darted off the trail after something Bill could not see.
Bill did not stop for lunch. When he crossed small streams he let the horses drink but he did not let them grab at tufts of grass as they walked. He hated horses that did not watch where they were going. Stupid horses he called them. Mountain horses could not be stupid horses. But then, Bill mused, whoever heard of a smart horse?
At 3 p.m., Bill stopped at the mouth of a meadow. He had climbed about 2,000 feet in elevation from the trailhead. The meadow was over a mile long and not over a hundred yards wide. It was hemmed in by towering outcroppings of rock with a stream tumbling down one side. On the other side of the meadow stands of birch dotted the steep hills, while a few scattered pine trees jutted toward the sky along the edge of the stream. There was plenty of grass for the horses. Bill’s legs were growing tight after not riding for two years and a small ache was creeping into the small of his back.
After unsaddling the horses Bill hobbled them and turned them out. They immediately started to eat the green grass. He did not bother to pitch the tent but made a make shift lean-to out of a tarp.
Gypsy lay in the shade of a tree and snapped at flies while Bill went through the gear looking for a frying pan and other odds and ends. When he was done, although it would not be dark for several hours, he gathered a pile of wood.
When he sat down, Gypsy sat by his side. Resting his arm around her back he patted her head. “I can see her everywhere,” he told the dog. “I can hear her laugh.”
Gypsy lay and rested her chin on his leg. “You’re a good old dog,” Bill said. “You’re a good old worthless dog.”
The Woman The Beginning Of The Search
Sheila was outside of town before the morning rush hour. It was a beautiful sunshiny day with only a few meandering clouds. She felt like a model for a women’s outdoor clothing company. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts, hiking boots with cotton red socks folded barely below her knees, a white light-weight cotton shirt and a plaid over shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Her camping gear was in the back of the car. All she had to do was put the backpack on and start walking. Since it was such a nice day, she rolled down her window and let the air whip her hair around. “If the weather will only stay like this,” she thought as she turned on the radio and searched for a rock and roll station.
Finding a station, she did not like the song that was playing and turned it off. There were times she could not listen to music—it brought back a flood of memories, memories that were too difficult to push away. It would be easier if she had hated her husband. Then she could ignore the memories and feel elated with her freedom.
Driving toward the mountains she did not think about the office or anything to do with work. She glanced at a book on the dash and read the title, Wild Mountain Flowers—Trees And Edible Mushrooms. She pictured the golden chanterelle mushroom that grew in the Rockies. It had amazed her when she found out that the chanterelle mushrooms went for over twenty five dollars a pound in town. She hoped to find some. Some people went to the mountains to kill elk and deer, not feeling satisfied if they did not, she was on a mushroom quest. She grinned, “Sheila, woman mushroom slayer of North America.”
The road climbed into the mountains and Sheila relaxed, as if she had traveled a great distance and everything was new: new sights, new sounds, new people—nothing to remind her of the past, only the future.
As she turned off the blacktop and onto the rutted gravel road that would lead her to where she would start her hike, she had a momentary pang of apprehension. “Lord,” she said. “Some women run dog sleds across Alaska alone. I can spend a week by myself.”
The road ran beside a small stream littered with old tires, pop and beer cans and various other marks of civilization. The scattered forest signs were riddled with bullet holes. She visualized in her mind, men dressed in camouflage clothing with shaggy beards, standing by a battered pickup truck. The back of the truck was full of empty beer cans and they were shooting signs with rifles big enough to kill elephants. With each new hole the men would laugh. “Takes a real intelligent person to get his jollies shooting holes in signs,” Sheila said as she drove by a sign she could not read because of all the bullet holes.
Luckily, the sign that had the number of the trail she wanted had only a few bullet holes in it and she turned and drove to the back of a well maintained camping area with picnic tables and barbecue pits. She was glad nobody was camping. None of the trees around the area had lower limbs, or any that could be reached unless with a ladder. They had all been chopped off and burnt by hordes of weekend campers. She read a sign, ‘Sterling Peak, 23 miles.’ The meadow she had picked to hike to was only seventeen miles, but, for a moment, it seemed like thousands of miles.
Getting out of the car the wind blowing through the trees was the only sound she heard. It was strange and eerie, almost alien, after hearing the sound of the city for so long.
At first the wind hitting the bare skin between her hiking shorts and sock tops was cool, almost uncomfortable, but the feeling only lasted a few seconds and the breeze was refreshing. It did not take her long to have her backpack on, the book stuck in a side pocket, and headed for the trail that began up a steep incline through thick timber. After she walked several hundred yards she was hot and had to unbutton her over-shirt. After another hundred yards she stopped to adjust the straps to the backpack and catch her breath. “Maybe I won’t walk as far today as I’d planned,” she said.
After walking less than a mile her legs were already tight and sweat was running down between her shoulder blades. The back pack that had been light on her back in the living room seemed to gain ten pounds with each step. Sitting down heavily on a large boulder she leaned back against a pine tree and while slowly regaining her breath she spotted a woodpecker diligently pounding his beak into a rotted tree stump, his dark head moved back and forth like a miniature jackhammer and it made Sheila smile. She struggled back to her feet. “If you don’t think about the pain it won’t bother you,” she told herself picturing in her mind an old Chinese sage walking barefoot across an endless desert in search of truth and wisdom.
After another hundred yards of the steep trail, she wanted to stop but forced herself on. “You always wanted to take me camping,” she huffed. “Now I know why I didn’t go.”
She suddenly felt like crying, but held her tears. “I should have gone with you. I should have been with you more.”
Trudging on, the image of her husband’s smiling face came to her. He was holding three, six-inch long trout, but, by his smile and happy eyes, they were as big as a house. She fried them and they had eaten them with a tossed salad with a light vinegar dressing, washing them down with two bottles of white wine. Afterwards they made love and he told her about the mountain stream and how beautiful it was and how he wanted her to see all the beautiful sights as he saw them. “It would have been better with you there,” he told her before he fell asleep with his head on her stomach.
Sheila stopped again and turned around. She could not see the parking lot, only the trail she had huffed along. The trail had not yet come out of the thick timber and she had not bothered to look around as she walked, more engulfed by her loss and physical pain. She fumbled in one of the side pockets of the pack and got out her topography map, more of an excuse to rest longer than to look at the map. She examined the elevation lines hoping there was a meadow close by where she could camp. “This could take me years,” she said remembering Sylvia’s words. “A camping trip for me is a suite in Vegas.”
“Hell, it hasn’t been two hours and I already want a hot bath and my shag carpet,” she
