Crossroads

“121!”

Nina shouts out another trail marker, but her originally peppy, satisfied tone has worn off into a blunt statement of fact.

One marker in 10 minutes, yep, seems about right. This hike will never end.

My stomach is pinched by the hip strap of my bag that I pulled too tightly to myself, my shoes get increasingly heavy with every “not–so–dry” patch of mud I step into. 

I’d rather just stop here and sleep, there’s no point to this anyways. Maybe we took a wrong turn, I haven’t heard a trail marker for a while. How is it I come all the way from Texas for this stupid thing and I still feel like my skin’s melting off. I should’ve just stayed in Texas anyways, especially with Dad—

“Nina, red light!” Mia shouts from behind us.

Nina turns around with a scowl on her face. It’s clear to me that her coping mechanism is to push through without breaks, and I can only relate because I increasingly doubt there’s an end to this hike, so one minute of rest is another minute before we turn back and sleep in the cabin. Additionally, I drank the last sips of my water well before lunch.

“5 minutes and get some water?” Mia asks.

“No!” Nina, Ellis, and I shout in unison.

This is miserable. This pack can’t be any less than 50 pounds, I swear it was lighter at the lodge. I would give up a leg to take this thing off and step in the air conditioning again. I’d so much rather be unpacking boxes in my room—

“Okay, Nina slow down or go to the back, seriously.”

It must be about one or two o'clock in the afternoon by now. We stopped for lunch hours ago with much higher spirits, and now the remnants cook in the sun somewhere in the cramped nooks of my pack. I can’t hear the pace to my trudging anymore, just bursts of motivation that quickly wear off as I slow down and stop someone behind me.

“122”

Only 50 more to go. Great.

Dylan’s controlling the speaker right now, which means some sort of niche Jungle Rap that only makes my mind louder as he painstakingly tries to have someone admit it’s good.

Being at the lodge was so much better than this, I don’t get why we had to do this. Everyone’s being annoying right now and no one's enjoying this. The other group’s probably at their site already. They’ve probably been there for hours. They probably have filtered water; the things I’d give for a glass of water right now. Nina’s speeding again, she’s going to have to go to the back. All I need right now is coffee, I could be making an iced coffee right now at—

“Nina, slow down!”

I finally look up and see we’re almost at the top of this hill. I put my hands on my knees and every step feels like a high bar squat as I try pushing up. My head throbs and my vision is increasingly blurry as I wonder if I’ll make it.

This hike will never end, and when’s the last time we saw a marker because—

“Water!” Nina says loudly but not enthusiastically, like a discovery with an underlying doubt.

We all gather at the top, I hear some sighs of relief and some sort of a 'I freakin’ told you we’d make it’ from Dylan in his Cockney accent.

“Okay, let’s keep moving, we still have about a mile to the site!”

This hike will never end.

It’s late afternoon now and I sit poking the logs in the fire, unnecessarily reorganizing the burning sticks, feeling the heat rise from it. The cool summer breeze and my damp bathing suit provide subtle relief from the warm air surrounding me. Taking my eyes off the flame, I reexamine my surroundings. Dylan is asleep on a nearby flat rock, still marked with watery footprints from when we used it as a launchpad into the refreshingly frigid pond. Mia has finally drifted off in her hammock, and the previous mellow ‘camping’ music has faded into a soft silence. Everyone else similarly rests around me on our sleeping pads and towels, though the sun has not yet started emitting its usual amber rays before setting. I sit alone on my rock, strategically adding just enough wood to keep the fire dancing, but not so much that I may soon have to go and collect more. My hair rests in the same tired braids Nina tied before pack-out, which feels so long ago. 

The calm that rests over the group now is a stark contrast to the day. I think back to the seemingly endless hike. The day that had been filled with tasks and necessities now sits complete, and for the first time, I sit with my thoughts. My thoughts turn to the not so near and close version of today. 

Dad deploys today.

My strange quiet echoes in the knowledge of my absence. I have no place in this event. The only place I can be is exactly where I am; tending the fire somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains. As I glance back down the fire is dimming. Quickly and attentively, I add sticks and fan it until it bounces right back.

That night, after waking up, prepping dinner, and washing the dishes, our group reconvenes. Sitting around that same familiar fire, I look around at all the faces illuminated in color, tired from the day.

“I want everyone to reflect on something they’re not proud of from today,” Mia says. 

Something about her tone wasn’t blunt, there was reflection and openness in it. Everyone here knew what happened, and we had no reason to ignore it. We take turns going around the circle.

“I rushed the group today, I should have been okay going to the back and letting someone else guide, but I just couldn’t.”

“I didn’t help unpack today and I know it made everyone else’s time harder, even though they were just as tired as me.” 

We all glance at each other in a stillness unlike my solitary reflection earlier; there was nothing solitary about this. Every word, although seemingly exhibiting the person saying it, found relevance in all of us. Every person’s wrongs led to another in this string of regrets.

“I know I complained way more than I should have,” I admit. “There was so much on my mind, but it made our experience miserable in a way it shouldn't have been.”

I see a nod here and there, but mostly everyone watches the flame. 

“What can we do to make tomorrow better?” Mia asks again.

Zach Bryan rings through the trees again, and we sing just as loud as the first time we had heard the song.

Nine Ball has to be his best song, I have no idea how people like Noah Kahan more—Ellis was right. I need to write the song names down when we get there so I don’t forget. We’ll probably turn back to pop soon though, we’ve been listening to this for a—

“15 minutes until a break!” Mia yells to the front of the group.

We’re already five minutes in? That felt like nothing.

I pull a strip of dried mango out of its bag and continue singing, my stride matching the beats of the song and my arms waving in the air. We realized early that morning that no one could hear us on this walk. Soon after, this became an advantage we used constantly, screaming the song lyrics at the top of our lungs to pass time. 

“Downhill!” Nina signals.

“Downhill!” We repeat, Dylan dragging out every note in a wanna–be opera performance.

I watch where I step and make sure not to lose my footing as the hill descends. I take a sip of water from my bottle, which is still heavy from the extra water I added after lunch and pass it to Ellis behind me. She shoves the bottle back in the side of my bag.

“121!”

“10 minutes!”