Range of Light (22 page)

That's it, think about flowers. I did miss those botanical sketches and wished I had had the courage to continue drawing. The academy processed your mind the way Kraft processed cheese, removing the impurities and idiosyncrasies and originality. If I returned to California, I
would
take up sketching again. And now to cheer myself, I recalled the favorite blooms: mountain heather, dwarf bilberry, Lemmon's paintbrush, alpine aster. I loved alpine aster, with its yellow center radiating into delicate purple petals.

At the shore of Lake
Townsley
, I found a grayness thicker than the blanket that haunted me all the way down from Hanging Basket Lake. Shivering, disconsolate, I set out in the direction of camp. The day seemed eternal, yet I knew night would come: an abrupt, dangerous precipice; I had to get back to camp before dark. Kath must be frantic. Exhausted, cold, I found will leading the way.

An hour passed. Another thirty minutes. Definitely, I was lost. L-o-s-t. Sheltered by a high outcropping, I gobbled a handful of trail mix. Almost choking on the chewy, salty, sweet stuff, I slowed down by taking first a raisin, then a pumpkin seed, then a cashew—Sari always liked cashews—then a walnut, then a Spanish peanut. This did no good; I was still speeding. The Donner Party and their disastrous shortcut loomed large. Still, I had food, water. It wasn't all that cold, just wet and foggy. I simply needed to keep my wits, and the wisest thing would be to stay in one place until the mist cleared, but standing still had never been my talent, and it was too late now.

Suddenly, thank God, it came to me that I had taken the wrong turn a mile back. Filled with relief, I retraced my steps, found the trailhead and set off, finally, in the direction of camp.

I hurried, knowing Kath would be furious with me when I arrived. Because I was racing along the trail, I overlooked a root, slightly raised, but enough to catch my boot and topple me. Kath would probably draw attention to the hidden strength of these fabled root systems. Damn, why hadn't I seen it? Cautiously, I lifted myself to a sitting position: upper body OK. With exaggerated slowness, I stood, grateful to discover nothing was broken, although my right knee ached. Well, I could handle this, just decrease the pace a bit. I forced myself to calm down, to eat another handful of nuts and raisins and take a sip of water.

Sun flitted in and out of clouds, roiling murky white sky and streaking the trail with dark patches. I wished I had brought along the Harris sweater. Still, the worst that would happen was that I'd arrive at the conference with sniffles. This well-traveled path revealed fresh boot tracks. Yes, it must be the right route. Yet as I walked, I grew less certain and I found myself searching for signs on the ground, the way after a long winter I would stare at the maple tree outside my study for the promise of tiny green leaves.

Walk carefully, I heard Kath advising in that infuriatingly correct way of hers, so as not to aggravate your knees. During the past few days it had become frighteningly clear how central Kath was in my heart. I should never have left. What would have happened if we had gone to Davis together? Perhaps I could have helped her through the abortion … walking cross-country now, I simply followed the sun; you don't need a compass when the sun signals west and east … perhaps Sari would have been able to talk with me … yes, I was on the right track now, I was almost sure … perhaps I could have helped Mother break away from Father before her life got completely waterlogged … really this was going fine … why had I been so anal these last six days about sticking to trails? … perhaps everyone would have been better off if I had stayed in California. No, not everyone. Leaving had meant saving my own skin, my own semblance of sanity. So as much as I regretted losing the West, I couldn't have done it differently. OK, it hadn't worked out all that well, but my real grandiosity was in believing I could orchestrate a perfect life.

My body yearned for Simon and Taylor—to touch their faces, to hold them close. Until I had given birth I hadn't realized that motherhood was such a lifetime physical bond, not just me to them, but them to me. Being a mother had widened my circle of compassion metaphorically, literally. There was incomparable pleasure in comforting them with my body, aiding them, locating my own strong tenderness, and such poignancy in seeing them grow up. At this moment, I wanted nothing so much as to walk into their room and watch their sleeping faces.

My knee was throbbing intensely now. I forced myself to look at the time: 6:30. Jesus, I must be walking the wrong way. Even if I could retrace my steps, it would be dark by the time I reached the turnoff.

Then, abruptly: a trail appeared to the left. Probably smarter to keep traveling in this direction, going somewhere. But I'd have to watch the knee. To distract myself and maintain courage, to scare away animals, I began to sing, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me …” I didn't want to end up as a midnight snack for Mama Bear and her cubs.

“This little light of mine …”

Sky was dimming. A wind came up. I studied branches scattered on the trail as if they were some sort of magical calligraphy. But their messages were indecipherable. Pulling my hat farther down over my ears, I plodded on.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …” I hummed, having just about exhausted my voice and my repertoire. I thought of Poor Tom walking Gloucester across the heath. How much was masquerade? How much was the opposite, a sort of discovery of himself in that costume? How much sense was I making? Not much. I was still alive, but was I still awake? I shouldn't be awake, I knew. I would need my strength to find camp when light returned tomorrow. Tomorrow I would go home, back to California, find Kath in camp. Poor Kath must be worried sick, poor Kath.

This site—nestled against a broad boulder, under a canopy­ of trees—was as good as any. I spread my poncho on the ground and scrunched up to conserve heat. Sure, this would be fine. I couldn't continue walking in my dazed state. I felt grateful that exhaustion forced the decision, grateful that in the end, body ruled mind and my eyes closed under heavy lids.

Tick. Tick. Not my watch. A rattler? If only I had a flashlight. I was surprised how much I could see in the dark, cones or rods? Biology had never been my subject. With the cloud cover, I could make out a fair amount. The noise ceased. A rattler poised to strike? Breathe in … out … in … out. One minute. Fifteen minutes, half an hour later, I understood it wasn't a rattler's sound. Perhaps a hungry cougar. Apparently, cougars had been feeding on mountain sheep being reintroduced by the Park Service. A wounded cougar, stumbling across a long-awaited dinner. Breakfast. Tomorrow couldn't be that far away.

I wasn't as afraid of death as I was afraid of being torn limb from limb. Terrified of suffering. I wouldn't mind going down in a swift plane crash or with a sudden heart attack. But I would never take my own life. I had witnessed what suicide did to a family and I wasn't going to bequeath that guilt to Simon or Taylor or … Lou.

“Adele.”

I swiveled, startled, but there was no one, nothing, just my imagination.

Huddling down, I rubbed my hands together. Often enough in the past ten years I had found myself wishing for death, hoping my car might crash, a truck might hit me in a crosswalk. But now, I realized, I did not want to die
here.
I wanted to be back in camp with Kath. During the last week, for all its ups and downs, I had begun to understand I needed to return to California. Something about the smell of the dirt, the yellowish green of the leaves, the quality of the air, was recalling me, reclaiming me. As much as I was Simon's and Taylor's mother, Lou's wife, my students' teacher, my friends' friend, I was also Adele, and this place was part of Adele; I was part of it. My body reminded me that I had never felt completely comfortable in that bluish green of Massachusetts or Maine or the Adirondacks. I thought of the leafy arcade between our cottage and the highway in Maine, where each year the branches would reach toward each other, high above the dirt road, lovers' fingers lusting for touch. I thought about the golden viceroys imitating monarch butterflies and about the forget-me-nots scattered in the pastures. Beautiful. Delicate. Elegant all of it, yet lacking the vitality of California. Somehow not quite real.

I shifted against the rock, letting in a pocket of cold air.

“Adele.”

No, I wouldn't be fooled again. I concentrated on physical reality, blowing at my hands. God, I feel stiff. What time was it? Too dark to see my watch. Too tired to judge reasonably. Perhaps I had been here an hour; perhaps three. The color of the sky remained constant— a sheet behind which stars and planets shifted. Would I live differently, if I had it to do all over again? No, life wasn't beginnings and endings; it wasn't this
or
this, but rather this
then
this. It was continuing.

Well, if I could track the swings between my dazed, pseudo-insights, I'd be fine. I would become a scout at the back of my own brain. God, Kath must be panic-stricken. Perfect, Adele. I'd struck out on my own for solitude, for meditative time, to prove to myself and Kath that I was competent in the woods. And look what I'd accomplished—enormous trouble for both of us. How had I got so blessedly off track yesterday? Today? Whenever.

Another noise in the woods now. No, my imagination again. A large, amorphous fear hunkered over me, bigger than a terror of harm or death, for harm and death are circumscribed by time. How would Simon and Taylor cope if I died here? Would their entire lives be haunted by the image of a mother frozen on the mountain? Yes, it was the fear of something eternal, the kind of fear you risk when you reproduce, forever after, all you do has resonance for your children and their children. Death by stupidity was not the legacy I wanted to leave.

Birds, did I hear birds?
The sky grew paler. My body had let go. Birds were an omen of daylight, or a warning, not worth thinking about it, I was safer this way, putting off fewer pheromones of fear. Damn reactions were shot. Daniel Boone kilt him a bar when he was only three. No, that was Davy Crockett. By the time they were forty-four, they were probably both dead, their celluloid futures ensured. Father had a rattlesnake key chain that Mother made him keep in a drawer. Disgusting, disturbing—I couldn't remember Mother's exact response. Cold. Rain? Mist.

“Oh, hello.” My words this time, a warm, friendly greeting.

The huge black bear wore a necklace of pine cones and bells. Gently, she moved, almost daintily, waving a long red silk scarf from her left side. For seconds I was transfixed, feeling no danger. Then common sense kicked in and I calculated possibilities of escape. She was too close for me to simply back away. Thirty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Closer, closer, she seemed to dance, the scarf flowing, the bells jingling. Had I summoned her? This was what happened when you flirted with death.

Back against the boulder I scooted, far back. Standing abruptly might alarm her, incite her. Noise worked sometimes, banging a pot—or stunning them on the nose. I slapped my hand against the side of the water bottle. She cocked her head.

Carefully, I lifted the canteen and aimed for that dark, wet snout, but the water bottle went flying over her huge shoulder. I heard it hit the brush, a soft, impotent landing. She turned away, interested in the pathetic bouncing. Gingerly, I inched up to a standing position. Perhaps I could slip away while her head was turned. Something, a shift in the wind, a sixth sense, made her turn back toward me. I was struck to find a sad curiosity, rather than menace, in her face. As she turned her head this way and that, the silver bells dinged faintly through the thick air.

“Adele.”

I could smell her now, and I was amazed how long it had taken me to notice this fierce stench. She stepped closer. I held my ground. What was I doing, being seduced by this enormous predator? Scream, I warned myself. But again her huge, sorrowful eyes held me. Scream. I thought of Taylor and Simon. But I continued to watch her, caught in a strange courtship. Shout, I heard Kath say. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I swallowed oceans of cold mountain air. And tried again.

“Adele.”

My voice.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kath

Sunday / Vogelsang Area

WHAT LUXURY TO SPEND
a whole morning reading by gloriously quiet Lake Helen. I stretched out over a body-sized piece of granite and savored this perfect time to finish the book I'd been carting around for six days. A few sprinkles. Then sunshine and gentle breezes. Translucent green leaves bobbed in nearby branches. I hoped Adele was having a good hike.

Guiltily, I enjoyed this time to myself. OK, so I had driven her away with petulant jealousy. I would apologize, would try to reform. Meanwhile, I'd bask in this familiar solitude. Being alone was a necessary part of my regular tune-up. Sometimes I got lonely or frightened—at night or during a slippery climb on a rainy day—but getting through always gave me a buzz. And there were so many other moments when I felt miraculously unencumbered. Like this morning.

The local Indians had been both more free and less free. Looking down at my vintage leather hiking boots, heavy wool socks, well-worn Levi's, faded blue work shirt, I wondered what it would have been like to work the way native women did, in moccasins, a buckskin skirt and no top. What a rigorous existence. And surely their huge burden baskets weighed more than my backpack.

Across the lake, a father and son were fishing. Trout, they had told me before assuming their mute stations on the secluded far side. Last summer they had caught four trout here. The High Country was filled with brook trout, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, golden trout. Frankly, I thought they'd do better if they fished the white-water rapids, but they looked content staring into the placid lake.

Something flitted across my line of vision—like when my watch crystal reflected a streetlamp at night. Moth or butterfly. My reflex was too slow for a good view. Streetlamp: damn urban reference points. I usually shook them within two or three days, and I'd been on this trip almost a week. Maybe my head was still in the city because of Adele. No, I couldn't really blame her. After all, I'd been distracted about my parents, my job, this decision about going back to school.

Shit. I'd completely lost the disciplines that could shape a mountain visit. Normally I'd hike two or three miles longer at a stretch. I'd stop less. Eat lunch faster, read a chapter each night and morning and during the day meditate on what I'd read. The routine created a wholeness, became an accomplishment. I always brought a mystery and something about Indians plus a book about wildfowers or birds or mammals. Last year I studied Miwok basketry and geology. This year's funky reprint of Galen Clark's 1902
Indians of Yosemite
was as interesting for what it revealed about the great white naturalist as for what he said about “the aboriginal people.” But just now I found myself caught by a description of the legendary Tis sa' ack, whose “dark hair cut straight across her forehead and fell down at the sides.”

Overhead the birds became insistent. Filled with strange sadness, I understood that although I felt intimate with this land, I'd never know any of the animals, really, individually. Maybe that's why urban people adopted pets—as a deposit on some kind of interspecies harmony. Jesus, I missed Baffin and knew I'd miss her all the more when I returned to the apartment this week. I felt familiar here, yet alone, the way I felt
almost
at home in San Francisco. There I knew the streets and buildings but not the people. I could tell when someone looked out of his neighborhood—as a beaver would, lumbering through meadow grasses—but I didn't have many friends in San Francisco.

Tis sa' ack was a dramatic figure, drinking all the water in Mirror Lake and being exiled to Half Dome and causing chaos among the Ah-wah-nee-chees. I often thought that Adele with her bangs and raven hair looked Indian. Smiling, I remembered the time I asked Dr. Ward if there was any native heritage in their family. Alarmed, he stared at me for several seconds. “Pure Scots.” He slowly recovered his dignity.

Acorn mush. Roots. Lupine splashed with manzanita cider. Sorrel. Wild caraway. Their diet sounded delicious. That is, if I could have skipped the deer and fish. Had any of the Yosemites been vegetarian? I found myself getting hungry and was surprised to see it was after one o'clock. I'd left Adele a note saying I'd be at Lake Helen. Maybe it'd blown away? Was Adele taking offense at being summoned? Had she been waylaid by Sandy and more of his photographic questions? Reluctantly, I stretched and headed back to camp.

My stomach knotted
as I
saw my note flapping against the backpack. No trace of visitors. I knew now—as I had tried not to know—that Adele was with Sandy. Damned if I was going to fetch her. I pulled out a piece of bread, broke off some cheese and made myself almost comfortable on a log. The canteen was nowhere in sight.

Still … I could understand how Adele would weary of my playing Ranger Kate. In fact, I
had
been obnoxious in the way I'd been sharing these mountains—as if I owned them. Rather than was rediscovering them with an old friend. What the hell was wrong with me? I had been so controlling this week, the crone set in her ways.

“Hi there. You have a good morning?”

Sandy strolled energetically along the trail. What on earth did Adele see in this guy?

“Adele back yet?”

“Haven't you seen her?” Relief. Then fear. If Adele was on her own all this time, she could be lost, could have fallen …

“No.” Sandy looked alarmed. “Has she been gone long?”

“Oh, don't worry. She'll be right back,” I explained to both of us. “She's kind of an absentminded professor at times. Probably off reciting her paper to herself.”

“That Stanford conference sounds pretty high-powered,” Sandy offered, with irritating congeniality.

Had Adele told him her whole damn life story? Shit, why couldn't he just disappear? Maybe if I implored Tis sa' ack …

“Yes, I'm sure she's fine,” he was saying absently, although he didn't look at all sure. “She's a very competent lady.”

“Right.” I nodded curtly. Implying, I can't take anymore. Please leave before I start throwing rocks.

He got the message. “See you later.” Raising a palm, he ambled off to his tent.

Rattled, I sat back on the log and started at sky. He was a decent guy. The only
really
outrageous thing he had done was to interrupt us on the Glen Aulin Trail. Since then, I'd been at least as rude to him. I'd been dreadful, but my feelings for Adele ran so high.

He was right that she'd be fine. I remembered her in high school campaigning door to door for the Fair Housing Bill. Despite her parents' objections. Despite threats from Thomas Winslow and his junior KKK thugs. I thought of Adele traveling across country and negotiating her way with the snooty private school girls. In those days, we were both fueled by a beautiful anger, raging against unfairness in the world, racism, colonialism, poverty. What had happened to that lovely fury? These days I groped after it, as if after a lifeline. But I was more conscious of fear than anger, fear of menopause, cancer, senility. Death. My own, other people's deaths. This fear ate all the air and pride in my chest, diminishing me as surely as age shrank the spine.

Of course Adele would be fine. I sat up and stretched my tight neck from side to side. After all she had been an environmentalist before the word was invented. Conservationist we called it in those days. She owned a whole library of John Muir books before we graduated from high school. Such egotism to believe I was the only one who knew what I was doing. After all, I was an unemployed dropout while Adele was an international success. She would be fine. Adele was, as Sandy said, “a very competent lady.”

I yanked our packs down
from the trees. We'd leave as soon as Adele returned. If she was too tired to walk down to Tuolumne Meadows today, we'd have to beg the ranger for an extension on the camping permit. Of course she was fine, probably just distracted by the landscape. Maybe storing up images and longings to sustain her in Massachusetts.

As I leaned back against the firm pack, my mind grasped for distraction. Slow down, I told myself. I focused on breathing in the sun-ripened greenery. Pay attention.

The photograph showed an Indian in a long skirt, her hair shorn to widows' length, carrying a load of wood on her back. This woman looked tired, competent, stoic. The caption read, “As in all Indian tribes, the women do most of the work.”

Adele could use this picture in one of her feminist studies classes. I thought of how we had crammed together for the SAT during our senior year, sitting side by side in the library, sharing Good & Plenties and trying to stump each other with algebra questions. I allowed myself to feel how much I had missed Adele in the years between then and now. But this suffering posture was exaggerated, really, because other people had sustained so much more grief. Carter's wife died in a train crash. Adele lost both Sari and her mother.

I, myself, was lucky my parents remained alive. Dad's mind was gone in some ways. But in others, he was still here. As long as life continued, so did the possibility of forgiveness. I guess I'd always been a puzzle if not a disappointment to Mom. Martha had spent at least forty years trying to shake me up and reshape me. And Dad simply wanted a son. One daughter was enough. He didn't quite know what to do with two. So if these people really drove me nuts like this, why didn't I go, as Adele did, far away where they couldn't touch me? It had something to do with place. This California was as much mine as theirs. And it had something to do with loyalty. That made sense. What didn't make sense was that that same loyalty kept me from finishing my degree. Deep down, I knew that graduating from college was immigrating to another country.

Enough self-consciousness. The best things about Clark's book were the legends, like the one about how the mountain peak El Capitan emerged from a boulder. Two small boys slept on the boulder while the earth pushed granite toward the sky, stranding the children at 3,300 feet. Despite all rescue attempts—by the great leaping grizzly and the broad-jumping mountain lion—the kids were unreachable. Until the modest measuring worm inched its way to the top and recovered the children.

The first drops of rain
registered on my head. Looking up, I found a huge dark cloud migrating from the northwest. We would never make it down to the Meadows in the rain at this hour. Drops struck the tree stump where we set the lantern last night. Gene Krupa, Ricky Ricardo, Ringo Starr … I wasn't very good on drummers' names. Had Adele taken her poncho? I combed through my friend's backpack anxiously. Yes, it was gone. Fine. She'd be fine. Adele knew how to take care of herself. But in case something was wrong, I decided to go to the High Sierra Camp and report her missing. Oh, Del. What have you done now? What have I done? Please come back. Safely. Soon. Now.

Night felt dark,
cold, and
our tent was cavernous without her. During the first phone call, the ranger hadn't seemed particularly worried. Hanging Basket Lake was close, he said. Adele had gone off with food, water, a poncho and a topographical map. Regular Girl Scout preparation. But her bulky green sweater was still here. The real danger was hypothermia. It surprised a lot of people in summer camping. And Adele, so long back East, wouldn't be used to these altitudes, where it got frigid at night. Hypothermia produced lack of judgment. She could be wandering off a cliff right now—or lying exposed in some deceptively cushy mountain meadow.

I lifted the flap, searching the uncommunicative, overcast sky. Just as the sun and moon disappeared, so did my moral and emotional signposts. I had to have faith that they were still there. The earth was still revolving on its axis and the stars would reappear. Even invisible, they were doing their jobs.

The ranger had even been a little flip: maybe she was meditating on wildflowers? I tried to believe him, remembering Adele's wonderful botanical sketches. But at the back of my mind was Sari's death. Adele's preoccupation with the Berkeley job. Our fight the night before.

Now I flopped on my stomach, resisting sleep as much as I desired it. Cursing my repressed, private personality, which held back the kind of information that would have gotten his goddamned ass moving sooner. I had spent the afternoon walking back and forth between our campsite and the phone at Vogelsang Camp, debating whether to tell him about this history of suicide in Adele's family, about the other pressures that could distract her if not drive her over the brink.

At first the ranger didn't even want to extend the camping permit. Then, he relented. And about 4:00 P.M., when the mist was soupy thick, he agreed to send out a search party. Helpless, I remained in camp, pacing, praying, staring at a tree branch bending in the windy rain. Of course it made sense for me to wait here, but waiting was not my strong suit. While my body held vigil, my mind raced across country. Scouting for Adele, chasing away dangers. Singing madly into the wind. Hours after dark, the soggy searchers returned, saying they had found nothing, not a scarf, a scrap of litter. Not a body. The reassuring ranger said to remember she had food, water, a map. The rain had ceased. Because of the cloud cover, it wouldn't freeze tonight.

Well, I didn't know about that. It was certainly too cold for
me
to fall asleep. I cursed my temper again. Why had I clung to my silly rivalry? So what if Sandy helped ease her way back to California? At least she'd be in the Bay Area. She'd be home again. And he wasn't a bad guy. He was only a guy.

If I'd been more tuned in, I would have known Baffin was sick, maybe taken her to the vet that morning instead of flying off to the jogging trail. And if I'd been more sensible, I would have noticed Mom's bruises before she was taken to the hospital, would have found a way to explain Dad's behavior to Martha without sounding like a know-it-all professional. If I'd been more generous, Anita wouldn't have left.