Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lily holds up a red bikini. “Well, didn’t get much use out of this.”
“Why on earth did you bring a bathing suit to a wilderness trip?”
“I pictured a hot tub. I wanted to be prepared.”
Lily has everything that was once stuffed into her suitcase strewn around the yurt. She is packing, and I am shuffling around
my mostly unused clothes. We leave tomorrow. After a morning hike to the lake and one last view of Denali, Frank is coming
to pick us up in his jalopy of a van and drive us back to Anchorage, where Lily and I will fly into Newark International Airport
and land back in reality.
I’m not sure I’m done with Alaska.
Sure, I relish a long, hot shower and a Venti cappuccino, but I found something here I never expected to. Truth be told, all
I’d hoped for was to make it through the trip and get home in one piece. Now, at the risk of sounding like Wizard Ven Tarion,
I’m starting to feel whole here. Or I’ve finally had a breather long enough to realize what whole feels like. I came into
this vacation for someone else. To save my sister. That’s what’s changed. The understanding that I can also be here for myself.
But now we must go home.
It’s time for Lily to face her husband. The guy who blew up her world.
She must decide what kind of life she wants from here on in.
It’s not going to be easy. She will need her family with her.
Which is why I can’t stop thinking about what she said when she pulled me aside after dinner this evening.
Supper had been cold sandwiches acquired in Talkeetna and packed into a cooler with fruit, bottles of beer and soda, and,
delightfully, moose-dropping cookies. I’d given mine to Dane at the bar in an attempt to lure him from his whiskey, and I
don’t regret it, but I’d been looking forward to having something sweet as a reward after that hike.
The wood for the campfire was damp and the fire smoky. Jace poked at it with a long stick, which sent embers flying but did
nothing to clear the air. I couldn’t see the person sitting opposite me, and I’m sure I’ll never wash the smell of campfire
out of my hair and clothes. Still, we were warm enough and our bellies were full.
The group was subdued for once, no laughing and joke telling. Everyone realizing it was our last night together. It’s hard
to believe how close we’d gotten in a week. How our world became a bubble. We’d exchanged numbers, and social media handles,
and promised to keep in touch—there was even talk of a reunion tour. I’m sure that was just talk. We’re spread all over the
country. We have lives and people at home. We needed to take what Alaska had offered us and get back to them.
After we finished our sandwiches and repositioned ourselves out of the line of drifting smoke, Brick pulled a book out from inside his jacket.
“I save this for the last night of every trip. It’s from Robert Service, poet of the Yukon.
He wrote over a thousand poems about the wilderness.
I highly recommend you read a few now that you’ve experienced some of what he saw.
The emotions haven’t changed in a hundred years.
But I’m going to leave you with this one.
” He stood with the book open in front of him, although I suspected he had memorized the page long ago.
“Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.
The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;
You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;”
As he continued to read, we all leaned in. I saw my sister’s eyes widen as he spoke about trails not taken.
“Bid good-by to sweetheart, bid good-by to friend;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow to the end.
Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the true;
Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.”
He closed the book with a flourish, and we clapped and cheered. Brick smiled and bowed. I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow, I thought to myself.
“Here’s to the Lone Trail,” shouted Dane.
“To the Lone Trail!” replied the audience.
Luna had been brought to tears. “Oh, this darn smoke,” she’d said, wiping her eyes. I knew their lone trail had miles to go.
“Hey, can I talk to you?” asked Lily when everyone had turned their attention away from Brick and back to the fire and the
beer.
“Of course.” The tone in her voice was alarming for its softness.
“Privately.”
My heart revved up its beats waiting to find out what was wrong.
Yes, I was definitely going to need more than three weeks to break my old habits.
We stood and moved away from the group. Lily grabbed my hand and headed toward the outhouse.
I followed her to the shabby wooden structure, prepared to guard the door for her, when she stopped short, turned, and held a hand to my chest.
“Did you hear that poem?”
“Of course, I was sitting right next to—”
“No, but did you hear it? It’s karma, I’m telling you. ‘Tarry not, and fear not . . . the Lone Trail waits for you . . .’
I need to go up there. To see the sunrise. I don’t care if you think the Wizard was a fake, I want to believe it. I want to
have my last experience before I go home to that shit show to be something spiritual, something that will give me some goddamned
strength, something to hold onto whenever the tide of what’s coming starts to drown me.”
I thought about my fox and twisted Luna’s ring around my finger. I had a reminder of what I’d learned here, one that I could
carry home.
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m going with or without you. It’s that important to me. Honestly, it’s not like I haven’t been up
the same trail already. It’s straight up, I couldn’t possibly get lost, and I’d be back long before anyone wakes up. Now,
come guard the door, I really do have to pee.”
Back at the campfire, I sat down next to Luna and Mimi. “Can I ask you two a question?” My friends turned to me with open
faces. “Did you ever do something so out of your comfort zone you thought your heart would explode?”
“More times than I can remember,” said Luna. “And I never regretted it. Not once.”
Lily is stuffing everything into her suitcase except for what she plans to wear tomorrow. “So,” I say, reopening my own case and pulling out a fleece vest. “Two-thirty wake-up call. Who’s setting the alarm, you or me?”
“No! Big! Really?”
“Someone has to make sure you come back in one piece. Mom would kill me.”