Kathleen Frank
Hiking Trip
Dana Rider
When she takes her boyfriend backpacking for the first time, she picks a route that is short but challenging. A boomerang trip—in then back out—because all the loop trails are longer, and she isn’t sure how he will handle it.
Within ten minutes on the trail, he steps on a snail and loses all composure. He wonders aloud: What have I done? How could I have done this? Can I undo this?
She tries her best to reassure him. She tells him the snail was one of many, maybe even invasive. It could be, she reasons, that his action, however accidental, was a net good.
When she offers this, he breaks out in sobs, body nearly collapsing under the weight of his pack.
Approaching death, for the snail, is not altogether unlike life, though with fewer pleasures. No dipping its head in a gently running stream. No feasts of decaying leaves. A small amount of disagreeable nerve stimulation before the quiet. The infectious trematodes the snail had carried in its intestines experience air for the first time and have nowhere to go next.
She uses her paper map to edit their planned path—turning right instead of left at the first fork—and finds them a campsite less than a mile away. Getting her boyfriend this far without another collapse is a feat. Just for some space from his sulking, she says she’s going off into the woods to hang a rope for their bear bag.
When he asks, she pauses to explain that they have to hang their food in the trees to avoid attracting bears, and to avoid instructing the bears that easy meals can be found around humans. As she walks away, she hears him mutter a platitude about leaving no trace of one’s presence with bitterness in his voice.
She walks deeper into the afternoon forest and finds a stick the size of her forearm to tie to the rope. The stick, when she flings it, soars over the branch of a yellow birch.
The nearest bear is asleep, very still but snoring gently. Not far off, a small group of white-tailed deer dine on poison ivy, unaffected by its defensive irritation, then settle in a clearing near a freeway overpass. Mice skitter in the underbrush and trade nuts and bits of stolen grain. They close their bulbous black eyes to clean their faces.
She and her boyfriend are alone at their campsite, which sits on a peninsular outcrop into a calm lake. She reads until she is hungry, tapping her foot against the dirt to shed the energy she had stored in preparation for a much longer hike.
Her boyfriend sits near the edge of the lake, hands resting in his lap, staring at the water.
When she approaches him, she notices a small, dark shape moving in the water. She points and announces it is a muskrat. He looks in the direction she points and says nothing. She suggests eating dinner.
The sun drops toward the horizon in time with crepuscular and vespertine creatures blinking open their eyes. An owl shakes his feathers out. A moth adept at camouflage hangs on bark—unknown to all but itself and the tree. The tree’s awareness is subtle and quiet and old. It leaves the task of tracking day and night to its leaves.
She doesn’t light a campfire. The wood of the forest is too wet, and she values a lightweight pack too much to carry it in. Instead, she extracts her stove and boils water to pour into packages of thirsty freeze-dried food. They eat in silence, listening to the nighttime settling of birds. When she finishes, she peels the plasticky foil apart and licks off the residue. He gives her a confused look and she explains: to minimize the leftover smell.
Into the bear bag she packs away the garbage and the food and anything else that smells—toothpaste and deodorant, for example. She pulls the rope until the bag sways high above her. Shortly after, both she and her boyfriend climb inside their tent to sleep.
She wakes after an hour to the sound of her boyfriend crying. She cuddles closer until his body stills.
Overnight, stalks of grass shift around slowly—the movement invisible to animalian eyes—no longer seeking the light of the sun but still angling roots to find water in the soil. Earthworms wiggle deep tunnels beneath. A spider jumps around, tossing silk to form its web, then perches at the center and waits.
On a similar mission, catchfly blossoms unfurl, obeisant to none but the logic of the moon.
Dana Jean Rider is a writer, teacher, and editor from St. Paul, Minnesota. Her short fiction has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Exposition Review, and Revolute. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she currently teaches in the English department. Find her on Instagram @danajeanspider.