Happiness for Beginners (11 page)

This guy was dead serious.

“This is not Hiking for Beginners, people,” he said, looking around at the group. “Man up and deal with it.”

It wasn't?
It wasn't hiking for beginners? Yes, it was! “Actually, it
is
hiking for beginners,” I blurted out. “It's listed as a beginners course. In the catalog.”

For a second, he blinked like he hadn't realized that. Then he gave me a look. “You know what I mean.”

Actually, no I didn't.

“Okay,” he said next, clapping his hands together as if he'd covered everything there was to cover. “That's it for now. Any questions?”

That big guy Mason raised his hand. “What do we do with our poo?” he asked. “Do we pack that out in plastic bags, as well?”

Beckett's face got serious. “Yes. You'll keep that in your pack with your kitchen supplies.”

Our
kitchen supplies
? The room held its breath.

“I'm kidding!” Beckett burst out with a head shake, after the longest minute ever. “No. You don't pack out your feces. Fecal matter is biodegradable. You'll dig a cat hole with a stick, do your business, sprinkle some dirt on top, stir it up, then cover it. Mother Nature will do the rest.”

“Do our business?” a girl asked. “Like, out in the forest?”

“No,” Beckett answered. “We helicopter you back to base camp every time you need to go.”

There it was. We had ourselves a comedian. A sarcastic, pubescent, wilderness comedian.

Beckett looked around for other questions. I, personally, had a thousand, but I'd be damned if I'd ask them—or ever speak again for the rest of my life. When no other hands went up, Beckett slapped his palms on his thighs and stood up.

“Okay then,” he said, surveying the group one final time with a wicked smile. “Let the games begin.”

 

Chapter 7

At Outfitting, I tried on several pairs of boots. Beckett said it was best to rent them unless you had your own well-broken-in pair, which I didn't, of course. The rental pairs were certainly well broken in—by other people's stinky feet. The boots had been gelled so often with water repellent they were crusty. The laces were fraying. And every single pair rubbed me wrong in some different spot.

I snagged a side-of-the-eye glance at Jake. He was helping that blond girl Windy try on boots. I saw him yank her laces tight, then I heard her burble a delighted squeak before I looked away. In that moment, I had a vision of the next three weeks of my life: I was going to make myself miserable on this trip by being overly serious and overly self-conscious and overly self-critical. And Jake was going to make me even more miserable by being the pure opposite of all those things.

They loved him. We'd been here two hours, and he was already the king of the group. He was just one of those guys, it turned out, who always had something funny to say. Plus, he was confident without being pompous. He was interested without being anxious. He was laid-back without being a slacker. He had something for everyone. The hard-core guys could talk hard-core hiking with him. The sorority girls could ask him to adjust their pack straps. He was infinitely likable. To everybody. Except me.

I was fully aware how crazy it was, but the more they liked him, the less I did. This was supposed to be my trip! It was like he'd taken it over, somehow, and squeezed me out. We were enemies now, after all, if only in my mind. We were like the broken-up couple whose friends had to choose sides. Except we had never been a couple, and there were no sides left because everybody had already chosen him.

There it was. If he was happy, I had to be unhappy. If he fit in, I had to be left out. Especially since I still wasn't talking to him. If he was the person everybody was gathered around, I didn't have any place to stand.

At the Pantry, we measured and bagged up ten days' worth of dehydrated food, as well as mixtures of spices and dehydrated milk, lemonade, and cocoa. We got the glorious, unbelievable news that butter can last for weeks unrefrigerated without going rancid, and the same was true of cheese. Each cook group would carry its own cheddar wheel so thick it had to be cut with a wire, and enough butter to last until the re-ration at the midway point. Apparently, someone was going to ride up into the mountains halfway through with a full load of replenishments on a caravan of donkeys.

“Donkeys?” that guy Mason asked.

“No cars. No ATVs. Just living, breathing nature.”

“What happens if we run out of food before that?”

Beckett shrugged. “Then we eat each other.”

There was a limit for the packs based on each person's size, and yes—they weighed us one by one on a scale and called out the results. The big guys carried more than the small girls, which is why they got the gas cookstoves and the giant wheel of cheese. My own pack weighed in at seventy-nine pounds, which seemed like plenty. I was issued flour, dehydrated milk, a bag of homemade granola, and hot chocolate.

Packs full, we practiced putting them on. You can't just hoist a pack that heavy straight up to your back from the ground. You have to kneel down like you're proposing marriage, pull your pack up onto the shelf of your thigh, then wriggle it around onto your back. Beckett had us practice. I took it very slow, worrying that I might drop it, or strain something, or otherwise humiliate myself. Because the only ways I knew how to shake off embarrassment were: (a) to leave the room, or (b) to laugh it off with a friend. Since I couldn't leave, and I had no friends, the stakes were pretty high.

I would have expected to have a simple but clear education about the wilderness by the time we finished our orientation. The basics, at least. But Beckett, for all his posturing, talked in scribbles. He gave lines of information with gaping spaces in between, and after listening to him for five straight hours, all I knew for sure was that dandelions were edible, singing on the trail would keep the bears away, and we had to drop iodine in our water bottles every single time we filled up or risk an intestinal infection called Giardia that would have us “spewing out of both ends.”

When Beckett dismissed us for dinner with instructions to meet at the lodge entrance at six the next morning, I couldn't shake the feeling that we had only a tiny fraction of the information we were going to need.

I asked him about it on the way out the door, but he said, “It's all in the handouts.”

“The two handouts?” I asked.

“Don't worry so much.”

“I feel under-educated.”

“We do experiential learning here. You'll learn as you go.”

“But what if there's some information I need before I have it?”

“You'll figure it out.”

“What if I don't?”

“Then you'll die,” Beckett said with a shrug. “And I'll use my one stick of dynamite to make it look like an avalanche.”

*   *   *

I took my journal with me to the Mexican place on State Street for supper, thinking I'd sit quietly with a bowl of guacamole and jot down some pre-journey deep thoughts. But as I approached the hostess's podium, I heard a loud wave of laughter in the back. When my eyes followed the sound, I saw every single member of our hiking group, including Beckett, cozied up for dinner at two pushed-together tables, well into their meal.

I looked away so fast I spun halfway around. Then I peeked back to see if they'd noticed me. They hadn't.

I felt like I was crashing a party I hadn't been invited to. Like I was stalking them, or tagging after them, or trying to be friends with a group that wasn't friends with me. Except they weren't friends. We were all strangers, dammit. How had they formed a south-of-the-border drinking club in the half-a-day since we'd all met?

Maybe I should have joined them. That's no doubt what Jake would have done—just bounded over like a chocolate Lab with a wagging tail to slip into the pack. But I wasn't a chocolate Lab. In fact, in that moment, I was Pickle: a mangy-looking mini dachshund with a tail that never wagged and a foul temper. Maybe that's why we got along so well.

Pickle was, of course, quite literally, a bitch. And though I would not have called myself a bitch, I certainly admired that about her. There are women who describe themselves as bitches—often proudly—on T-shirts, say, or bumper stickers. I've noticed them for years around town: Sweet Bitch, Sexy Bitch, Crazy Bitch, Alpha Bitch, Yoga Bitch, Bitch on Board, Bitch on Wheels, Bitch on a Broomstick. Pronouncements like that caught my eye because I actually didn't get it. Why would you put that on your car? Or across your boobs on a T-shirt? What were you trying to say about yourself? Was it a beware-of-dog warning to let the world know how tough you were? Because I couldn't help thinking that if you were tough enough to fit into the “bitch” category, you probably didn't need to bedazzle it in rhinestones across the butt of your shorts.

Pickle certainly didn't need a sign. One look at Pickle's little pinched-up, pointy face, with that one lip always caught on her teeth, and you knew not to mess with her. That was the kind of toughness I wanted, especially in that moment. The kind you didn't have to declare.

The principal at my school had a poster of Chuck Norris jokes hanging in his office. I'd read that poster a thousand times since he'd put it up, and it always reminded me of Pickle: “Chuck Norris doesn't call the wrong number. You answer the wrong phone.” “When Chuck Norris does division, there are no remainders.” “Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.”

I'd read the poster so many times, I'd just about memorized it. And even though I knew the jokes were, in fact,
jokes,
I had somehow come away with a bizarre affection for Chuck Norris—and, also, for the idea of toughness in general.

So, tonight, I decided to see this experience of standing ignored in a Mariachi-themed entryway as a teachable moment. Had the group left me out on purpose, or just forgotten me? Did it even matter? I felt like I had exactly two choices: slump my shoulders in defeat, or stand up taller in defiance. What would Chuck Norris do?

Another roar of laughter from the group at the back. One of the girls stood up and started looping an imaginary lasso above her head while the rest of them cheered her on.

That was fine. I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to do the opposite of that, actually. I'd spent my whole life way too tender. This was good for me. It was time to learn how to not give a shit. Plus, the last thing I needed, I told myself, was to get plastered on tequila the night before I set off into the wilderness. Hungover is no way to start a journey of self-discovery.

What would Chuck Norris do? Hell, what would
Pickle
do—aside from biting everybody's ankles? The answer was easy. She'd find another restaurant and go eat her own damn dinner.

But there was a reason Beckett had recommended the Mexican place on State Street: It was the only restaurant in town. Other than the Chinese restaurant with the wagon wheel out front that called itself the Golden Corral Chinese Buffet and BBQ, which was closed on Thursdays, of all the luck.

In the end, I assembled my dinner from the gas station snack shop under the influence of two opposing motivations: to load up on healthy fuel so I could start this new journey in tip-top condition, and to consume all the nastiest junk food I could get my hands on in case it was my last chance. That's how I wound up out on a park bench at sunset, balancing my “dinner” on my thighs: a bag of sunflower seeds, some peppered beef jerky, a bottle of spring water—and a Coke, a Hershey bar, and a Whoopie Pie for dessert.

I forced myself to appreciate my surroundings. The town had a classic Western profile of square storefronts facing each other across a wide main drag. Off in the distance, mountains. All of this was topped off by a sunset so wild and fiery and breathtaking it just had to be showing off.

At the sight of it, I reached into my bra for my list of self-improvements. It was time for a pep talk, and there was nobody to give it but me. I'd come to the wrong place, that much was clear. But so what? I'd made wrong choices before. Wasn't that what I was here for? To outdo everybody's expectations—especially my own? So what if I was the last person anybody would ever bet on. I was going to earn a Certificate. I might not be the best outdoors-woman in the world, but I could certainly out-hike a batch of hungover college kids. They were too young to understand the stakes. They lived on the mistaken assumption that their lives mattered, that life was essentially fair, that it was all going to wind up happy in the end. I knew what they didn't—that everything you care about will disappear, that deserving a happy life doesn't mean you get one, and that there really is no one in the entire world you can count on but yourself. I had the edge that disappointment gives you. I had the advantage of life experience. I might be eating Whoopie Pies for dinner, but at least I knew how very pathetic that was.

That was me on the precipice of my Big Journey: all alone with a lap full of junk food and an open notebook with one useless quote written on the page: “If at first you don't succeed, you're not Chuck Norris.” I was funneling sunflower seeds into my mouth and worrying over just how uninspired I felt, when my phone rang.

I fumbled around to find it in my bag and barely caught it in time.

Mike.

I didn't even say hello. Just, “You're calling me again?”

“Actually,” Mike said, “you're the one who called me.”

“I did not.”

“You did. You pocket-dialed me. I've been listening to the inside of your purse for ten minutes.”

I just had to double-check. “I pocket-dialed you?”

“About ten minutes ago. It happens a lot, actually.”

“It does?”

“Maybe once or twice a month.”

“What do you do about it?”

“I shout, ‘Hey! You're pocket-dialing me!' But you never hear me.”