On the Kalalau Trail

CHAPTER ONE "You’re crazy. He’s nothing like Daniel." I shook my head for emphasis. On one level, Nina was wrong to say the two men were similar. Conroy’s charm was studied, whereas Daniel’s had been genuine, even a little vulnerable. But she was focused on a different level. "He’s another loser, Nathan." There’s nobody like a big sister to tell you what she thinks, whether you want to hear it or not. Nina was only one year older than I was, but—I hated that this was true—she had proven herself to be considerably more mature. Of course, she’d inherited her position as the oldest sibling in the family when our older brother Neil had died. That didn’t necessarily mean that I followed her advice. Neil. Our big brother. Neil had been born five years before me. He and his best friend, Jeremy Ford, started claiming mountain peaks together when they were in their mid-teens. I lost track of how many mountains they climbed together. And when I was eighteen, just over two years ago, they had died. They’d been hiking in the Priest Wilderness in Virginia, an extremely remote area. I’d never heard of a fire tornado before, but that summer I learned it was a thing. Neil and Jeremy were unable to get out of the path of one of these hell-spawned monsters. Neil called me from the satellite phone he’d brought for the trip, as he and Jeremy huddled inside the portable fire shelter that might have saved their lives if the fire had been smaller, or less ferocious. Neil had told me the same thing I think anyone would say when facing certain death: Tell everyone I love them. I heard my brother die. I can still hear the screams. I met Conroy, the man Nina and I were arguing about, the summer before my senior year at UNH. It was on Cannon Mountain: four thousand one hundred feet above sea level, a qualifier for the Four Thousand Foot Club. Before he’d died, Neil had been aiming for the honor of membership in this club, whose members have climbed all of New Hampshire’s forty-eight peaks with summits four thousand feet or higher, at least once each. His goal, cruelly interrupted, was now mine. I parked my grandmother’s Subaru along the side of the highway; even though I’d left the house in Concord where I lived with Gram at O-dawn-thirty, there were enough people already at the Lafayette Place campground that there was no more parking available there. I assured myself that most of the people from these cars were here to ride the aerial tram up the mountain. I didn’t expect to see a lot of hikers on the tough trails I planned for the day. I liked rugged trails. The more rugged the better. The fewer other hikers the better. Toward the beginning of the trail, about half a mile from the Lonesome Lake trailhead, I turned onto the Hi-Cannon Trail, and by that time there was no one else in sight. It was a gorgeous day in late August, with the warmth of summer in the process of giving way to fall. About a mile up the trail, when it had grown steep, I came to something that a lot of people who consider climbing this mountain will hike a different trail to avoid. It’s a ladder, or a couple of them: wooden slats nailed to paired two-by-fours climbing at a moderately steep angle for about twenty feet. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to fall off the thing; for the ascent, the right side is attached rather precariously to a vertical granite face, and the left is open to a steep fall into the forest below. It’s a true ladder; there are no handrails. I’m pleased to say I had no problem on it. Past the ladder, the Hi-Cannon climbs up a lot, and down a bit, and up a lot more, around huge boulders and over granite faces that forced me to use hands as well as feet. It’s not technical rock climbing by any means, but it’s not an easy trail. At one point I came out onto a massive granite ledge, the lower Cannon outlook. Facing east, I could see for miles as my eyes followed the massive ridge connecting Mount Liberty in the south to Mount Lafayette, pretty much due east of where I stood. The sky was so bright and clear I could almost pick out Gram’s car, parked way down along Route 93. There’s nothing like this kind of view to validate the work it takes to climb this high. The freckled granite of the ledge, heated by the sun, was almost too hot to sit on. The backs of my legs below my hiking shorts settled onto the gritty surface, and gradually my skin grew accustomed to the temperature. I filled my lungs with mountain air that was scented with pine and with that earthy decay from fallen leaves. Legs dangling over the sloping ledge, I pulled out a hunk of cheese, tore a handful of bread from my large sandwich roll, and settled in for a snack, relishing the solitude. I’d barely swallowed a couple of mouthfuls when I heard the scuff of someone’s boots on the granite behind me to my left. Shit. I decided to pretend there was no one there. At least it sounded like just one person, not a group of people who would completely spoil the spot for me. "What a sight." It was a man. A man whose voice started somewhere near his feet, gaining resonance and dimension as it rose through his body. Former intentions aside, I turned enough to see a pair of brown hiking boots with dark red laces, the legs above the green tweed hiking socks decorated with light brown hairs catching sunlight. My eyes moved up the tanned skin on his calves, over his knees to the hem of dark olive shorts. From the edge of my vision I could tell he was gazing into the distance, so I allowed my gaze to linger on his crotch, even though the thick material and heavy zipper prevented me from getting much of a sense of what lay beneath. A motion of his head warned me to move my eyes up, past the sleekly muscled arms, over the broad shoulders to the face. Sunglasses hid his eyes, but there was no hiding the jawline that made me think of the granite ledges I’d crawled over on my way up the trail. Fashionably tousled light brown hair polished off the look, with a few longish curls teasing his forehead. In so many ways, he was the opposite of me. This guy was practically Aryan, while anyone looking at me would almost certainly guess at my somewhat-diluted Chinese heritage. If my slight build wasn’t a clue, my board-straight, nearly-black hair would give it away. His face toward me, he asked, "Mind if I join you?" He waited until I extended my left arm toward the granite beside me before dropping his pack between us and settling onto the warm rock. I guessed his age at mid-twenties. Once he was sitting, I could tell he wasn’t especially tall—just a little taller than me, probably. He positioned himself so he could extend his right hand in my direction. "Conroy Finnegan." "Nathan Bartlett," I responded. His grip was firm, the handshake just one downward plunge and a definite release. He busied himself pulling out a water bottle and a small ziplock bag that held gorp. "You hiked Cannon before, Nathan?" "Not Cannon, no. First time on this one. I’m working my way through." I waited to see if he’d know what that meant. He did. "Notched my boots for Owl’s Head a couple of weeks ago. You got that one yet?" Owl’s Head was one of the peaks I would have to climb to join the four-thousand-foot club. He hadn’t actually notched his boots, of course; that was just an expression some hikers use. "Not yet," I admitted. "Good climb?" He chuckled. "It’s one of those peaks you do just because you have to. I decided to get it out of the way." "Tell me more." "Summit’s not above tree line, for one thing, so that’s not much fun. The lower part of the trail is kind of flat, and some folks bike it. Mountain bikes, of course. But then they have to lock their bikes someplace, because once you hit the rock slide part of the trail, it’s painfully slow going. Dangerous, actually. Not a fun climb, unless you like that kind of thing. I don’t mind the danger, but I don’t like a slow pace." "But—biking? That doesn’t count." He finished a swig of water and shook his head. "Not toward the patch, no." I knew he meant the patch awarded hikers who’ve proven their qualification for the club. Biking any part of a trail, or traveling it by any means other than on foot, would not qualify you for claiming that peak. "How many peaks do you have so far?" I had to know. "This today is number nineteen. And, of course, twenty and twenty-one, because I’ll do the ridge loop over the Kinsmans." I nodded, trying to look knowing. On the drive up, I’d decided to see what Cannon was like before setting my sights on North and South Kinsman, just south of Cannon, each of which is over four thousand feet. It’s one of those perfect loops that gets you more than one qualifying peak in a day’s climb, if you’re up to it; I just hadn’t been sure how tough Cannon would be. Cannon was only number eight for me. I was hoping he wouldn’t ask what my total was. Neil had started claiming peaks in his mid-teens and had been well on his way before he’d died. I reminded myself I had gotten a late start. So instead of volunteering my score, I took a side trail in the conversation. "Had a crazy experience last fall. Climbed Lafayette twice. By accident." I took a swig from my own water bottle, going for a dramatic pause. "Thereon on hangs a tale," Conroy said, his voice implying that he wanted to hear it. "My college roommate and I decided to do an overnight. We parked near the head for Falling Waters Trail—" "Love that trail. You went up and over Little Haystack and on to Lincoln, then." Was he showing off? This was my story. "Anyway," I continued, "yes, so I claimed Lincoln for the club, too. El Speed isn’t going for the patch, but—" "El Speed?" Okay, so that interruption might reasonably be warranted. "Yeah. Larry Speed. Taking the initial ‘L’—" He laughed, and his laugh had the same character as his voice: deep, resonant, compelling. "I get it! Fun." I sighed inwardly. Was he going to let me finish? I gazed east toward the mountain in question. "After the Lafayette summit, we headed a little way down the Greenleaf Trail to make camp. In the morning, when he went to put on his frame pack, one of the straps broke." "Man!" "We tried a few ways to fix it, but nothing worked. So we put as much as we could into my pack, hid his, and finished the loop down, taking turns wearing the pack. At the car, we emptied my pack and hiked with it back up to get what we’d left hidden. We were so far back up the mountain we said, f**k it, let’s just do the summits again." Conroy laughed again, and again the richness of it pulled at me. "That’s not how you’re supposed to do a loop!" He pushed the bridge of his sunglasses down his nose a little, revealing clear blue eyes and very long lashes, and gave me a teasing glare from under his eyebrows. "You do realize that doesn’t mean you can claim four peaks." "Yeah. Tempting, though." We had finished our snacks, but neither of us made a move to leave. I lifted my legs, one at a time, off the pocked surface of the granite, feeling with my fingers where the skin was temporarily dented. I could reasonably have gotten up, wished Conroy a great hike, and headed off. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Sure, the guy was attractive and friendly, but he didn’t know I was gay, and it was unlikely he was. It was also unlikely I’d ever see him again. Still, neither of us made a move to leave. After about a minute of silence, in which we both gazed into the gorgeous distance, he said, "Did you see anyone on the ladder?" "You’re the first person I’ve seen since I left the lower part of the Lonesome Lake Trail." He paused, no doubt for effect. "I had to wait for this couple who were part-way up the ladder when I got there. Man and a woman. They had a mixed-breed dog with them, maybe the size of a pit bull. The woman was about five feet up from the bottom, following close behind the guy and—well, the dog."