Chapter Text
“Shit.”
My sharp curse barely stirred the stifling, too warm air inside the Jeep. The stretch of skin beneath my thick pink braid was tacky with sweat and my legs were stiff from nearly three hours in the same position, yet I continued to sit, completely still, in the unbearable heat. I’d turned the engine off, but my hands remained clenched tight around the steering wheel. I breathed out another curse, panic settling tight under my ribs, as I begged my body to move.
There hadn’t been a single moment of indecision until this moment. Not once during the three hour and some drive from Casper, or the nearly five hour flight from Chicago to Wyoming. Not in the time it took for me to pack up my meger belongings and buy a plane ticket. Not even in those few, brief seconds my mouse cursor had hovered over the word ’Volunteer.’
Nope.
It had to occur to me now, literally a car door away from my destination, that I could turn back. That I should turn back.
Pride. Purpose. A future.
Laughter.
A stolen kiss under a flickering street lamp.
Success. Joy.
The slow drip of tomato juice onto a bare kitchen floor.
I hope you’re not disappointed…
Perfect.
The memories flickered to life behind my eyes, and before I knew it, my hand was inching towards the keys still stuck fast in the ignition…
Frantic yells.
Terror.
Doubt.
It’s gone. It’s gone!
The slow drip of blood onto stark white linoleum.
Failure. Grief.
And accusation in endless black eyes.
With a near violent jerk from my wrist, the keys were in my hand. I stuffed those deep into my pocket and made sure that any lingering uncertainty was shoved down even farther than that. Then, after snagging my bulging pack from the passenger seat, I wrenched the door open and stepped out into the - far too warm for seven thirty in the morning - heat.
When I slammed shut the door to my borrowed Jeep Cherokee, the remembered weight of Papa’s solemn eyes as he handed me the keys was enough to make me guiltily reopen the door, lock it, and then shut it again a bit more carefully. No need to spit on kindnesses after all.
I tossed my bag over one shoulder and walked toward the welcoming board with ‘Thorofare Trailhead’ painted in bright yellow along the top. I already knew that the path I’d need take lay directly beyond it, but as I headed that way, my eye caught on the notices pinned to it's front. Especially the one a near desperate shade of RED declaring fireworks to be banned, and the one beneath that cautioning people about bears and how happy they’d be to eat their yummy, yummy flesh. Both notices showed a bombastic lack of faith in human intelligence that I could not help but applaud.
An enlarged map of the area dominated the rest of the board, but I had my own map, so this went largely ignored. As did the last poster warning inexperienced hikers away from the trail. Which the Ranger who debriefed me had also gone out of his way do. Repeatedly.
My dead eyed glower must have convinced him that phrases like “rough trail” or “difficult hike” weren’t about to scare me away. He’d informed me, through a smile with too many teeth, that I was “Lucky they installed that cable car ‘cross the ravine - else that one day hike would be a two day one.”
Because, of course, sweet little thing like me? Camping all by herself? In the woods!? At night!? Gasp!
Irritated by the memory alone, I marched right past the board to the head of the trail. Though not before I’d given it, and all its well meant warnings, the middle finger.
~
About an hour into the hike, I decided that the Park Ranger had been very generous when he called the trail “rough.” Sometimes there was not even a “trail” at all, and I had to figure out which boulder was less likely to roll over and kill me if I tried to scramble over it. I may have underestimated how difficult this would be. Or overestimated how fit I am. Or both.
But damn, was it ever beautiful up here.
The first thing you see, no matter where you look, are the seemingly endless stacks of smooth slate. Stones bigger than I, cut in these near perfect squares, and reminding me so much of giant toy blocks tossed fitfully about by some toddler. There’s also this eerie sense of, I don’t know, intention to their placement. Reverence is attached to this place, and now I think I can see why.
And the colors! Earth, the reddish orange of wet clay. Grass, sharp green with recent rain. Aspen, startling bone white. Wildflowers, brittle little paintbrushes, flush with every shade under the sun. All of them underscored by an orchestra of browns and golds and greys and tans.
Then there was the scent of pine and soil, and any number of other unnamable, untamable things. It pulled my childhood so vividly to the fore, I half expected to look up and see my dad, hand outstretched to help me clamber up a boulder. I closed my eyes and smiled at the memory. Back then, I’d been determined to climb it on my own. Prove that, no matter what he said, I could do it. And when I got back to camp some time later, I’d been covered in scrapes and dirt, yes, but also victorious. Dad had just chucked me under the chin, called me stubborn. A trait, it turns out, I never outgrew.
Somehow, that made those memories even more bittersweet.
Lost in the past as I was, I barely heard the soft huff in the quiet forest and only spared the sound an absent glance upwards. I went rigid, a gasp stuttering out over my tongue. An elk stood before me like some ancient God, just suddenly there, framed between two trees, so close I could see the glossy sheen of his eyes.
A moment caught in amber, utterly still and perfect. Then the wind brushed through the dark fur at his throat like clever, admiring fingers. A near heartbeat later, he simply turned and vanished into the trees.
In the silence after, Chicago and the life I’d left behind seemed so small, so distant. The absence of that weight, even for a moment, brought me to tears. I hunched down right where I was upon a fallen log, fingers pressing sharply into the bark, and wept. Great, trembling sobs that tore from my throat. I let them. Couldn’t stop them.
Grief. Agony. Guilt. Disappointment. Heartbreak. Loss. Shame. Doubt. Relief. Awe.
All of it, every last bit; like someone had reached in and tugged them out. I was a jagged shape, perched upon that makeshift bridge, shaking with all the things I’d refused to feel for so long.
When the tears finally stopped, I simply rose back to my feet, not even bothering to wipe away the moisture on my cheeks. My legs pained me nearly as much as my chest, but I pressed forward, heedless of their shaking.
Drained. I felt drained. A husk. Like someone had swallowed down all the things that had sustained me for so long. What remained? What could I be now? Could I be anything? Did I deserve to be anything?
Too much. Too much emotion. Too many questions. Just…too much. I shook it all away, and focused on my feet. They would carry me to a place of solitude and quiet. A place where I could just be. Where I could just sleep.
Everything else could wait.
The world could wait.
And if ever I returned, it would not be as a broken thing.
~
The sun was just beginning to set when the tower came into view and, even with that short trip cross the ravine cutting the time in half, it officially made my hike a twelve hour one. And I still had a mile left to go according to the helpful mile-marker that I absolutely did not kick down in a fit of rage.
Oh, and that four minute trip in the rickety bucket of death - sorry, I mean cable car? Ha. Barely terrifying. After it was over, I only threw up, like, a little. Three times, tops.
If my thigh muscles hadn’t felt like they were on the verge of sloughing right off my bones, I might have taken my chances and hiked the long way round. And no matter what Ranger Rick suggested, a night in the woods hardly scared me. I lived in Chicago for twelve years. It’s safe to say that my spectrum for fear is absolutely bonkers.
Regardless, the sight of Two Forks tower was a decidedly welcome one.
I looked up to where it stood high on the rise of the hill, silhouette like some long legged bird eyeing the waters below. This was my new home - for the next few months at least. This precarious box on skeletal legs. Home.
I moved a bit faster then, up that steep slope, the promise of a bed urging my tired form onward. Chicago had been such a bustle, of cars and of people. A near constant hum of activity and noise. When I’d lived there, I’d loved it, thrived on it. Now, I couldn’t recall wanting anything more keenly than the promise of calm, of quiet.
Then I was there, in its shadow, my hand gripped tight around the banister. I eyed the steps twisting around the tower’s limbs, before tugging, coercing and then completely forcing my exhausted body over each and every one. But damned if I didn’t feel exactly like I did when I was nine; crumpled and panting on top of that boulder. A conquerer.
After trudging through the door, flicking on the light, and tossing my pack on the floor, I collapsed onto the mattress, not even caring that it was both dusty and bare.
Finally.
Eyes falling shut, breaths long and deep, I let it all go and just relaxed. Couldn’t even begrudge the heat so long as it was this blissfully silent.
“You know your door’s still open, right?”
The rough, lazily cadenced words dragged me from the edge sleep, making me frown irritably into the mattress. Why, exactly, was my tired brain conjuring up male voices? Hallucinations could wait until tomorrow, thank you very much.
“There are bears out here, you know?”
I turned my head and popped open an eye just to confirm that there was not, in fact, a man standing across the room, rife with disapproval. Huffing, I closed my eyes and invited the sandman my way once more.
“Although, I suppose a little wood and glass wouldn’t really stop a hungry bear…”
Eyes now thoroughly open, I scanned the room. If the voice existed, I’d find it and I’d kill it. Then I’d sleep. Probably for a decade or two.
“But an open door? There’d be nada between you and the claws and the teeth and the mauling. So much mauling. And when you’re crawling across the floor with your intestines all hanging out, you’ll think ‘Gosh, I really wish I’d closed that - ‘“
I followed the voice across the room only to discover the source was a black and yellow two-way radio, sitting innocently atop the desk. I wrenched it from its little stand, and growled, “What in the absolute FUCK!”
“Oh good, you’re not dead! I was actually a bit worried there for a minute.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose in complete disbelief, “Who are you? And why are you…talking?”
“Just your friendly neighborhood Fire Lookout, protecting my poor, pink-haired fellows from gruesome bear attacks.”
I mouthed the words in tired bewilderment, not quite able to tell if I was dreaming or not - though my dreams weren’t usually this irritating. On the last threads of wakefulness and sanity, I attempted to be as succinct as possible when I said, “Look, I just spent two days flying, driving and hiking to get here an- Did you just say ‘pink-haired?’ What? How - how do you know that? The door thing, too! Can you see me?!”
The man on the other end relied with a cheery “Yep! Saw your light turn on from my tower. When I looked through my scope, I couldn't help but notice the imminent threat of bear mauling that is your open door.”
I took a moment to absorb the fact that my tower was a single, open room, and that all four walls were windows. Right. Many windows. Good for Fire Watching. And apparently peeping.
“Where are you?” I squinted, trying to see through said windows, past my own reflection and the vague outline of trees.
“Look for the flashing light.”
At those words, I spun, searching. There, to my right, I could make out a light turning on and then off again in a distant tower. I offered him, in return, a blank little: “Huh. See it.”
There were a few beats of silence and then, “Had to jog to my light. May or may not have tripped over a jar of peanut butter.”
Rather uncharitably, I replied, “I hope you broke something.”
“I may be wrong, but I seem to be sensing some hostility...” He didn’t even sound offended, just, if anything, amused.
“I’m going to bed now,” I stated, officially done with the conversation and the unnamed man on the other end of it.
“All right, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Or the mosquitos. Although, you know what really stops mosquitos in their tracks? Closed d-“
And with that, I firmly shut my new front door, after setting the little two-way radio on the ground. On the other side.