“Oh, I do love a road trip,” said Dr. Wolfe as the highway hummed beneath their wheels. “There’s something so romantic about heading into the great unknown, especially when that unknown is a million-acre wilderness park. And we couldn’t have asked for more glorious weather.”
“If only Dad was with us,” Harper said wistfully. “Thank goodness he’s found his passport, so he should be here tomorrow or the day after.”
Kat was only half listening. Nose pressed to the window, she watched road signs flash by on Interstate 87, pointing the way to New York City, Albany, Saratoga, Troy, and—beyond the Adirondacks—Montreal, Canada.
Everything was new and yet somehow familiar, as if she were in a Hollywood film come to life. A red barn against a bright blue sky. A black truck with monster tires and two dogs leaning out, tongues lolling. A milkshake drive-through. Lorries that Harper called semis carrying bread, eggs, and corn. Holstein dairy cows ambling home.
Lining the highway were trees in shades of rust and green-yellow.
“Are those the legendary fall colors?” asked Kat, who was less than impressed. Harper had told her that tourists came from across the globe on “leaf” holidays. To come so far and be met with trees that were no better than the ones in Bluebell Bay was a little disappointing.
“Be patient!” teased Harper. “Wait till we get to the Adirondacks.”
Patience was not one of Kat’s virtues. Not unless it involved animals, in which case she had all the patience in the world. Restless and fidgeting in the back seat, she willed the Chevrolet to do a quantum leap to the distant forest.
For eleven years, Kat and her mum had lived in a cramped, fume-filled part of London, the streets noisy with honking, drilling, hammering, and bursts of music and arguing. It wasn’t until she moved to Bluebell Bay that she realized she needed nature the way she needed oxygen. The farther she got from cities, the better she liked it.
Which was why her spirits had soared when Harper and her dad had invited the Wolfes to join them for a log cabin vacation in the wild heart of the Adirondack Park. Harper had grown up in the neighboring state of Connecticut, where her father had been a professor at Yale University. Now she had few connections to her hometown, so she hadn’t minded when her dad suggested they spend fall break in the Adirondack wilderness. He’d spent many happy summers there as a boy.
For months, Kat had thought of little but Nightingale Lodge, which the cabin’s owner, Ross Ryan, described as a “haven of tranquility on the edge of a lake.” Even the park’s name, which she’d had difficulty getting her tongue around, conjured up images of campfires and shy deer peeking between pines: Ad-i-ron-dack.
“It comes from a Native American term ha-de-ron-dah, meaning ‘bark-eater,’” explained Harper. “That’s what the Iroquois tribe used to call their rivals, the Algonquin. They didn’t think much of their hunting and berry-gathering skills. The Iroquois and Algonquin were the first people of the Adirondacks back when it was one of the toughest places on earth to survive. The winters were long and brutal. Often there was still snow on the ground into May. The summers could be a nightmare too. The woods were crawling with hungry bears and bugs. Rattlesnakes too.”
“Gosh, you’re really selling it to me,” Kat said wryly.
Harper rolled her eyes. “Nowadays there’s heating and bug spray, and people know they need to lock down any food if they don’t want their cabin doors clawed off their hinges or their tents ripped open by scavenging bears. We have it easy.”
Not everyone had it easy, Kat discovered, when they stopped for a rest break at the Inquiring Minds Bookstore in Saugerties, a quaint town in the Catskills. Cross-legged on the floor of the travel section, she pored over At the Mercy of the Mountains: True Stories of Survival and Tragedy in New York’s Adirondacks.
“Your brain is your biggest asset…,” advised the author. “Those people that remain calm, don’t panic, and then logically reason out their situation are the ones who most often survive.”
The cover showed a man signaling for help in a snowbound landscape.
The sparkles in the snow reminded Kat of the diamond necklace. What would a ninety-one-year-old in a nursing home want with $50 million worth of jewels?
Then again, why would a real thief plant the wish list on a “blameless senior”? It didn’t add up.
“Good choice,” said a voice. “Forewarned is forearmed.”
Kat jumped guiltily, as though she were the one with the wish list in her pocket. A mother cradling a sleeping baby and a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar was smiling at her and nodding at the book.
Kat put it down. “Umm, er, have you visited the park?”
The woman laughed. “I used to live there, so more times than there are lakes and ponds in the Adirondacks. There are close to three thousand of those. That’s not counting the thirty thousand miles of streams and brooks feeding twelve hundred rivers. And don’t get me started on the number of mountain ranges and wild animals. There are four thousand bears alone.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of wilderness.”
“Sure is. Three steps off the trail in the wrong direction can turn a stroll in the woods into a major search-and-rescue mission. Blink and a person’s gone. Now you see them; now you don’t.”
Kat resolved never to stray so much as a millimeter from any trail. “How do the rescue crews find them?”
“First, they try to pinpoint where they were when they vanished. That’s often the trickiest part. Those tasked with naming six million acres’ worth of ponds, peaks, roads, and rivers ran out of inspiration early on. For every Lake Tear of the Clouds or Train Wreck Point, there are nine Deer Creeks, two Mirror Lakes, and thirteen Bear Roads. When friends say, ‘Jack said something about hiking near Bear Road—dunno which one,’ that’s not real helpful.”
“We’ve been hunting everywhere for you, Kat,” said Dr. Wolfe, rounding the shelves with Harper and three mugs of hot chocolate. “There are so many nooks and crannies in this glorious store that one literally could get lost in a book.”
The woman smiled. “I do that all the time. More fun than getting lost in the woods.”
Harper hooked her arm around Kat’s. “Come on, let’s go. The leaves are calling!”
Kat hung back long enough to say to the woman with the baby, “Nice chatting to you.”
“You too. Enjoy the beautiful Adirondacks. They say that once you’ve breathed the High Peaks’ air and felt the ruby rain on your skin, you’ll be forever changed.”