Page 50 of Happiness for Beginners

This was something I’d already noticed about the wilderness: the fallen tree trunks everywhere. It was the life cycle of a tree, of course—to grow, live, die, and fall—but you never saw anything like that in the city. Dead trees were cut down and removed precisely so they didn’t fall. Here, still-standing dead trees were called “widow-makers.” “Don’t set up camp within reach of a widow-maker,” Beckett had said the night before. “One good gust of wind, and that thing’s going down.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. There was evidence of it all around—dead logs everywhere, especially lying across our trails. At first, I’d found it a great pleasure to step on them—willing to go to the trouble of climbing up so that I could enjoy literally one second of the relief of going back down. Stepping on those trees had been my favorite part of hiking that first day, until Beckett called me out at a rest stop. “You guys haven’t seen Ellen doing this,” he’d started off, pointing at me to make sure everybody knew who he was talking about, “because she’s all the way at the back. But she’s been stepping on the logs that lie across the path.”

“It’s Helen,” I corrected. “With an H.”

But he was making his point. “Who wants to tell her why she can’t do that?”

Jake shouted out the answer. “Some of them are rotten,” he said, meeting my eyes. “They can’t support your weight. Your foot will crash right through.”

“That’s right,” Beckett said. “That’s a broken leg and an emergency evacuation, right there.”

“Sorry,” I said, shrugging.

Beckett pointed at me. “Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” I said, pouting like a naughty child, and not saying what I wanted to: This is exactly the type of information I would’ve wantedbeforewe set out into the wilderness.

So, this morning, as Jake gestured at the dead log, I hesitated.

He knew what I was thinking. “You can sit on it,” he said. “Your butt is much, much wider than your foot—”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So it distributes the weight more evenly. Plus you don’t have your pack on, so you weigh less right now.”

I sat. And I didn’t crash through.

“And anyway,” he went on, “you can’t really break your butt.”

“Just watch me,” I said.

He turned to the medical kit, and I couldn’t tell if he was stifling a smile.

He pulled off the old bandage on my knee and examined the cut. The scab was about an inch long, and so dark it was almost black. The skin around it looked bruised now, too.

“It looks worse,” I said.

“No, it’s good,” he said. “That’s a great scab.”

“Agreatscab?”

“And the bruising’s to be expected. I don’t see any signs of infection. Nice job.”

“You’re the one who bandaged me.”

“I was talking to myself,” he said.

“I have to confess something else to you,” I said then. “I may have some blisters.”

“Actual blisters?” Jake asked.

I nodded.

“That can’t be right,” Jake said. “I saw you taking notes during Beckett’s Beware of Blisters lecture on the bus.”

I nodded. I knew how we were supposed to handle blisters. I gave a little shrug.

“Okay,” Jake said, looking down. “Show me.”

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