The next morning was sunny and mild. Bonnie decided to spend the day adding markers to the section of a hiking trail where several of her guests had lost their way. The trail led from the backside of the meadow upslope through forest dense with sequoias to a waterfall fed by a winding creek. The cascade itself was so small that no one had bothered to name it, but Bonnie found the algae coloring the surrounding stone mesmerizing, and the sound of the water itself was calming even on the most stressful of days. She loaded the markers, nails, and a hammer into one compartment of her Swiss Army backpack, and a picnic lunch complete with an airline-sized bottle of red wine into the other.
She set out at a little after eight a.m., knowing full well that there were more important things she could be doing. The guests who’d complained were intoxicated at the time, and she was pretty sure the incident wouldn’t repeat itself. But this was the best excuse she had to give herself the kind of day she needed after an awful, high-anxiety forty-eight hours. She needed to reconnect with the mountains, to remind herself of why she’d fallen in love with Camp Nelson in the first place.
Most important, she needed to be alone. Away from Jim and Rudy and even the kids. Away from demanding guests. Away from phones and fax machines. Someplace where she couldn’t be reached and wouldn’t be disturbed. It wasn’t that she wanted to think—she wanted to take a break from thinking.
According to her inebriated guests, the trickiest part of the trail came in the long stretch between two granite outcroppings. The forest was thick and steep there, and the path was continually covered with a fresh layer of duff. Bonnie passed the first outcropping and had to admit that it was harder to pick the trail back up than she’d remembered. The markers were scarce, and as she hiked upslope she sometimes had the sensation that she’d gone off course and was simply standing in the middle of an untamed forest. More than once she had to backtrack, return to the first set of rocks, and start over.
In theory, it was impossible to get lost since at least one of the two outcroppings was never more than a few steps from view, but Bonnie could understand how, if you ventured here in the dark, or in an altered state, you might start to panic. And her guests had spoken the truth: there were no markers to be found anywhere. It was, Bonnie thought, simply a matter of spelling out the straightest line possible between the two clusters of granite. From there, the trail became crystal clear as it followed the creek the last mile up to the waterfall.
She chose a place to start, knelt down, and opened her backpack. The markers she’d brought with her were oval reflectors like the ones you’d find on the back of a bicycle. Shine your flashlight around until some of that light came back at you, and you shouldn’t have any difficulty at all.
Her plan for the day was succeeding. She lost herself in the sun and shade, the quiet, the thin mountain air. Sometimes she would remember where she was and think: I’m kneeling at the base of a 140-foot tree, five thousand miles above sea level. This is my life now. This is the life I’ve made. When she was done working, she would continue on to the waterfall. She knew exactly where she’d spread her blanket and eat. She could already feel the wine moving through her body, warming her from the inside. And then she would lay back, shut her eyes, and listen to the water.
She was about halfway done when she heard a birdcall she didn’t recognize coming from maybe a hundred yards below. It sounded to her like the highest pitch of a tin whistle played in a long-short-short pattern. She was tempted hike back down and see if she could identify the species, but then she heard the same call coming from roughly the same distance in the opposite direction.
They must be talking about me, she thought. Warning the forest that there’s an intruder.
She smiled, took a sip of water, went back to work.
But then what had to be another of the same kind of bird perched somewhere to the east joined the conversation, repeating the exact same call. She stood and listened, trying to envision the bird: she guessed small, maybe the size of her fist, and yellow-breasted with black wings. She wanted very badly to see one, to know if what she pictured was accurate.
She tried to talk back to them by imitating their call, but her attempt came out breathy and uneven. Still, they responded, or seemed to, with each bird sounding off in rapid succession. Not only that, but she was sure they were inching closer. She tried her hand at their call again—tried, even though she knew it was impossible, to make her version sound friendly, nonthreatening.
But her whistling appeared to rattle the birds. Their song altered. The pitch dipped an octave lower; the long opening note dropped off. And then the call changed completely. Instead of a single pitch there were two, one high and one low, and the sound no longer resembled a tin whistle. More like a parrot imitating human speech, Bonnie thought.
And then she understood: these weren’t birds closing in on her.
She concentrated until the two short syllables came into focus: rich bitch, rich bitch, rich bitch. From the north, the south, the east. Rich bitch, rich bitch, rich bitch. One at a time, and then in unison.
They were on her now, no farther than twenty feet in each direction. She could see them darting between the trees, bandanas hiding their faces as if they were grown men playing cops and robbers.
Despite herself, Bonnie screamed. And then she grabbed her backpack and ran, the voices behind her chirping rich bitch, rich bitch, rich bitch all the way to the meadow.