Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
The trees parted, and Biscuit stepped into a clearing, Duke and Noah right behind us. I opened my mouth to say something, but the words died in my throat. The valley appeared so suddenly it stole my breath away. One moment we were climbing through dense forest, and the next … paradise.
It was the kind of view that made you believe in magic, or at least in whatever supernatural power was responsible for landscape design.
Jagged peaks pierced a canvas of swirling clouds, their snow-capped summits gleaming silver in the afternoon light.
A crystalline lake stretched below, its surface like glass.
I just sat there, drinking in the raw beauty of it all.
As Noah hopped off Duke, I slid off Biscuit, legs wobbling like I was walking the plank on a pirate ship.
At the edge of the clearing, I spotted what had to be the lightning tree, a massive old oak split right down the middle, its halves curving away from each other like two mythical serpents reaching for the sky.
The bark was scorched black in places, but somehow the tree had survived and thrived.
“You were right,” I admitted. “So you came out here a lot as a kid?”
Noah took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air. “Every summer. Dad would pack up the Jeep with camping gear, and we’d spend weeks exploring these mountains. No phones, no TV. Just us.”
“You really love it up here, don’t you?”
His eyes fixed on the distant peaks. “It’s not about loving it. It’s about respecting it. Understanding it.” He glanced at me. “Some things aren’t meant to be packaged and sold, Sam. They’re just meant to be experienced.”
Noah grabbed the canteen and gave Yeti another bowl of water, then offered it to me.
“You know, my dad built the original adventure program with nothing but local knowledge and respect for these mountains. Both of which he got from my grandfather, who got them from his father before that. Now corporate suits who’ve never spent a night under the stars want to package and sell what took generations to learn.
” I followed his eyes to the LuxeLife-branded cooler.
“Just because Victoria calls it authentic doesn’t make it real. ”
“What does authentic even mean anymore?” I asked, more to myself than Noah. “Is it only authentic if it stays exactly the same forever? Or can something evolve and still keep its soul?”
Noah was quiet for a moment. “Maybe authentic just means being honest about what you are. Not pretending to be something you’re not.”
I thought about my perfectly posed photos, the careful captions, the strategic hashtags. “I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore.”
“Seems to me like you’re someone who actually cares about getting it right.” Noah’s eyes met mine. “That counts for something.”
“Does it?” I asked, shaking my head. “I used to review these tiny Mexican restaurants. You saw.”
“I did.”
“Places where abuelitas made tortillas by hand and refused to write down recipes. It was real, you know?”
“What changed?”
“Money,” I said simply. “Paying bills. Trying to survive. Sponsors pay contracts for luxury content. Not hole-in-the-wall taco joints.”
“Or hole-in-the-wall Adventure Centers. Apparently.”
I nodded. “I guess I adapted.”
“I guess we all do,” agreed Noah.
We stared back over the valley, each lost in our own world.
“So all this camping with your dad, that’s where you learned your badass wilderness ninja skills?”
His hands stilled on the blade of grass he’d been twirling between his fingers. “Dad taught me how to read weather patterns, find edible plants. He showed me how to tie proper knots when I was six. By eight, I could start a fire in the rain.”
In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolled across the Colorado sky, as if Mother Nature was accepting Noah’s challenge.
“Dad used to say you could read the mountains like a book. Each track, broken twig, or scattered feather tells a story.” I watched his face as he spoke, his usual guardedness melting away.
“I wish my dad taught me cool stuff like that. The only thing my dad taught me was how to fold dumplings. Well, he tried to teach me. They always come out weird-looking and lumpy. Like little mutant Buddha statues.”
“I’m sure they tasted good.”
“That’s what Mom said. She’d tell me it didn’t matter how they looked, as long as they were made with love.”
“That’s what my mom used to say about pie crusts.” Noah’s smile was bittersweet.
Across the clearing, we watched Yeti sniffing the grass like she was hunting something. Perhaps an attempt to show that her owner wasn’t the only one with superior wilderness skills.
“So, your parents still cook a lot?”
“They own a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown.”
“That must have been interesting growing up.”
“That’s one word for it. Other words are loud. Intense. Chaotic. I grew up doing homework surrounded by the sounds of broccoli chopping and sizzling woks. The smell of five-spice powder still takes me right back there.”
Staring out over the mountains, soaking in the views, it seemed Noah wasn’t in a hurry to leave.
Which was good, because I wasn’t in a hurry either.
It was one of those moments you want to remember for the rest of your life, and you make a conscious effort to make sure you commit every detail to memory.
“It’s not that hard, you know,” said Noah, breaking the spell.
“Have you tried making dumplings?”
“Not dumplings. I meant reading tracks.”
“Maybe not for you, it isn’t. Or natural born predator over there.” I thumbed toward Yeti.
“Anybody can do it.”
I could only assume that by “anybody”, he didn’t mean me.
“Here, let me show you.” He scanned the ground. “Elk come through here all the time.” It took only a few minutes of searching for him to find something. “See, come over here.”
I wobbled over, still bowlegged and saddle sore, then crouched down beside him. Noah traced his finger along the edge of what looked like a dent in the dirt to me, but clearly held volumes of information to his trained eye.
“This is an elk track,” he explained, his voice dropping into a wilderness professor tone. “See the heart shape? And how it’s split at the top like this?” He traced the outline. “Each animal leaves a distinct print. Deer tracks are smaller, more pointed. Moose are huge, like dinner plates.”
I leaned closer, genuinely fascinated by how animated he became when sharing his knowledge.
“But tracking isn’t just about footprints.” Noah pointed at a broken twig. “It’s about reading the entire story. Direction, speed, how recently they passed by.”
“How can you tell all that from a footprint?”
“The depth tells you weight and speed. See how this one pushes deeper at the front? The elk was moving at a trot, not walking.” He gestured to a nearby pine. “And look at the bark here, see the rub marks? That’s a bull elk marking his territory.”
He looked up, catching me staring at him rather than the track. “What?”
“Nothing,” I blurted. “Just ... I’m impressed.” I looked down at the tracks with new appreciation, seeing not just dents in the dirt but a narrative hidden in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right knowledge to decode it.
“First time I tracked an elk, I was maybe seven. Dad had me crawling through the mud, pointing out bent grass blades and half-eaten leaves. When she finally led us to the herd, I was so excited I stood up and scared them all away.”
“Did he get angry?”
“Nah. Just laughed. Sometimes the chase is better than the catch.” Noah’s eyes were on me like a hunter stalking prey.
“I guess that depends on what you’re chasing,” I said. “And what she does after you catch her.”
Noah didn’t even try to hide his grin this time. “I guess so.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“How long … how long have your parents been gone?”
“Long time.” The way his eyes glazed over suggested it felt like yesterday. “They were setting up a new route. Something went wrong with the anchor point.”
“A climbing accident …”
He nodded. “I’d just graduated from high school.
“Noah, I’m so sorry.”
“Like I said, it was a long time ago.”
“But you were so young.”
“Brie had it worse than me. She was only fourteen.”
“So wait … you raised her?”
“Someone had to.”
I watched him stare out at the mountains, his jaw tight.
“Thank you for sharing this place with me,” I said.
Another rumble of thunder rolled in from the horizon, this time accompanied by a flash of distant lightning that lit up the sky. Noah’s face darkened with the clouds. “We should get back before that storm hits. Yeti, come!”
He stood, then helped me to my feet. We worked together to fold up the blanket as another rumble of thunder boomed in the distance. That storm was coming in hot, and a lot sooner than expected.
Noah’s jaw tightened. “Remember how I said we might get a little wet on the way back?”
“Yes.” I watched as the dark clouds swirled in the sky.
“Might be more that a little.”
“Let me just grab a couple of photos for my feed.” It was clear Noah didn’t love the idea, but he didn’t protest, either. It would have been a shame to go all the way out there and not come away with at least a few pictures.
As Noah went to gather the horses, I reached for my phone.
My hand patted an empty back pocket.
“Oh, my God. No, no, no. This can’t be happening.” I spun in a circle, scanning the ground. “My phone’s gone.”
“You put it in your saddlebag like I told you, right?”
“I was taking pictures of Yeti in the meadow. I must’ve …”
Thunder growled in the distance, and Noah glanced up at the darkening sky. “We need to head back now. Phone or no phone.”
“We have to look for it!” The idea of being without my phone for even five minutes was almost paralyzing.
The thought of leaving it behind, alone, lost in the wilderness, was simply unimaginable.
My heartbeat shifted into a higher gear, and beads of sweat erupted from the pores on my forehead.
“Everything we did today will be worthless without it!”
Noah’s face hardened. “Worthless?”
“You know what I mean.” From the look on his face, I wasn’t sure that he did.
But I couldn’t worry about Noah’s hurt feelings; I had a crisis to deal with.
I had to find my phone. “It’s not just today’s pictures that are on there.
It’s everything I took the entire week. Dawn patrol.
The river. All the stuff back at the resort. This entire trip would be for nothing.”
“Yeah,” Noah said, his voice low and cold. “I heard you the first time.”
“Noah, don’t.”
Noah slid one boot into a stirrup and launched himself into Duke’s saddle. “It probably bounced out of your pocket somewhere between here and the meadow. We’ll keep our eyes open on the way back down the trail.”
“That phone is my entire life.”
Noah shook his head, the pity clear in his eyes. “We’re too exposed up here when the lightning comes. We have to go now, phone or no phone. So either you get on your own horse or I throw you over mine.”
The first fat raindrops began falling about ten minutes later. Noah dug his heels into Duke’s side and the big horse surged forward, Biscuit right behind him. Thunder roared and lightning crackled across the sky.
Noah pulled a pair of flashlights from his saddlebag once the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Our light beams swayed across the rocky terrain in desperate search of my phone, but each flash of lightning made our efforts seem increasingly futile.
Another electric bolt split the sky, this one close enough to make the tiny hairs on my arms stand at attention. Yeti howled, then bolted down the trail. Even the fearless wolf-dog was terrified, which did absolutely nothing for my rapidly deteriorating confidence.
“Is Yeti going to be okay?” I yelled, trying to make my voice heard over the wind’s howl.
“She’ll be fine,” Noah shouted back as a sudden gust whipped my hair across my face.
In the distance, sheets of rain advanced across the valley.
“We can’t stay out here. It’s too dangerous.” Noah squinted at the sky as if he could intimidate the weather into submission. “But even more dangerous is what Jenn will do to me if something happens to the horses. We can’t have one of them slip and break a leg. We need shelter. Now.”
“Where are we going to find shelter in this?” Thunder boomed and lightning flashed.
The raindrops somehow got bigger. Wetter. Colder. Suddenly, finding my phone became much less of a life and death situation, at least compared to the real life or death situation we were in.
“Follow me,” Noah commanded. Not waiting for my reaction, he shifted Duke into reverse, grabbed Biscuit’s reins, and looped them around his own saddle horn. “Let’s go!”