Wild

Why did they always have to run in the direction I was going?

I waited a few minutes and then hiked on, picking my way trepidatiously along, belting out lines from songs. “Oh I could drink a case of youuuuu, darling, and I would still be on my feet,” I crooned loudly.

“She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean …!” I growled.

“Time out for tiny little tea leaves in Tetley Tea!” I chirped.

It worked. I didn’t run into the bear again. Or Bigfoot.

Instead, I came upon something I actually had to fear: a wide sheaf of icy snow covering the trail at a 40-degree angle. Hot as it was, not all the snow had melted off the north-facing slopes. I could see to the other side of the snow. I could practically throw a stone across it. But I couldn’t do the same with myself. I had to walk it. I looked down the mountain, my eyes following the course of the snow, should I slip and slide. It ended far below at a gathering of jagged boulders. Beyond them there was only air.

I began to chip my way across, kicking each step with my boots, bracing myself with my ski pole. Instead of feeling more confident on the snow, given the experience I’d had with it in the Sierra, I felt more shaken, more aware of what could go wrong. One foot slipped out from beneath me and I fell onto my hands; slowly I stood again with my knees bent. I’m going to fall was the thought that came into my head, and with it I froze and looked down at the boulders below me, imagining myself careening into them. I looked at the place I’d come from and the place I was going, the two equidistant from me. I was too far from either, so I forced my way forward. I went down on my hands and crawled the rest of the way across, my legs shaking uncontrollably, my ski pole clanging along beside me, dangling from my wrist by its pink nylon strap.

When I reached the trail on the other side, I felt stupid and weak and sorry for myself, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t felt on the trail before, envious of the couples who had each other, and of Rex and Stacy who had so easily become a hiking pair—when Rex left the trail in Seiad Valley, Stacy would be meeting her friend Dee so they could hike through Oregon together, but I’d forever be alone. And why? What did being alone do? I’m not afraid, I said, calling up my old mantra to calm my mind. But it didn’t feel the same as it usually did to say it. Perhaps because that wasn’t entirely true anymore.

Perhaps by now I’d come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid.

When I stopped for lunch, I lingered until the others caught up to me. They told me they’d met a backcountry ranger who warned them of a forest fire to the west and north, near Happy Valley. It hadn’t affected the PCT so far, but he’d told them to be on alert. I let them all hike ahead, saying I’d catch up to them by nightfall, and walked alone into the heat of the afternoon. A couple of hours later, I came to a spring in an idyllic meadow and stopped to get water. It was too beautiful a spot to leave, so afterwards I lingered, soaking my feet in the spring until I heard an ever-loudening jangle of bells. I had only just scrambled to my feet when a white llama rounded the bend and came bounding straight up to me with a toothy grin on his face.

“Ah!” I yelled, the same as I had when I saw the bear, but I reached for the lead rope that dangled from his halter anyway, an old habit from my childhood with horses. The llama wore a pack that was strung with silver bells, not so unlike the belt on the woman I’d met at Toad Lake. “Easy,” I said to him as I stood, barefoot and stunned, wondering what to do next.

He looked stunned too, his expression both comical and stern. It occurred to me that he might bite me, but I had no way to know. I’d never been so close to a llama. I’d never even been far from a llama. I’d had so little experience with llamas that I wasn’t even 100 percent sure that a llama was what he was. He smelled like burlap and morning breath. I pulled him discreetly in the direction of my boots and stuffed my feet into them and then petted his long bristly neck in a vigorous manner that I hoped struck him as commanding. After a few minutes, an old woman with two gray braids down the sides of her head came along.

“You got him! Thank you,” she called, smiling broadly, her eyes twinkling. With the exception of the small pack on her back, she looked like a woman out of a fairy tale, elfin, plump, and rosy-cheeked. A small boy walked behind her and a big brown dog followed him. “I let go for a moment and off he went,” the woman said, laughing and taking the llama’s rope from me. “I figured you’d catch him—we met your friends up the way and they said you’d be coming along. I’m Vera and this is my friend Kyle,” she said, pointing to the boy. “He’s five.”