Chapter 9: Ashokan Farewell

In the weeks that followed our discussion about Barbara, something changed between us. We still chatted on the web site. But she felt less like something on the screen and more like someone who simply became part of my life. Like other women I had known. At least – for the most part.

The strange thing was how ordinary it all began to feel.

Mornings meant coffee on the porch and the quiet clank of tools in the shop. Some afternoons she practiced welding. Or she worked on her idea for the therapy center, scribbling notes in a yellow pad. At night I would cook, or we would drive into town for Italian or Tex-Mex.

I began to watch her carefully. There were times when she would go really quiet – as if thinking more deeply than I could imagine. She liked to be able to see everything going on around her. So, in restaurants she sat with her back to the wall; in a crowd she would try to stay on its edges and not be surrounded. One thing was most striking of all: she didn’t like closed doors. I got a little tired of opening them if I wanted so air to circulate, like in the shop, but mostly left it alone.

Physically, she left small signs of herself around the house. A pair of boots by the door. A sweater draped over the chair in the living room. A turquoise bracelet resting on the kitchen counter.

By the time I suggested a trip to the Grand Canyon, it already felt like something we had been doing for years. It was March in Austin, and the air was held the sweet scent of Texas mountain laurel and the bluebonnets filled roadside ditches. It also now was warm enough that we could sit on the patio after dinner and share a glass of wine.

Why the Grand Canyon? Because it had been my happy place for fifteen years. The shorthand I tell people is that I’d spent a sizable chunk of my life hiking in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. I had climbed Mount Rainier eight times, and Denali. I had seen some country.

Or so I thought.

Then my friend Lyn got a permit for a backcountry canyon trip: Grandview Point to South Kaibab. We flew down to Phoenix, rented a car, checked into a cheap motel, and in the morning took a cab to the trailhead at Grandview Point.

After I had hiked maybe two hundred yards down the trail, I stopped. Sat on a rock. And looked around, breathing in the dry air. I saw rocks burnt red by the sun. Wind-carved towers rising from broken cliffs. Deep gorges falling away into shadow. Broad green plateaus. All under a sky so blue it seemed unnatural.

The scale was incomprehensible. It was completely different from what one sees from the rim. Here, only a few hundred yards from the trailhead, the canyon was not simply deep. It had depth. Dimension. Magnitude.

But what really got me was the silence.

Not quiet. Silence. The kind that doesn’t just muffle noise but absorbs it. Swallows it. It makes you realize how much noise you carry in your head all the time.

The noise I sometimes carry.

I sat there for maybe ten minutes. Lyn kept hiking.

Finally, I stood back up, again taking the weight of the forty-pound pack on my shoulders and hips. I hiked for maybe a half mile down the steep trail, carefully balancing on boulders when needed, kicking dry dust in other spots. Once I Iooked back at my tracks, the lugs from the bottom of the boots making patterns like waffle irons. At last I spotted Lyn ahead of me, standing in the shade of gambel oak.

When I got close, he gave me a look and asked, “What do you think.”

I stopped. Poked some rocks with my trekking pole.

“Lyn,” I said at last. “I think I’m home.”

And I was. That’s when the Grand Canyon became my happy place.

I had been back every year since. Sometimes twice. So of course I took Charlotte there. Of course I wanted her to see it the way I first did.

Of course I thought this was going to bring us closer.

And of course:

That did not happen.

At first, all was well.

Two days on the road. West through the endless flatness of West Texas, then north into New Mexico. We stopped at a roadside stand in Pie Town. Bought two slices– apple for her, pumpkin for me. Ate them with plastic forks while standing in the parking lot.

Charlotte navigated. I drove. We listened to Emmylou Harris and Neko Case and Sarah Bareilles and talked about nothing important. We overnighted near Gallup. Drank our morning coffee watching the sun hit red rocks.

By late afternoon of the second day, we were there.

Just in time for a warm spell for late March – freezing at night, but shirtsleeve weather by early afternoon.

We spent a day walking around the South Rim village, doing some tourist shopping, grabbing an afternoon beer in the bar at the stately Yavapai Lodge. At Hopi House I saw Charlotte admiring a small silver brooch set with turquoise. I bought it for her. “That’s too much,” she said. I told her it looked like Arizona.

At the bookstore she bought a copy of my favorite book, Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. I had met one of the co-authors. She read the first few chapters that night in the trailer, horrified.

One incident described two hikers from Pennsylvania – a man and woman in their twenties– who tried to speed hike from one trailhead to the other. Well within their capabilities. But they misread the map. It was thirty-two miles, not twenty. It was June, and the weather was hotter than they had anticipated. And by canyon standards, they had half the water they needed for an overnight hike.

By noon the next day, the man collapsed, delirious. His companion kept going, reached the junction with South Kaibab, then down to Phantom Ranch.

By the time rangers reached her friend, she was dead.

What Charlotte couldn’t get over was that early on that second day they had found a pool of water.

The man refused to drink it.

There were pollywogs in it.

Pollywogs.

“So…people die here?” she asked.

“Pretty often,” I had to admit. “It’s not a forgiving place.”

I had almost died here once. A stumble, a head laceration and concussion, a flight out in a Park Service helicopter. I decided not to bring this up.

She frowned. “And you brought me here…like a date?”

“Well…yeah.”

She turned a page and kept reading.

The second afternoon we hiked the Bright Angel Trail, one of the main tourist routes. Not far– just a mile or so, enough to get well below the rim.

I was in my element. Blabbing about how the canyon formed. Pointing out the Redwall limestone. The Vishnu schist. The unconformity.

“So, this layer is two billion years old,” I said, pointing at a rock face. “And this one above it is only five hundred million. There’s a billion and a half years just… missing.”

Charlotte nodded. Asked questions. Seemed interested. But wore a slight smile that made it clear she was humoring me.

I had deliberately timed the hike so we would come out in the dark. Once benighted, we donned headlamps that pooled yellow light on the trail. The Milky Way arched overhead like a garden hose spraying stars.

“God,” she said, looking up. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

I felt like I had given her a gift.

That evening, I grilled tenderloin steaks directly on the coals of the campfire. Just meat on embers.

Charlotte watched, skeptical.

“Won’t that ruin them?”

“Nope. Watch.”

I pulled them off after four minutes per side. Brushed off the ash. Sliced one open.

Perfect medium-rare.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, tasting it.

“Right?”

We ate sitting at the picnic table. Smoke smell in our hair.

Everything seemed perfect. I liked playing guide.

That night we could hear the wind in the Ponderosa pine trees. A coyote wailed.

On the morning of our last full day there, we caught a shuttle bus to the South Kaibab trail.

It’s a gem of a trail – starting with a series of sharp switchbacks followed by a descending traverse along rocky ledges and pinyon pines to a knock-out view from aptly named Oo-Ah Point. I know it well.

But Charlotte began to struggle not long after we had cleared the first switchbacks. The altitude was hitting. After a mile and a half, we stopped at Oo-Ah. The view was lost on Charlotte. She was breathing hard.

“I need to rest,” she said.

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s the altitude – you’ll adjust.”

We kept going.

Somewhere above Cedar Ridge– a large flat area with hitching posts for mules and a toilet for people– the sky changed. That sudden desert shift from bright to wounded. Wind first. Then rain. Cold big drops that smacked into the dust like hand grenades.

The trail became slick. Charlotte’s pace slowed. I turned and looked back at her.

“You okay?”

“I’m tired.”

“We’re almost to Cedar Ridge. You can rest there.”

But Cedar Ridge was still half a mile away.

Twenty minutes later she stopped.

“Tom, I need to eat something.”

I reached into my pack. A gust of wind blew rain against my face. Then I realized with a start that I had forgotten the snacks. The Goldfish crackers. The Snickers bars. The Liquid IV packets I always carried. The things that bring a person back when they’re fading.

I felt my face flush.

Here was the rub: I knew better. I had spent a chunk of the previous two summers working as a volunteer in the canyon with PSAR – Preventative Search and Rescue. My job, in large part, was to make sure people didn’t get into the kind of trouble Charlotte was in right now.

And I had made one of the most basic mistakes in the book.

“I don’t have anything,” I said. “It’s back in the Ford.”

She stared at me. “You’re kidding.”

She sat on a rock. Put her head in her hands.

“Charlotte, we can make it. We’ll head up now. It’s maybe a mile and a half.”

A shake of her head.

“I don’t think I can.”

“You can. Come on.”

I pulled her up. She swayed.

“Tom…”

The stretch from Cedar Ridge to Oo-Ah Point is a series of switchbacks that cut back and forth across a steep ridge. Each time we crossed over the crest, the weather changed – blasting wind and rain on one side, somewhat merciful calm on the other.

As we neared Oo-Ah – a place where the trail eases a little – Charlotte bonked. Hard.

She was stumbling. Lightheaded. Miserable. Her steps got shorter. Uneven. “Just a little further,” I said.

No answer.

Now we were fully exposed to the wind and rain until we got to the trailhead.

The rain worsened. Cold. Relentless. We had already put on all the clothes we carried. One more layer would have been nice. Another mistake, I thought.

She stumbled again. Caught herself. I reached for her arm. She pulled away.

“So, this is your goddamn happy place?” she muttered.

Then she tripped. Went down on one knee. Scraped it raw. A first-aid kit I had. She let me clean the wound with some Betadine and apply a bandage.

Fortunately, the South Kaibab Trail rarely veers near steep drop-offs. Some canyon trails creep within inches of hundred-foot cliffs. There the rain can turn the soil into something as slick as ice. Death in the Grand Canyon has several stories where a slip proves fatal.

We plodded uphill.

By the time we clawed our way back to the rim, we were drenched, exhausted, and mad as hell at each other. We caught a shuttle back to Mather Campground and the Airstream.

Neither of us spoke.

Inside, I heated tomato soup on the stove. The only sound was the burner clicking, then hissing to life.

I poured soup into bowls, little contrails of steam rising. Set them on the dinette table. We sat across from each other.

Charlotte winced each time she shifted her weight.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally.

She looked at me.

“I should have doubled-checked the pack.”

“Yeah. You should have.”

Her voice was flat. Not angry. Just… done.

With me.

She finished her soup and stood. “I’m going to bed,” she said. I nodded.

I made up the dinette bed. She took the Gaucho bed in back.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of her in the bathroom. I sat up. Stuffed my sleeping bag into its storage sack along with my pillow. She came out dressed. Made coffee without looking at me. “Morning,” I said.

“Morning.”

“How’s your knee?”

“Sore.”

Charlotte sat on the Gaucho bed. I stayed at the dinette.

She looked out the window.

The sun was bright, but the air was cold.

“I’ll get us packed,” I said. It seemed like a good idea to get moving.

________________________________________________________________