We jammed ourselves into Pia’s Chevy Tahoe, which had been meticulously packed with ground sheets, extra tents, groceries, wet-weather gear, emergency rations of dried (astronaut!) food, even a fly rod. She was always fanatically prepared for any eventuality. None of us had ever lacked for sunblock, a lifesaving Chap Stick, an extra sweater, raincoat, or beach umbrella. But the obsession with preparedness was tempered by her lust for risk. At the dude ranch in Montana we visited one summer, Pia put in a bid to ride “the most crazy-ass horse on the playa,” so she could, as she put it, “challenge” herself. Conversely, I couldn’t bring myself to saddle up even the most ancient mare because I couldn’t get over that horses weighed thousands of pounds, as well as my certainty that whichever one I chose would sense my terror and hurl me off like the cowgirl wannabe I was.
But Pia actually did it. After pestering the head cowboy at this place, threatening to never come back, hinting she’d post negative reviews, and finally agreeing to sign away all liability, she climbed up on this unbroken horse the cowboys were afraid to touch, this Appaloosa demon that snarled and bucked, in seconds tossing her up and over its gorgeous head. I watched her do a complete flip in the air, landing hard on her hands and ass. I stopped breathing as I waited for the dust to clear. She got up and walked away, though she’d sprained a few fingers and bruised her tailbone badly. That was it, she declared, “for the day.” But I got this feeling, talking to her about it later over beers at the ranch’s Horseshoe Saloon, that she almost wished something more dramatic had happened, something that would have somehow freed her from herself.
I hoped there wouldn’t be too much bucking-bronco craziness this time around. My wish—the one I always had when we four were together—was that our energies would balance each other out. Sandra’s tact and level head would temper Rachel’s sharp wit and knack for speaking the truth, regardless of the consequences. As for Pia—and I could only guess about the others—being with her made me feel buoyant, more robust somehow. In shape by proxy. Because as much as she drove me to distraction, she always seemed to be vaulting toward the unknown with her own brand of wonder and a fearlessness utterly foreign to me. It took me out of myself. I was looking forward to that.
As Pia navigated the city streets, I found myself gazing from the front passenger seat at all the things I would no doubt appreciate later: telephone wires, streetlights, houses with running water, indoor toilets, and warm beds. I wondered what kind of snakes Maine had, what sorts of stinging insects. A large part of me wanted to back out, feign sickness, make my phone ring with some sort of emergency: “Wini, we can’t get these carob chips out of this month’s Devil’s Food Vegan Brownies! Get in here now!” I forced myself to do none of the above, but still felt shivery even in the morning sun.
We crossed the Tobin Bridge, following signs to points north. Boston receded quickly behind us in a blue-gray haze.
“So, Pia,” Rachel said, leaning forward from the backseat. “What are the chances we freaking croak on this river?”
Pia laughed. “Statistically? You’re in more danger driving home from work than you are camping or white-water rafting. Some drunk asshole could be flying at you the wrong way and, splat, it’s over! And it’s only a long weekend, for crying out loud. Rachel, seriously, what are you missing by going on this trip?”
“A little weeding,” Rachel answered gamely. “Was going to clean out the shed with Ryan. Maybe hit the mall on Sunday.” Ryan was her third husband, a maxillofacial surgeon with a couple of teenage daughters a few years older than her two sons. She tended to marry well—divorce even better—but never seemed to truly settle into domestic peace.
“Sounds life changing!” Pia said. “Sandra?”
“Correct papers. What else? Maybe sort out the kids’ school clothes for fall.” Sandra taught undergraduate English and philosophy classes at her local City College of Chicago.
“Win?”
“Get some food for Ziggy. Swim. Scare up some freelance work.”
Pia’s hands flew up from the wheel to dismiss us before she settled her sunglasses down over her eyes. “I rest my case.”
Pieces of the northern suburbs slipped by, places so familiar I failed to see them anymore, so with a kind of gladness I felt myself letting go and drifting off. Sometimes the engine’s rumbling beneath us lulled me into a misty consciousness through which I watched Pia drive—one of her favorite things to do—then felt myself falling off again into a firmament of my own design. I woke as we crossed the bridge from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I gazed down at the sparkling blue water of the Piscataqua River and sailboats bending under a brisk wind.
“We almost there?” I mumbled, mouth sticky.
Pia laughed. “Not exactly. Two hours down, seven to go, not counting pee stops.” She glanced at Rachel and Sandra, fast asleep in the backseat. “So, you’ve been swimming?”
I made a dismissive sound and slid back in my seat, suddenly aware of my girth. Pia worked out like a demon, CrossFitting and triathlete-ing her way through her weekends. I’d never heard of her embarking on a bike ride less than twenty miles long, or taking it easy in any way, and she dieted herself down to a slapping slimness, like she could slip into the stingiest size 8 but could also lift a Volkswagen off a small child if necessary, because she would know how to use her back and legs in such cases, and she’d be able to commandeer the proper help—I pictured stunned passersby doing her bidding—on the fly.
“I do my laps a couple times a week. For whatever good it does me. Look, Pia, I’ll never be you—”
Her jaw tightened. “Just getting older stresses out your body. You need to be ready for that, get a jump on it. Besides, I want to be ready for when the shit hits the fan in this crazy-ass world.”
“So you can what, outrun global warming?”
“So I can outrun what global warming will do to so-called civilization.”
I pictured Pia sprinting gazellelike from tsunamis and rising ocean tides, from famine and disease. “So you’re going to be one of those survivor types who lives in the woods and shoots at whatever happens by?” Don’t know why I was being such a priss. Maybe part of me thought she might actually try it, and it scared me. “Live off the land?” I teased a little more gently.
“Something like that.” She downshifted as roadwork narrowed the two-lane highway to one. An actor-handsome cop waved us by, his eyes resting an extra moment on Pia’s face. She didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not, Pia, I just don’t really get what you’re planning here.”
She looked at me with such intensity. “It’s like this, Win. I’m sick of everything, you know? I’m sick of dragging my ass around the world to fucking sneaker expos, hanging around with hip-hop”—finger quotes—“ ‘stars’ and hawking the latest line of bullshit miracle insoles guaranteed to make you run faster or lose weight, some lie like that. I’m dying of boredom tweeting about ankle support and bubble soles and how the right sneaker can make your life worth living.”
“I spend my day making photos of flank steak look juicy.”
“So you know, then, what we’re up against.”
I thought I knew, but watching her face, I wasn’t sure.
“That’s why I go on these trips,” she said with a shrug, “because what I do is meaningless.”
I gave her a look. Impatience, I guess; a touch of Pia-exhaustion, already.
“Don’t you get it? The world we know is dwarfed by the worlds we don’t. Why not explore them all? Being out there in the wilderness, you have no idea what’ll happen, really. It could be just you and this gorgeous night sky, or maybe you’re surfing and some big-ass wave comes at you, and if you don’t ride that sucker, it’ll pull you under and have you for lunch, or you might turn a corner on a hike and there’s some beautiful deer and her little fawn—now that has meaning, all of those things, and I need more of that and less of trying to make money so I can pay bills to live in a way I just don’t care about anymore.”
“But money lets you go on all these trips.”
“I get it, yeah, still—I don’t need half the crap I have. I don’t need my fancy-ass condo. I’m never home anyway. I’ve saved a little money. I could quit my job tomorrow and live out somewhere on my own for a couple years”—she gestured at the passing trees, rolling farmland—“and just make it on my own. I feel good out there, by myself, not having to count on anyone or anything.”
The “anyone” comment cut me. How could she think she didn’t need people, didn’t need her friends? The “anything” bit struck me as bullshit as well. I studied her as she drove, planning some sweet life under the moon and stars where she was magically fed, kept warm, clothed, and entertained.
“God, I want a cigarette.”
I laughed and loved her again. “When did you quit last?”
“Two weeks ago.” She shook her head in disgust. “Ever been in a room with thousands of high-tops? It’s hell. Sneakers reek, you know. The rubber. The chemicals.”
“Just quit the stupid job.” I held up her fancy phone.
She finally laughed. “Let me get through this trip. Then I’ll give notice. Dump the condo. Disappear. Get off the grid.”
“Do you even know what that means, Pia?”
She gave me an odd look. “Of course I do, Wini.” She shrugged. “You’ll see.”
• • •
Minutes later we pulled over at a rest stop and tourist-information area. Bored middle-aged and older women in green vests milled around with too much information to give and not enough travelers to give it to, so they loaded us down with all manner of maps and brochures. Sandra and I couldn’t tear ourselves away from a floor-to-ceiling map of Maine on one wall that showed all the collisions with moose over the past year. Each red dot a crash. There were so many on our route—straight up into the Allagash—it looked as if someone had splashed blood from Portland to Canada.
Sandra stared at the red dots as she gnawed on the black licorice she’d bought at the gift shop. “This can’t be real.”
“Afraid it is,” said one of the women in green. “My best friend’s sister and her new husband died on their wedding day in 1973, right after the ceremony on their way to the reception. Boom, like that. Gone. But it was fall, you know, rutting season. Moose are crazy then.” She let go a creepy laugh. “One whiff of something good, and they just tear across the road, don’t look both ways!”
“Jesus Christ,” Rachel said under her breath as she walked around a nine-foot monster plastic moose in the middle of the room, its antlers grazing the twelve-foot ceiling.
“You’ll be fine,” the woman said. “It’s summer. Just keep your eyes out.”
I trailed behind as Sandra, Pia, and Rachel burst out of the building, howling and wisecracking about rutting season and two-ton mammals hurtling across highways for hot moose action. As we settled back into the car, it occurred to me that we were already dressed for this new world. Rachel in her red fleece vest, multipocketed hiking shorts, and ankle-high boots; Sandra in her purple Patagonia jacket; Pia outfitted head to toe in REI’s finest. Already I sensed a profound separation from the normal, even from the people we had been that very morning in my cozy apartment in Boston.
A thought came to me that I couldn’t force away: What we are wearing is how we’ll be identified out in the wilderness. This middle-aged woman in this blue jacket, these nylon pants, these Timberland boots. I noticed for the first time a small zipper on my new hiking shirt and counted three cunningly hidden pockets, one on either side of my waist and one on my sleeve, where I could put things like keys, or maybe a note telling someone what had happened to us. I imagined what I might say, if I’d be able to conjure anything profound. All I knew was that no one expected us home for five days, and no one I knew expected to hear from me at all.