Chapter 37 Sadie #2
Seven hours is also a long time to hike.
“Let’s go, then,” Thorn says, and he leads the way.
We follow, ducklings in a row, with Trey bringing up the rear. It isn’t too steep—not at first. We’ll be covering roughly two miles every hour, Thorn tells us, and it’s around seven miles to the top.
It starts feeling like a mountain around mile two.
The incline grows gradually steeper with every step, and I’m thankful for so many things: Emma’s hiking boots (there’s a ton of loose gravel, way more than any trails we’ve hiked so far), the hiking poles (for balance), sunscreen (the sun feels extra potent up here), and the long-sleeved shirt I packed (it’s June, but it’s already a little chilly, and I see snow higher up on the mountain).
We take our first break at an alpine lake about three miles up. The water is so glassy and clear you can easily see every tiny pebble at the bottom.
“Wow,” I breathe, taking in the scenery. “This is incredible.”
But Thorn’s not looking at the lake or the huge jagged rocks at its edges—he’s looking at me.
“This is only the beginning,” he says, eyes sparkling. “Just wait.”
We press on.
I have nothing good to say about miles four and five.
Nothing good at all, except that Thorn was right, and the view from the lake was only just the beginning.
From this vantage point—past the mountain’s halfway point, and not a moment too soon!
—I can see forever, far out over all the land we’ve covered these last ten days.
It’s a little dizzying, honestly.
I do my best to not look down—to not look up, either, for that matter—and just focus on taking the next step, and the next after that. My legs burn from the incline.
“I’m glad Emma decided not to come,” I tell Thorn, slightly breathless from the effort, the two of us at the front of the pack. And then, a confession: “It’s messing with me a little, too. Being this high up.”
Thorn glances over his shoulder just in time to see me lose my footing, the tiniest little slip, not enough to be dangerous.
“You okay?” Thorn asks.
“These boots are gold,” I tell him. “Someone really should have added them to the suggested packing list.”
He laughs, so fully it echoes off the rock wall to our left, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
I make a mental note to buy Emma a second milkshake when we get back down to the bottom, or fries. Or a cheeseburger. Or anything, really. Maybe she’d like a spa gift card?
“The dizziness, though?” he goes on. “Are you feeling nauseated? Lightheaded? Headache or anything else?”
I recognize the symptoms of altitude sickness, but thankfully, I’m pretty sure that’s not what this is.
“None of that,” I say. “Just…height anxiety? Is that a thing?”
He laughs again. “I think that’s got to be the official term, yeah.”
It’s only going to get worse the closer we get to the top. I can do this, though: mind over matter. Faith over fear and all that.
Fear leapfrogs ahead at the beginning of mile six.
I should find it comforting that, suddenly, there are cables to hold—a zigzagging line of them held up by steel poles, as if we’re in line at a theme park and just can’t see the roller coaster anywhere up ahead—
It’s not comforting. Not at all.
The only thing it puts in my head is that there’s a good reason for the cable railings from here on up: that it’s so steep, so dangerous, that we’re most definitely going to need to hold on to them.
All I can think of is Brittany, twisting her ankle and nearly falling over the edge of the switchbacks that day.
My mouth goes dry, and I’m suddenly having trouble swallowing.
I still have a decent amount of water left; I take a sip and hope it helps.
It does—but only a little.
“You’ve got this, Sadie,” Trey says, the back of the group catching up to us where I’ve paused. “You can do this.”
Hunter takes advantage of our brief break, seeming completely at ease up here as he whips his camera out to snap a shot of the expansive view.
“Can I borrow some of your fearlessness?” I ask him, only mostly joking.
Right now, I can’t fathom feeling anything but a burning desire for this to be over.
“Sadie?” Thorn says, looking down on me with concern from his slightly elevated position. “You good?”
He offers me his hand—a warm alternative to the cold, metallic cable that I will have to hold on to eventually—as in immediately—and it’s just the right thing to get me moving again.
As soon as my hand closes around the metal cable, I feel better.
Safer.
I’m not going to fall. Scratch that—I refuse to fall.
I have two jobs: to hold on, and to keep going.
Which I do, to surprising success—
Until we get to the switchbacks.
There are twenty-six of them, Thorn tells us.
They’re not all that long—the total length adds up to just under a mile—and when we finish, we’ll be at the top.
I cannot overstate just how different it is to be here, starting the seventh and final mile of climbing this mountain, versus merely reading about it in Henry Herrington’s guidebook.
His pictures and bullet lists and hot tips didn’t do justice to any of how it actually feels to experience this place.
We haven’t even reached the summit, and I’m suddenly overcome with a wave of emotion.
My relationship with Caden ended because he thought I was too much—but it also ended because he thought I was too little. He had zero faith that I could do any of this.
Caden laughed at me, treated me like a joke.
Abby tried to talk me out of it.
And deep down, I’m not sure I truly thought I had it in me.
But I’m here. I’m terrified, but I’m doing it.
I’ve been doing it.
Now I just have to finish.
Spoiler alert: switchbacks don’t get any easier just because you’ve conquered five, then ten, then enough to lose count.
They also don’t get easier just because you’re more determined than before.
We’ve come so far—we’re close enough to see the top, and I’m finally brave enough to look out into the distance beyond it—but it’s challenging in every sense of the word just to keep going, one step at a time, until it’s done.
The instant I set foot at the top, my eyes fill with tears.
I’m laughing, I’m crying—I’m elated, so light on my feet and surrounded by such a surreal, foreign view that I suddenly feel like I’m on another planet altogether, one with a strange sense of gravity.
But no: this is our world.
This is every forest and meadow and lake and waterfall and boulder we’ve met along the way, so far beneath us it’s hard to believe they’re really down there.
I’m still looking, marveling, when I feel his fingers intertwine with mine.
I turn, and there’s Thorn, eyes as ice-blue as any alpine lake. I could look at them forever—
But then his mouth is on mine, and we’re kissing on top of a mountain, on top of the world, and I take it back: this is what I could do forever. He’s a furnace, warming me up against the chilly breeze; he’s a soft place to land, a safe place to land.
I kiss him like we’re running out of time.
Hot tears streak down my cheeks, and I’m certain he can taste them at this point, but neither of us pulls away.
If this is all the time we ever have together—if we never even see each other again, a thought I do my best to shove down—he’s changed my life just by seeing me so clearly at the exact moment I most needed to be seen.
“Thank you,” I say when we finally pull away. It comes out as a whisper.
He brushes my tears away, grins.
“That was all you, Sadie Whitlock. You did this.” His grin becomes a full-blown smile, beautifully bright.
“How are you still standing right now after hiking until two in the morning and only getting four hours of sleep?” I ask, laughing.
“This is my whole life,” he says with a shrug. “I’m used to it.”
“Hey, lovebirds!” Trey calls out from beside a tiny hut built of bricks and beams, a shelter of some sort—for people who want or need to spend the night up here, maybe? “Come sign the wall!”
The building looks bigger on the inside, but not by much.
Nearly every inch of it is covered in black Sharpie.
Silas hands me the marker when he’s done. It takes a minute to find the perfect spot, but I know it as soon as I see it: a blank spot just beneath a little window that peeks out over the sprawling view.
Halfway through signing my last name, I feel Thorn behind me, the heat radiating from his body welcome to say the least.
I offer him the Sharpie, but he waves it away.
“Great minds think alike,” he says, then points to a signature about two inches to the right.
AUGUST THORN, it reads in uneven capital letters, the sort that look nothing like the practiced handwriting from the journal he gave me. It’s dated nineteen years ago: he wasn’t even a teenager yet.
On instinct, my gaze lands on the name just below Thorn’s, in a neat architectural slant: DAYTON THORN.
“Your dad?” I ask, knowing the answer before the question is even past my lips.
“My dad,” he echoes, shoving his hands in his pockets. “He loved it up here.”
His words hang between us, suspended in the air.
When I finally say something—“I bet he loved it so much because he got to do it with you”—Thorn’s face changes into an expression I’ve never seen on him.
“Yeah,” he says, brows knitting tightly together in a way that looks like he’s trying to keep himself from breaking.
He swallows, takes a deep breath, and his shadows change into something more like peace.
“Yeah,” he says again. “I think you might be right.”