OPTIONS

(Peak Wilderness, Days Fifteen to Eighteen)

The canoeing days are long. Six or seven hours of paddling under the hot sun with aching shoulders, back, arms, and obliques. Lots of time to ponder how much longer this pain is going to last, hour by hour, day by day. It’s agony. Long agony. We take turns at the bow and stern positions, and in our canoe one person has to be the “princess,” which is the person who sits in the middle on their pack because there isn’t a seat.

It turns out paddling and steering a canoe takes coordination not just of oneself, but with others. And we are a group of people at odds with ourselves and others. There are long periods of determined silence in our canoe, broken by bursts of grumbling and bickering when one of us gets out of sync, or our paddles whack each other, or the front person sends a big splash of water onto the people at the back, or the canoe is suddenly going the wrong direction. Ally does more apologizing than bitching, but Jin and I bitch.

In fact, Jin is noticeably out of sorts, and I soon realize she doesn’t like being on the water, not that she’d admit it.

“Good thing we didn’t try this before the hiking,” I mutter at one point.

“We’d have drowned,” Jin agrees grimly.

This is one of our more positive exchanges.

When everything goes smoothly, though, which happens more often as we get the hang of things, canoeing is almost soothing. Well, it’s soothing in the sense that your body starts to be able to do its thing, and your mind can wander.

I’m not that keen on where my mind wanders, though.

Talking about Isaac and Oz to Tavik has had the effect of stirring up those memories for me, and I find my mind looping back through the horrific ups and downs, through the hours I spent not knowing if my mom would live, and over and over to her making me promise I would never tell anyone.

I am very close, with Tavik, to breaking that promise—close in the story itself, which I know he’s not going to let go of, and close also because I’m angry she asked me to keep it secret. Keeping her secrets never did me any good, and didn’t help her either, I don’t think. And being out here in the wilderness, I’ve started to realize how tightly, how tensely, I have to hold myself all the time, how tightly to myself I have held everything about me for so long. I do it now by instinct. I do it because I don’t know how not to, because I’m afraid not to, because it has become the way I am. I thought it was strength, this solitary absorption of all things, good and bad. But it has left me very alone, and maybe that is part of what freaks me out, here in the wild. I feel my aloneness, and my inability to easily cross the bridge to another person.

Other people, over the past few weeks, have opened up—some of them to all of us, some to just one or two others. Melissa, since Peace left, has talked about everything to everyone, and she is transformed.

Ally has been quieter about it, but she is changing too, spending hours with Seth, but also talking in circle, and there is a quiet competence growing in her. Almost everyone else, with the exceptions of Jin and me, has relaxed into a comfortable rapport with the rest of the group. Everyone else is friends by now, whereas we are only friendly.

My body is stronger, and I have fantastic wilderness skills, compared to when this started fifteen days ago, and even some unexpected leadership skills. And I can speak my mind about something that pisses me off. All of that is good, I guess. But I am still trying to build up and reinforce the walls I use to keep myself strong.

Supposedly strong.

But definitely alone.

Maybe that’s why talking to Tavik is so tempting.

Maybe that’s why I spend so much of Day Fifteen thinking about whether I’ll sneak over to his lean-to again tonight, and sleep with him curled up around me, and whether or not it’s actually sleep I’m looking for.

Maybe that’s why I don’t go.

On Day Sixteen we pause for a breathless half hour to watch a moose near the side of the river. We’ve been seeing a lot more wildlife while canoeing than we did hiking, partly due to the higher speed of travel, but also Pat says hikers are so incredibly noisy that they scare the animals off, especially this far north, where there are so few humans. From the canoes, though, we’ve seen foxes, a couple of beavers, a few deer, and a ton of toads, in addition to the moose.

Because we’re a little behind, Bonnie suggests we have what she calls a “floating lunch,” which saves us the time it would take to get onshore, unpack the canoes, and so on. At the top of a long straight part of the river, we paddle close to one another and then hang our legs into each other’s canoes, thereby creating a haphazard flotilla. Then Melissa, Henry, and Seth make us wraps from their food barrel, and we pass them along from canoe to canoe until everyone has one, and we drift down the river, happily eating.

We’re just finishing this rather fantastic lunch when the river takes a turn, merges with another river, and widens out. Suddenly we’re moving fast—really fast. We all scramble to disentangle the canoes, and quickly grab our paddles.

“Yo, Pat, is this a rapids?” Henry shouts.

“Nope, not a rapids,” Pat calls back calmly. “Just a fast part of the river.”

“Rapid is another word for fast,” I point out.

“Don’t panic.”

Panic or not, Harvey and Tavik’s canoe is soon stuck on a rock, and they’re in trouble. Pat and Bonnie start to paddle back upriver to help, while we pass them, barely in control.

“Get to the shore,” Bonnie says, jerking her head toward it. “And grab on to one of those branches. And be ready to catch their food barrel!”

I guess this is what they meant by “situation.”

We somehow get to the side, and Jin and I half stand to grab on to the low-hanging branches, while Ally paddles to keep us steady.

Upriver, Bonnie and Pat send the food barrel our way.

“If I let go to catch it, can you hang on?” Jin asks.

I’m not sure I can, but I say, “Go for it,” and brace myself to hold on once Jin lets go—hands tight, legs half wrapped around the seat below me.

She lets go, and my whole body jerks, but I manage to hang on, and keep the canoe under me too, as the barrel comes closer.

I tighten my grip again, trying to ignore my shaking arms. . . .

And that’s when I see the freaking bear, standing not more than ten feet away from us, under the shade of the same tree I’m hanging on to. It’s dark brown, and massive, and it’s looking right at me. Ohmyfuckinggod.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Jin leaning out as far as she can without tipping the canoe, and she almost has the barrel. We need that barrel—the food is planned meticulously, down to the last meal. Of course we might be about to become a meal. Facts race through my mind: Bears rarely attack humans. Bears mostly eat berries. Bears are not so hungry in summer compared to spring. Bears mostly attack only if you threaten their young and I don’t see any young. Bears are as scared of us as we are of them.

Sure.

Please, Jin . . .

“Got it!” Jin cries, and then pulls the barrel close and heaves it into the canoe.

“Good job!” Ally shouts. “Great job!”

“Guys!” I say from my precarious position. “Not to freak you out, but we have to go. Now. I’m going to let go, and both of you start paddling away from the shore as soon as I’m down. Okay?”

Neither of them knows what the problem is, but by the way they move—quickly—they believe me. I let go of the tree and drop down in one as-smooth-as-possible motion, trying not to cause us to tip in the process, and they start paddling like crazy. I haul myself onto my seat, pick up my paddle, and do the same.

With the weight of the extra barrel in our canoe, we sit low in the water, the paddling is more difficult, and the result is slower. Too slow.

“Holy mother of shit,” Jin says from behind me.

“What is it?” Ally says, her voice high with panic.

“Just paddle,” I say.

“Bear,” Jin says. “There on the shore.”

Ally gives a squeak and paddles faster.

“It’s not going to attack us,” I say, trying to sound sure.

“But . . . they . . . can swim . . .” Ally gasps.

“Yep,” Jin says.

“I think the response we’re supposed to be having is how beautiful and majestic it is, and how lucky we are to have spotted it,” I say, tight-voiced.

On the shore the bear is still watching us, and then it gets down on all fours and lopes along the rock and sand, almost keeping pace with our canoe.

“I’ll be filled with wonder later on,” Jin says. “Right now I might barf.”

Finally we hit the center of the river where the water is moving faster. The bear seems to lose interest, and we leave it behind. Along with ten years of my life, I’m sure.

Dear Mom,

Canoeing has put me in a strange state. Almost like I’m having an out-of-body experience some of the time. Like I am floating along beside myself, or above myself, and thinking about things from a one-step-away position. Or I go wandering off in the forest, away from myself entirely. This, it occurs to me, could be “meditative”—i.e., a good thing—or it could be “dissociative”—i.e., I am going batshit crazy. I’m just spacey, maybe.

I might be depressed. . . .

Except I don’t feel sluggish or heavy, and when I need to wake the hell up and respond to something, I can do it. It’s like a switch is flipped, and I go back into my body and do what I need to do. And that feels good.

But when I am back outside myself, I feel a little bit sad for the me that I’m watching, and yet I am cheering her on.

I could have been eaten by a bear today.

But I guess I also could have drowned or choked or had a freak accident.

I built a decent lean-to tonight. I could stay in it and test my courage further. Or I could go sleep with a very warm ex-convict who always wants me to talk. A different kind of test. A different kind of courage.

If that’s what it is.

Five more days of this . . .

Good night, diva mama,
Ingrid

Tavik’s light is flashing.

Anyone could see me going over.

But Ally and Seth are still talking by the fire, and there’s no rule about visiting each other, and anyway, Pat and Bonnie’s tent is down near the water.

“Hey,” Tavik says when I arrive with my sleeping bag, and then ushers me inside.

“Were you signaling me?”

“Sort of.”

I am in my body enough to know how cold and tired I am. In fact, it’s hard to connect to that detached feeling at all when I’m around Tavik. Something about him requires all hands on deck, mentally speaking.

“You want to continue with our interview?” he says, a smile quirking at the corner of his mouth.

All I really want is to curl up next to him again, battle my lust for him for a few minutes while I get warm, and then sleep. But maybe it would be rude to just say so. Still, I am supposed to be using my true voice.

“Actually, I came to sleep with you,” I say, meeting his eyes straight on, daring him to take it the wrong way.

“Again?”

“Again. If you don’t mind.”

He gazes at me for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, I don’t mind.”

“We can talk if you want, first. If you’re not tired enough from the portaging and the near-death experiences and . . .”

“No, get on the bed,” he says, patting his sleeping bag, “and let’s do it.”

I have to admit, I giggle. But within a couple of minutes, we’re huddled together just like the other night, and as I warm up, the pain and soreness of the day seem to seep out of me.

But Tavik is wide-awake, and despite my fatigue, I am too.

“Know any bedtime stories?” I ask.

“What, like ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’?”

“Uh, that’s a song.”

“You would know.”

“Nobody sang ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ to me, trust me.”

“But did she sing to you? Your mom?”

“Of course. But it was Verdi. Puccini. Mozart.”

“Classical shit. I don’t think you lost out.”

“Well, I guess whatever you didn’t have, something was there in its place.”

“Yeah. Like a kick in the ass,” he says.

“Literally?”

“Yeah, but that’s not a bedtime story.”

“Mine isn’t either.”

“Maybe not, but . . .” His squeezes me closer. “I saw it in jail; everybody needs to talk at some point. To get it out. They reach this point when it’s, like, oozing from them. You’re like that. Or we could fuck.”

I sit up fast, this comment a good reminder that this isn’t a guy who’d just want to share a few dreamy kisses, if I were foolish enough to start something.

“Kidding, kidding,” he says, dissolving into rude laughter, and covering his mouth to muffle the sound. “You should see your face.”

“Tavik . . .”

“I’m sorry. Lie down. I told you a bunch of times: you’re safe with me. I’m just trying to make you laugh. And, you know, get you to talk to me.”

I glare at him for a long moment, and then lie back down, this time facing him.

“You’re an asshole,” I say.

“Hey, gimme a break—I’ve been in jail.”

“All the more reason for me to be worried.”

“Ah, so you think I’m a sex-starved desperado.”

I shrug.

“I could be a sex-starved desperado just as a result of this trip,” he points out. “Depending on my needs. But I just meant that I’m a petty criminal—I’m supposed to be bad-mannered and occasionally shocking. But I’m also honest, and hospitable, and not a rapist, and don’t forget, warm and in possession of a large mosquito net.”

“There’s that.”

“Not that I wouldn’t fuck you under different circumstances.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Under almost any different circumstances.”

“Oh, like what?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

“Like you saying yes?”

This should appall me, but instead it makes me laugh. Hysterically, and into my sleeping bag because I need to muffle the sound.

“See? You just think it’s funny.”

“I can’t believe you said that.”

“Doesn’t it break the tension, though? I say it out loud knowing it’s not happening, you confirm it’s not happening, we leave it behind.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” It reminds me of Juno and her “deal with the penis” lecture. I think we just dealt with the penis.

“Sure,” he says. “Now, are you sleepy yet? I’m a really good listener.”

“Actually,” I say with a yawn, “I really do want to go to sleep.”

“All right,” he says. “Sweet dreams, Ingrid.”

“Thank you for making me feel . . .”

“What . . . ?” he says.

“Safe . . . ?”

In the morning we wake at the same time, and early.

“Just build a piece of shit for your lean-to tonight,” he murmurs into my ear. “And stay with me.”

I nod, and try to ignore the ache I’m starting to feel, lying crushed up against him.

Day Seventeen is bear-less, but we have more rocks to contend with, plus another portage—two kilometers—and this time Seth, in the lead and walking just two people ahead of me with a canoe, almost steps on a rattlesnake . . . and screams bloody murder while backing up as fast as he can, which causes a backward avalanche on the path, and then a stampede.

For once, neither Bonnie nor Pat equivocates about what we need to do.

“We go around,” Pat says.

“We bushwhack,” Bonnie confirms.

And so we very carefully pick up the fallen and dropped canoes and gear, and do it.

Bushwhacking is exactly what it sounds like—whacking and being whacked by bushes and tree branches as you forge your own path through the forest. It’s hard, time-consuming, and super awkward with a canoe. We’re heading for the first trip back when Seth has a total meltdown.

“I can’t lead,” he says, his face covered in sweat.

“What’s the problem, Seth?” Bonnie says.

“A rattlesnake is the problem!” he shouts.

As he says this, I remember how he also wigged out when we were in the mud pit. If he has a phobia of snakes, this all makes sense.

“If you face your fear, it will begin to diminish,” Pat says in his wisest voice.

“I faced it already. I keep facing it every single day out here. I’m not going back there!”

It takes the entire group to convince Seth not only to come back with us to get the next two loads of stuff, but also to lead.

Remembering how I helped Isaac years ago, I offer to sing as we’re starting out, and sing a couple of soothing arias. Then Harvey takes over for comic relief, telling Seth a long, ridiculous story about a potato-gun contest he went to one time.

When we get to the beach of tonight’s camp, which is on a very pretty little island, Seth turns to all of us and says, “Since I just survived the scariest day of my life, I may as well add to it and tell you all I’m gay. And if that didn’t scare the gayness out of me, I don’t think anything is going to.”

I can tell he expects us to react like his über-religious parents, because he’s amazed to see all of us smiling, and people coming to hug him, pat him on the back, and congratulate him.

“No one cares?” he says, looking around in amazement.

“No one is surprised,” Jin clarifies. “But all of us care.”

We stand around chatting, and I feel a wonderful sense of connection from having gone through this day, and then this revelation, with Seth. Then Bonnie and Pat take him for a walk and talk, leaving the rest of us to set up.

All at once I’m alone again.

And I’m so tired, I just want to fall on my face.

In my lean-to.

That I still have to build, just to keep up appearances, even though I’m not planning on sleeping in it.

Tonight’s circle conversation is all about facing fears and about surrounding yourself with people who support you—finding your tribe.

Seth is still terrified. His family might kick him out, and he would then be homeless, or forced to live with other, equally disapproving relatives. Henry and Harvey tell him he can take the bus to the city and come to their house if that happens.

“Our mom likes to take in strays,” Henry says. “Uh, not to call you a stray.”

“My folks aren’t fit to host anybody,” Ally says. “But in a couple of years when I’m eighteen, me and you could get an apartment. If you can handle being around a baby—well, a toddler by then. And if I can find a job, and if I have her back.”

“You could come to my house too,” I say, and then turn to Jin. “And that goes for you as well, if things go badly with your aunt. Even if I’m in London, my parents . . . It would be fine. My room will be empty anyway. And Andreas, my dad, is great in a crisis.”

“We can be your people,” Melissa says to Seth.

I wait in my flimsy lean-to until the camp is quiet, then tiptoe over to Tavik’s.

“I almost thought you weren’t coming,” he says, as I duck inside.

“After my second performance of The Wizard of Oz, my mom overdosed, and almost died,” I blurt out. “Supposedly by accident.”

“Whoa,” he says.

“Sorry, I’m out of practice talking about these kinds of things. Well, I was never in practice. Should I have built up to it?”

“No . . . you do it how you want. I’ll roll with it.”

“Okay, so the thing is, I spend a lot of time thinking that it might have been my fault.”

“For singing, and doing the play?” he says.

I nod.

“Bullshit,” he says.

“Thinking that and believing it are two different things,” I say.

He nods slowly.

“I promised her I would never tell anyone. She made me promise.”

“So why did you just tell me?”

“Because sometimes I am so messed up, and I feel so . . . I feel like breaking things.”

“Promises?”

“Yes. And actual things,” I say, my hand going to my shin.

He’s very still, and watching me with deep, steady eyes.

“Sometimes I feel too much,” I continue, eyes locked on his, everything slow-motion, loaded. “Other times I can’t feel anything.”

“What are you feeling right now?”

I am feeling like I want to break down and tell him the whole sad story, and like the whole sad story is too much to tell. I am feeling like his eyes on my eyes are sustenance. I am feeling like if I could put my hand on his jawline and then trail it down his neck to his chest, then I would know if I was making his heart beat faster, and that would be better than all the talking in the world. I am feeling like I could sleep a thousand years, feeling like crying, like singing, like touching my lips to his, like crawling into a hole and hiding there for the rest of my life. I am feeling like lying on my back and looking up at the sky and letting the stars fall into my eyes and change me, drown me, light me up.

“Are you cold?” he asks finally when I don’t answer.

“I should be able to move on,” I say, ignoring his question.

“From?”

“All of it. The overdose. The boy I liked dating someone else after I rejected him. Losing our first life, and Mom’s voice, and . . . all of it. Sure, I was left to deal with lots of things on my own, but I managed. So many worse things happen to people. Here in this group, much worse things have happened to people. I just . . . Where is it all supposed to go when you move on from it?”

“I don’t know,” Tavik says.

“But it’s also . . . I am afraid of what I’ll become, going to London, studying music. Afraid to fail, afraid to succeed, afraid of being too much like my mom, afraid of not being enough like her. Afraid of my motivations, because . . . I want to surpass her. Why do I want that? Am I allowed to want that? What am I doing . . . if I succeed at that? What does that make me?”

“It makes you the person who succeeds, I think. It makes you your mother’s daughter. And she’s an adult. Can’t she take care of her own reactions?”

I let out a pained gasp of breath and look away.

“This ‘being responsible for her’ business is dumb,” Tavik continues. “But what do I know? I know zip about classical music, or any of this. I’m just a guy who’s probably going to end up fixing people’s toilets or cars, and that’s if I think big.”

“Oh, Tavik, I’m sorry, I—”

“I don’t mean it like that. I don’t have high aspirations. I’m just hoping for a normal life. I’m good with it. Just, Ingrid . . . don’t be afraid. That’s all I can say. Or be afraid, but do it anyway.”

“I think . . . I feel like I’m looking for a sign. You know? Something that lets me know, or gives me the feeling of knowing . . . that I’m going in the right direction, that everything is going to be all right.”

“No point worrying or looking for signs,” he says. “It is or it isn’t.”

“Aren’t you supposed to lie to me and tell me that it is?”

“You’re already here to sleep with me,” he says with a hilarious wink. “I don’t need to tell you any lies.”

I smile, while my mind gets busy peeling his clothing off one piece at a time, running my fingertips over his many beautiful muscles, but my body simply does what it has done every night I’ve spent with him, and curls up, humming, and eventually goes to sleep, exhaustion and caution winning over lust.

Day Eighteen. There are three more days until Day Twenty-One, when we all go home. The canoeing is better and worse now—we are better, but the terrain is worse. We’re on a new river system, which widens and narrows with no warning. We don’t have to paddle as hard, because there’s a current. On the other hand, we have to steer like crazy. There are more rocks and multiple close calls and everybody gets stuck at least once. Melissa, Seth, and Henry bail when they take too sharp a turn, and the rescue and recovery is epic, but luckily sans bears. We stay in our canoe, but barely.

The eighteenth night is cold again, and I stay late beside the fire, shivering from my evening swim—aka stubborn exercise in self-torture—and wishing my hopelessly tangled mop of hair would dry before I go to bed.

The journal is on my lap, but though I planned to write, I find myself just holding it, still waiting for a sign.