off in the lower forty-eight. It rests above the desert like a petrified shadow, permanent and hard. Our trail traversed that face. This was Fuller Ridge, our notorious descent.

  We would climb right where John Donovan had died.

  Edison and Icecap and I hiked up the steep hill. We approached the merge with Saddle Junction, sweating, tense. I tripped and fell and caught myself, palms on damp rocks.

  “Dumb bitch,” Edison said. He laughed. “She’s a prissy little bitch this morning, look.”

  I stood, wobbly, squinting. Then I actually smiled. After my night with Icecap, sharing the same bed, knowing I was audible, knowing I could say no, nothing Edison could say mattered to me. He was a weak joke. I didn’t feel anger, wounded—nothing. I hardly heard him.

  But from higher on the hill, Icecap twisted. He’d been out ahead, hiking fast, but now he stopped. “You can’t talk to her like that,” he called down in perfect English, his accent inaudible from the distance. He jogged back down, a fluid dash and hop, and took my hand in a fierce grip.

  My palm’s pulse sped, my body straightening. I was consumed with Icecap. My first time giddy kissing a boy since the rape, since ever, his hand on mine again, protecting me. Icecap’s hand was smooth and dry, and hot—and I was wet again. I didn’t look to see Edison’s slack smirk.

  The mountain rose above us, silver-blue and pocked with shadows like a near moon. Edison had curled his lip and said nothing; we all hiked on. The wind pressed us. I tripped and gripped at Icecap, steadied myself. My breath was fast and shallow, and I felt dizzy. I felt bonded. Icecap hiked close to me now, with Edison way down below. Shrinking, a speck.

  That evening Icecap and I pitched our tents up north of Saddle Junction, on a long flat whited-out with drifts of snow. Edison showed up, glossy with sweat, gleaming in the falling sun’s gold light.

  “Pitch it out zair,” Icecap said to him, pointing far out to the other side of the flat. He was telling Edison to pitch his tent somewhere else, protecting me. He was claiming me.

  I felt safe and adored. Edison walked away. He pitched his tent far away, out of sight, blocked by far trees. We both knew he’d never camped alone before. He was terrified; we could see in his stiff gait. That walk pleaded with us to call out, “No! Wait.” We didn’t, though. That was the last time we ever saw him. I knew it would be. Here Icecap’s tent touched mine. Our p-cords crisscrossed. We whispered stories to each other through our thin tent walls long after we turned our headlamps off.

  The last thing Icecap told me that night, in the dim air, had “not a good ending.” Through the black space between our tents he told me a true story. He was whispering, and his voice cracked mute at the words after “the last race.” The inaudible gaps were bygone moments lost. It was the story of the premature end of his racing career. He wasn’t crying, but the words came to me in soft, short exhales:<
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  A month after his crash and concussion, against the neurologist’s orders, Icecap had resumed his cycling training. He was desperate to regain his speed, his muscle tone and fearlessness; after an hour on the bike, he developed a knocking headache. He needed to stop. It passed, but then that evening when he sat down to do his homework, it returned. He took a nap. It didn’t help. He could not concentrate. That night he couldn’t sleep.

  He returned to the neurologist, who informed him that premature exertion had damaged his brain. In his impatience, he had caused himself further brain trauma. Now, because of that irreversible mistake, he’d have headaches and trouble focusing on school, on words, on anything at all. He’d been desperate to regain his fearlessness, but instead he’d only damaged his mind. He could never get better. “But so is what?” he asked me. “I’d fuck school anyway.”

  “You can still go back to school,” I told him. I asked him what he wanted to study.

  “Maps,” he said. “Rocks.”

  I fell asleep picturing Icecap at a scratched-up carved-up wood desk, drawing topographic curves, breathing through his relentless headache.

  That night I dreamed John Donovan wasn’t dead. He had been living with just his yellow backpack all this time. He lived off big acorns and sap. John. John of candles, of wild hope and loneliness.