Nevada Barr: Blood lure

"I like bears," Rory said defensively.

"You will," Joan promised.

"They would certainly like you," Anna said ominously.

To distract the children from their squabbles, Joan made the mistake of introducing Anna to huckleberries. Arm in arm with thimbleberries and bearberries, they grew wild over much of the park. In late summer and fall, when they were at their peak, they were the favored food of bears, both black and grizzly. They consumed them by the ton as they stored up as much sugar and fat as they could for a long winter spent curled in dens at the higher elevations.

For the next mile or so, Anna played catch-up, foraging for the delicious dark purple berries then trotting to catch up, pack slamming down on hip and knee joints that weren't nearly so forgiving as they once had been.

Joan couldn't resist a few berries herself but took her responsibilities to her job more seriously than those to her immortal berry-loving soul.

The Van Slyke kid had gone about his berrying with zeal till Anna gave into the temptation to muse aloud as to whether bears would find huckleberry breath an irresistible enticement. For that she earned an exasperated look from Joan Rand and Rory's share of the berries.

When they crossed Kipp Creek, glittering over stones of vivid red, green and gold-not the murky, brown, cottonmouth creeks that prevailed in Anna's new home in the south-interest in berries gave way to interest in breathing.

Unbeknownst to him, Rory got some of his own back. He was stronger than he looked. And younger than some of Anna's towels. On the climb, much of it on an exposed southwest-facing mountainside, the sun proved its strength. After a mile Anna was hurting. Sweat poured into her eyes. Lungs pumped and burned. Breath sawed through a mouth dry from hanging open gasping for air like a landed trout.

Periodically Joan called a rest stop in the shade offered by the occasional towering white pine. For this Anna could have kissed her feet had she not known that if she did so, she'd never get up again. During these brief respites, Anna swatted deerflies obsessed with the backs of her thighs and split her concentration between enjoying the view and hiding her physical weakness from her compatriots.

From their ever-higher vantage points they could see seven mountains. Four, along the Continental Divide, formed a wall encircling them from west to east. Mountains, not green but blue, were still streaked with snow at the summits, and long mares' tails of water cascaded over the rocky faces in tumbles and falls tracing through stone and forest for thousands of feet.

The canyon they labored so hard to climb out of was no exception. A ribbon of white water, now falls, now rapids, now fishing holes, appeared and disappeared as the mountain's magic act unfolded.

Between sweating, faking fitness, and mentally promising Amy, her aerobics teacher back home, that she would attend classes religiously if she survived this hike, Anna was dimly aware they pushed through an array of wildflowers that she should be appreciating.

By noon they reached the top. Sheered off by glacial movement, Flattop was a peculiarity among its steep-sided neighbors. To the east, the argillite cliffs of Mount Kipp in the Lewis Range rose over alpine meadows. Six miles north, the planed top of Flattop Mountain dropped away, wrinkling down into the Waterton River Valley and on to Canada.

Once on Flattop they left the comforts of the trail and struck west through the burn, heading toward Trapper Peak. Between Flattop and Trapper's imposing flanks was a deep cut, much like the one they'd followed during their ascent, where Continental Creek carved its way down three thousand feet to McDonald Creek to empty its glacial melt. The first of the hair traps was located in a small avalanche chute above the gorge, a place made as attractive as its grander competition by several springs that ran even in the driest years.

The fire of 1998 had burned slowly and exceedingly fine, consuming everything in its path. Blue-black snags clawed at the sky. Without shade, without greenery or moisture, the sun weighed as heavily on Anna's back as her pack. With every step, cinders crunched under her boots. Black dust boiled up to stick in the sweat and DEET sprayed on her legs. Despite the insecticide, horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes followed. With only a brief window of opportunity in which to slake their thirst, they were fearless.

Despite the ash and grit, she blessed the fire that had torched ten thousand acres of America's crown jewel, taxed the Glacier superindent's courage, not to mention the Waterton superintendent's faith in the good sense of the

U.S. superintendent as he watched the NPS "let burn" policy crackle toward the Canadian half of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Waterton-Glacier was a unique and highly successful experiment. The only park of its kind, one half was in Canada, the other in the United States, with major environmental decisions and park regulations worked out jointly between the two countries.

The Canadian superintendent was less optimistic than the American superintendent when it came to letting nature burn where she would, but Glacier's superintendent stood firm. The fire had been left to burn itself out and Anna was glad. She was no great devotee of trees; they blocked one's view of the forest. And fire cleaned out the deadwood, exposed the soil to light and air, making possible the riot of life that followed fire's necessary cleansing and renewal.

Against the scorched earth, with the liquid gold of the lowering sun, a carpet of glacier lilies glowed with an electric green so intense she could remember seeing it only in the altered states of consciousness of the late sixties and the paintings of Andy Warhol.

Glacier lilies were fragile yellow blooms, smaller than a half-dollar, that hung pointed and curling petals in graceful skirts around red stamens heavy with pollen. Their leaves grew from the base, sharpened green blades as tall as the blooms. Under this glamorous show, according to Joan, they hid bulbs rich in starch. The bulbs were routinely dug by the grizzlies in late summer and early fall as they followed the huckleberries into the higher elevations. At the height of the season great swatches would be dug up, leaving areas that looked as if they'd been rototilled.

This year, the flowers were spectacular. Glacier had gotten nearly twice its normal snowfall. Snows hadn't melted above six thousand feet until July. Spring, summer and fall were happening simultaneously as plants, so lately released from their winter sleep, rushed through the stages of life to reseed before the first cold nights in September.

"Hey," Joan said, "we've got company."

Anna dragged her eyes up from where they frolicked in fields of green and gold.

On a low ridge to the north, black as everything was black from a fire that had burned hot, fast and to the bone, stood a lone hiker. Behind him was a wall of exposed stone, probably once fawn-colored but now the gray-brown of rotting teeth where the rains had imperfectly washed it free of soot and char.

It wasn't against park rules to hike off trail. Or camp off trail for that matter, though that required a special permit. It was unusual. For a man alone it was also foolish. Bears were the least of the dangers of hiking by oneself in the backcountry. The greatest were carelessness and stupidity. A slip, a fall, a badly sprained ankle or shattered kneecap, and one could die of exposure or thirst before anybody thought to begin a search.

Rory, sensing a social-and so, static-occasion, was quick to drop his pack and dig out his water bottle, a state-of-the-art model with the filter built in. Anna allowed herself a fleeting moment of envy.

"Hello," Joan called cheerily, because she was that kind of person.