Summer Lane - State of Emergency

I’ve got a backpack full of camping gear and first aid stuff. And I’m standing on the edge of the Young’s doorway, tears burning my eyes. Or maybe it’s the cold weather. Whatever. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to do this. But I have to — I have to get to the cabin to meet my dad.

I’m not afraid of the wilderness. Heck, I’m not even afraid of the dark like I used to be in Los Angeles. Pine trees and random squirrels just aren’t as scary as a guy walking down the street with his pants falling off.

What I’m afraid of — and I mean really terrified of — is not doing the right thing here. I can’t abandon my dad just because it’s comfortable kicking back and roasting weenies at the Young farm. Dad is counting on me, just like I would be counting on him entirely if I had never met Chris or his family.

No, failing my father is somehow more scary than sleeping in the forest during the winter. Although I will freely admit that the thought of facing down a bear does make me want to walk a little faster.

I have to do this alone. Chris is safe, here, with his family. He’s protecting them by being here, just like he protected me when we were escaping Los Angeles. He doesn’t deserve the pain of a long hike on the cusp of winter. No. I’m doing this alone because I care about him. Because I want him to be happy.

I take a final glance at the Young property, a stillness washing over me. It’s peaceful and silent at this early hour. Nobody has even gotten up to feed the chickens, yet. And somewhere in the house or in the barn, Chris is sound asleep, oblivious to the fact that I’m leaving.

A tear slips down my cheek, the first of many that are building up, threatening to spill over onto my face. I’m suddenly afraid.

I kick the ground in frustration. If I cry, I’ll lose my nerve.

I’ll be back, I remind myself. I’ll tell dad about the Youngs and we’ll come back here together to help them with the farm. Then we can all be together.

Even as I’m thinking it, I feel selfish. Here I am on a mission to make sure my dad is still alive and all I can focus on is getting back to the Young house — and Chris — again as fast as I can.

I’m a regular Mother Theresa.

“Snap out of it,” I tell myself, swallowing my hesitation. I physically tear my gaze away from the house and squeeze through the bushes, hacking a path back down to the highway.

I’ll be back…I’ll be back…

That’s what I keep repeating. Because the cold air is sharp against my skin, and the road seems a lot bigger than usual. I guess I’m just not used to walking alone. I pick up the pace. When mental reasoning doesn’t calm me down, I like to keep moving.

As I walk, the more distance I put between me and the house makes my anxiety click up a notch. I mean, come on. I’m not a tactical ninja like Chris is. I can’t find food just by looking under a rock. I can’t wrestle wild animals with my bare hands.

I’m just a kid from LA.

Caw!

My head snaps up and I spot a massive crow landing on top of a tree. He makes a few loud noises, hops onto a lower branch, and then swoops down onto the road. “Good to know somebody’s comfortable being out here,” I mutter.

He gives me the eye, which gives me the creeps, because I remember learning in high school that crows have intelligence that’s equivalent to that of a 2 year-old child. Scary.

I walk past him (or her, whatever), feeling a little more relaxed once the first thirty minutes pass. This isn’t so bad. There’s nobody around. There’s nothing going on except some birds flying over my head. If this is all it’s going to take to get up to the cabin, it’ll be like a walk in the park.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

I look over my left shoulder, a habit I picked up when Chris and I were trekking down the empty interstate out of Los Angeles like a couple of Amazonian explorers. My chest squeezes because there’s nothing beside me but air.

I’ll be back , I say for the fiftieth time. He’ll understand.

After a couple of hours, the sun has risen over the trees. The higher I get, the thicker the forest becomes, and as soon as I pass the snowline, everything starts smelling like wet dirt and sugar pine sap. Even though it’s obvious that there are no cars on the highway, I keep to the side of the road, ready to duck and roll into the pine needles if an Omega truck comes along.

At the four-hour mark, I stop and rest against a log that’s fallen over the road. I’m guessing that nobody’s going to bother to clear it, since it’s not exactly like our taxpayer dollars are being used for useful things anymore. I’ve brought some of Mrs. Young’s food with me, like dried jerky and crackers. I’ve also got a few small canteens of water. I eat a small meal, pack it back up, and set off again.

It’s kind of boring walking through the woods without anybody to talk to, so I play games with myself to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, you can’t really play ‘I Spy With My Little Eye’ by yourself, and “Find That License Plate,” is kind of a no-go since nobody’s driving anymore.

Mid-afternoon hits, and my feet are killing me. I’m well into the so-called “mountains,” now, and I feel comfortable enough with the darker environment to take a breather out in the open. I lay down for about an hour, hydrate, and move on. When nighttime hits, I’m too chicken to navigate in the dark. I don’t want to end up walking off a cliff.

I make camp in a big grove of fern at the base of a tree. I lay awake for a couple of hours, aware of every sound. Being in the middle of the woods is like sitting in a room that’s so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face, only it’s extremely cold, the ground is hard, and you could be eaten by a wild animal at any moment.

Chris would love to laugh at me now.

I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to think about him. If I do, I’ll just turn back. So I force myself to relax. After a while I doze off. I sleep until sunrise, waking up to find everything covered with a thin sheet of frost. I sit up, trying to get my fingers warm by playing an imaginary piano.

I eat a quick meal of dried meat and crackers (yum), and get moving. I try to stay out of the foliage as much as possible, knowing that animals are at their most active stage during the early hours of morning. Of course, I always assumed that most creatures went into hibernation during the winter, but why risk walking into a snoozing bear if I don’t have to?

Another reason I miss Chris. He makes a great decoy.

At around ten o’clock, I arrive at the entrance to Sequoia National Park. The road widens into five lanes, all separated with yellow lines. There are two streamlined check-in stations in the middle of the road, marked with the National Forestry insignia. But that’s not what draws my attention: on the right-hand side of the road, there is a Redwood tree as big as a building. The trunk is bigger than ten SUVs, towering above the highway with gigantic branches.

It’s stunning.

I smile beside myself, remembering driving through here with my dad last year on summer vacation. We would always come to the cabin and hang out for a week or two, but everything was different, then. Obviously. There were cars and people everywhere at the entrance to the park. It was exciting.

Now it’s lonely. And it makes me think. Maybe the forest, the trees, everything out here, is happy that there aren’t any cars plowing through the roads, spitting out diesel fumes. I mean, without people around, there won’t be any idiots to leave empty beer bottles behind at campgrounds or throw their dirty napkins out the window for some poor squirrel to ingest.