ONE YEAR LATER
“A TOAST.” NATALIA LIFTED her paper cup filled with Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider. The cider had been packed in, along with the rest of the picnic lunch. Today, everyone wore backpacks as well as boots, and she didn’t need to look inside them to know that they had all kinds of gear. A year after the hike that had almost cost them their lives, most of their little group was back where it had all begun. Back at Basin Falls.
The trail to the falls had reopened only two weeks ago. While the water and rocks looked the same as they had the year before, everything surrounding them was different. Many of the trees still stood, but their trunks were charred black as charcoal and missing all their lower branches. The forest floor, which last year had been lushly carpeted with ferns, was now bare except for a few small, bouncy green fronds.
Still, they were lucky to be able to be here. Due to the danger of rockfalls and landslides, the Forest Service had announced that many other trails, including Twisted and Cougar Creek, would not reopen for months or even years.
“A toast to Susan and AJ,” Natalia continued.
“To Susan and AJ,” people echoed as they raised their cups and then tipped them back. This was the first time all of them had seen each other since the hospital. It had felt important to gather today to mark the anniversary of their narrow escape.
Three of them were missing, but for different reasons.
Susan was now living in an assisted-living facility. Natalia had visited her a few times, but on the last occasion it had been clear that the older woman didn’t remember her. The only consolation had been that the facility also housed two cats and a golden retriever. Susan’s daughter had told Natalia that her mom sometimes spent hours with the dog, petting and brushing it.
AJ was also absent. Right after the fire, he had joined a gym and then, three months ago, the navy.
And, of course, Jason wasn’t with them. He was still sitting in jail awaiting trial. The museum guard had also been arrested. Their partner, Brian, had managed to evade the law. The other stolen jeweled items—a belt buckle, a hair clip, a necklace, a pair of earrings, and even shoe buckles—had never turned up. Because the pieces were so recognizable, it was feared that they had been broken down, the gems recut and the gold melted to render them sellable.
The jewelry wasn’t the only thing that had undergone a transformation. Today it was strange for Natalia to think of her old self, the girl who had been in this exact same place a year ago. She had been so anxious at the beginning of that day, anxious about hiking, anxious about Wyatt, anxious about pretty much everything.
That single stretch of less than twenty-four hours in the woods had changed her. Had changed them all, as far as she could tell.
After Wyatt had managed to catch Trask with the trekking pole, he and Lisa were able to hold on to Trask and get him back into the child carrier. At the same time, Marco had lashed himself to the handrail with Darryl’s belt. On his back was the child carrier. Wyatt and Lisa managed to wrangle Trask inside. Then Wyatt had grabbed hold of the handrail with one hand and Natalia hand with the other. With him pulling, she had clambered to her feet and then immediately wrapped her arms around the handrail. With Wyatt’s surefooted guidance, all of them had been able to get back to solid ground.
Once Wyatt and Natalia were on the other side, with Trask safe on his back, Wyatt gave her another hug and an even bigger kiss.
Then he gave Trask to Lisa, squared his shoulders, and went back across for Ryan and then Jason.
Once they were all across the bridge, the group somehow hiked the last three miles to the road, staggering forward powered by nothing more than sheer determination. Just before they reached it, Ryan’s and Darryl’s cell phones got service. First they called 9-1-1, then they passed the phones around so people could notify their families. By the time they clambered up the last bit of trail, paramedics, search and rescue volunteers, and a sheriff’s deputy were just arriving.
The group’s first stop was the hospital, which evaluated and treated their injuries. Natalia had two broken ribs, which she was told would heal on their own in about six weeks. Even Blue’s scorched paws were salved and bandaged. As a precaution, Marco and Zion were kept overnight. Ryan spent two days in the hospital, but in the end didn’t need skin grafts.
The ends of Jason’s collarbone had been put back together, and his arm had been put in a sling. By the time Natalia left, officers from three different agencies were interviewing him.
Just before her parents picked her up, the emergency department doctor, a guy about her parents’ age, sought her out.
“Everyone keeps telling me about how you took care of some big medical emergencies out there in the woods,” he said. “This is what I do for a living, but I’ve got staff and supplies and even machines. You had nothing but a little first aid kit.”
Natalia shrugged, embarrassed. “We all worked together. Once we knew no one was coming to rescue us, we realized we were the only ones who could save us.”
It turned out their group hadn’t been the only hikers trapped in the woods that day. To get people out, first responders had been forced to rely on sketchy information and a lot of unknowns. Everything had been on the move: dozens of stranded hikers, their would-be rescuers, and the fire itself. Some groups on other trails had also self-rescued, but unlike their group, they hadn’t been trapped overnight. Forest Service rangers who happened to be nearby had walked two different groups of hikers out. And the Oregon National Guard had plucked three hikers off nearby Ransom Ridge with a Chinook helicopter.
Through some miracle, not one person died in the fire that day or the ones following. It took three months to be fully extinguished. By then, it had destroyed forty-eight thousand acres of wilderness and forced the evacuation of a dozen small towns. Interstate 84, which ran east to west, had been closed for weeks. Even now, a year after the fire, a lot of businesses along the corridor were still feeling the effects of months without income.
But it could have been so much worse. People had survived, structures had mostly survived, whole towns had survived. If the wind had pushed the fire west, it could have threatened Portland. As it was, the city had spent several months covered with a dusting of windblown ash. People had worn masks to exercise or even just go outside.
In addition to being charged with the museum’s robbery, Jason was also facing eight counts of reckless burning, one count of criminal mischief, and one count of reckless endangerment of others.
“I can’t believe he’s pleading not guilty,” Darryl said now.
Lisa replied like the lawyer it turned out she was. “It’s pretty standard. If he’s smart, he’ll take a plea deal and not let it go to trial. Even if jurors say they’re impartial, it’s going to be hard to find twelve people who weren’t affected in some way by the fire.”
“Enough about Jason.” Beatriz leaned forward. “I want to know how all you guys are doing. Like does Trask remember anything?”
They all turned to look at Trask. Farther down the shore, the two-year-old was throwing a stick for Blue with great enthusiasm and terrible aim and distance. Each time it landed only about five feet away. And each time Blue happily retrieved it and dropped it for Trask to throw again.
“He’s never had a single nightmare.” Lisa gave them a lopsided smile. “I can’t say the same for us. But we’re a lot better now.”
Ryan held out his hands and flexed his fingers. “My burns have healed. Now I’m just working on range of motion.”
“How about you guys, Beatriz?” Lisa asked.
Beatriz held out her own left hand. Her nails were silver and sparkly. And on the ring finger was a plain gold band topped with a tiny diamond. Marco grinned and put his arm around her.
“You’re engaged!” Natalia exclaimed.
“Congratulations, you two!” Lisa said. “I think this calls for another toast.”
“Zion, can you fill up everyone’s cups?” Darryl asked. As his grandson picked up the bottle, he said, “And Zion and I are both doing well. We’ve got EpiPens stashed everyplace, and now I always carry a few packets of sugar. Just in case.”
Zion spoke up. “Before we came here, we went to REI and got the ten essentials.” He shot a shy, sidelong glance at Wyatt. “And I’m going to join Boy Scouts next year. I know their motto is ‘Be Prepared.’ Like you were.”
Wyatt held out his hand so Zion could give him a high five, which he did with a grin.
“How about you, Wyatt? How did college go this year?” Darryl asked.
“I like engineering, but I’m still trying to figure out what kind of engineer I want to be.”
“You should think about bridges,” Darryl suggested. “You did pretty well with the bridge we had to cross.”
Ryan looked over at Natalia. “And what about you?”
“I just got certified in wilderness medicine.” The first day, they had gone around the room to say why they were taking the class. One person had sea kayaked. Another free rock climbed, which meant they did it with no ropes. Natalia had simply said she liked to hike, but then the rock climber looked at her more closely and said, “Aren’t you one of the Basin Falls Twelve?” But hardly anyone had recognized her lately. Her fifteen minutes of fame had been up a long time ago.
The course instructors had done their best to make it feel real, including putting special makeup on people so they appeared to be bruised, bleeding, or badly infected. When faced with someone pretending to be screaming in pain, some of Natalia’s classmates had panicked and forgotten everything they had just learned. For her, it had been a cakewalk.
Beatriz leaned forward. “Still planning on going into medicine?”
“First I have to get my undergrad degree. I’m going to major in biology.”
“Where are you going?” Ryan asked.
“Uh, Columbia University.” It still felt a little fantastic. “Part of the application is writing an essay. You can guess what I wrote about.” After talking to Dr. Paris, Natalia had even included Conner’s death.
Beatriz’s eyes widened. “Columbia! We need another toast. Can you top us up, Zion?” She turned to Wyatt. “Are you going to go see Natalia when she’s in the Big Apple?”
She was obviously trying to play matchmaker. But they were way ahead of her.
“Of course.” As he spoke, Wyatt brushed his fingers against the top of Natalia’s hand. When he was at school, they texted nearly every day. And when he was home, they spent most of their time together. This summer, they were both back at work at the Dairy Barn, where they occasionally snuck a kiss in the walk-in cooler.
“It sounds like we’ve got plenty to celebrate,” Lisa said. “There were so many times a year ago when I would have said none of us was going to make it out.”
Natalia said, “The one thing that makes me feel sad is how different everything is. On the drive out here, I was looking across the Columbia River into Washington. It makes it obvious how much we’ve lost.” Before, the two sides of the river had been like mirrors of each other. Now instead of trees, the ridgeline on the Oregon side was topped with a long line of blackened, leafless trunks, like the bars of a cage.
Wyatt put his arm around her shoulders. “The Gorge is already starting over. She’ll come back.”
Natalia bit her lip. “But it won’t be the same.”
“Nothing ever is,” he said simply. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be just as good.”