The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens Read Free Book Online Page A

lucky if there was no rain—or snow. “Let’s keep moving,” I said.
    We plodded on a little farther, up the striated granite and frozen flecked quartz, serenaded by Bridget’s chorus of complaints. “I’m so cold. Can we hurry up? The rocks are so loose.”
    It was clear to me that the silent girl in the green flip-flops was moving as quickly as she could, and Nola faster than I’d have expected, given her age. We continued on over the rocks for another ten or fifteen minutes, which should have brought us to Secret Lake but nothing looked familiar anymore, or rather everything did—the same spiny pines peering out at us from the fog in all directions. The same ragged rocks.
    “Hear it?” Bridget said. “Sounds like a waterfall.”
    We could all hear the sound of a roaring falls, an auditory illusion that the mountain is famous for. “The wind,” I said. “It’s the wind.”
    “Sounds like it’s this way,” Bridget said, pointing left.
    “It’s the wind,” I repeated.
    “It does sound like a waterfall,” Nola said.
    “It does.”
    “Isn’t that where the tourists would be?” Bridget asked. “At the waterfall? Shouldn’t we try to find it?”
    “The only waterfall is Corazon Falls,” I said. “That’s six miles away from here—down in the canyon. There’s no trail to Corazon Falls. Come on. We need to get back to the Mountain Station.”

    An owl began to hoot in the trees overhead, stopping us in our tracks. It was later than I thought. When we paused in a small clearing to catch our breath I tried to remain calm but I knew we were lost. I’d never been lost before. At least not in a mountain wilderness.
    The owl hooted once more. I was sure it was a sign—from Byrd? God?—a warning. “We can’t go on,” I said. “It’s suicide to walk in the dark. We need to find a spot to settle in.”
    “You’re not serious.” Bridget stiffened. “Are you saying we’re stuck here for the night?”
    “We’ll be good. We’ll be fine.”
    “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
    Nola reached out to squeeze her arm. “One night. You can make it through one night.”
    The girl in the green flip-flops said nothing but I could see she was afraid. Bridget sniffled, but I couldn’t find words to comfort her. Mostly I was irritated that she’d gone running off from the bees in the first place.
    We looked around, sifting through the fog for a suitable shelter. Finding no overhangs or caves, we quickly agreed that the site of a large fallen log seemed as good a place as any to wait out the cold night.
    Leaning down to clear a spot before she sat, Bridget was startled by a skittering cadre of black beetles moving in and out of a tunnel in the dirt, and let out a blood-curdling scream. Backing away from the clattering insects, she caused a cluster of rocks to loosen at her feet and roll down the nearby incline, which was deeper and steeper than I’d first imagined.
    None of us wanted to sleep with the beetles so we decided to roll the log away from their burrow. Nola suggested a flat spot up the hill near some manzanita, which would help block the wind. Agreed, we four leaned down to roll the log away from the offending insects, but we were pushing against gravity and the rocks were unstable beneath our feet. With much grunting and huffing we managed to move the big log only a few yards up the incline. Bridget complained that the beetles were still too close, so we four bore down once more.
    It all happened so fast. (How many times has a sorry man said those words?)
    We were moving that damn log up the hill—and then we were falling, lost in the kaleidoscope of rocks and ochre dust and manzanita and sage, conveyed by round, rushing boulders, and silt, and brush, hitting the ground with a thud.
    It all happened so fast.
    Battered and stunned, we rose, and gathering our wits tried to find one another amidst the rocks and soil and the bare-rooted scraps of the bushes that had concealed the cliff’s edge.
    Nola,