Page 45 of Happiness for Beginners

“I think I don’t want to smell like a skunk,” the Sister said.

“You can wash your body,” Beckett said. “You just can’t do it in a stream. And you can’t use any soap.”

Somebody asked, “What do we wash our dishes with if we don’t have any soap?”

“Dirt,” Beckett answered, and nobody knew if he was joking.

Having to hike at the slow end with these girls was literally adding insult to injury. I’d come here for nature. I’d come here to be transformed. And yet for that whole first day of hiking, I listened to celebrity gossip, tales of intra-sorority injustice, and diet tips. The air was thinner here, up in the mountains, and we were all panting some as we pushed relentlessly uphill. The Sisters were out of breath, too, but they didn’t let it stop them. One had just finished an all-grapefruit and laxative cleanse, which had cured her acne but given her a seizure, and the other—I swear I’m not exaggerating—spent a solid hour enumerating the benefits of juicing, and listing every fruit, vegetable, or meat that could be put in a blender for any reason.

It had not occurred to me that there could be something worse than being dead last. But those girls gave dead last a run for its money.

***

Much to my thighs’ relief, we stopped to set up camp midafternoon so Beckett could instruct us in proper tarp-hanging techniques, teach us how to light and use our kerosene stoves, and demonstrate a “bear hang.”

“Anybody know what a bear hang is?” Beckett asked.

We’d convened as a group in a clearing full of wildflowers for our first wilderness survival “class.” I had my journal out, taking furious notes—my inner A student refusing to accept defeat—but nobody else seemed to be writing.

Mason raised his hand. “You have to hang your food at night between two trees so the bears don’t eat it.”

“Correct,” Beckett said. “And why would that be bad?”

Mason frowned. “’Cause you don’t want the bears to get your food, dude.”

Hugh added, “And you don’t want to give the bears a reason to come to your camp.”

“That’s right,” Beckett said. “We also don’t want bears to become dependent on humans for their sustenance.” Something about the way he said it made me suspect that he was more concerned for the bears—and fish, and algae—than the humans.

“Who wants to be our first bear hang volunteer?” Beckett asked.

Nobody raised a hand. I looked around and was pleased to see that everybody looked about as dead tired as I felt. Finally, Jake raised his hand. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“Good man,” Beckett said.

After dinner, we combined all our food together in one big nylon bag. Then we followed Beckett and Jake as they scouted a spot.

I’d taken careful notes on the bear hang. It wasn’t just enough to hang your food from a branch. Bears were smart enough to figure that out. You had to climb a tree with one end of a rope while another person climbed another tree with the other end, and then tie that rope from tree to tree, attach your food bag to it, and then pull it to the middle point between the two trees. Bears were awesome, but they weren’t tightrope walkers.

“Watch,” Beckett said, “and pay attention.”

It was starting to get dark now. Setting up tarps and cooking dinner had taken us, as Beckett had pointed out, “way too long.” As Beckett and Jake started to climb their trees, I wondered about Jake’s night vision. But it didn’t seem to hold him back. In fact, the bear hang wasn’t supposed to be a race, but as Beckett noticed how quickly and easily Jake was pulling himself up, hand-over-hand through the tree branches, Beckett started to do the same. And people were cheering.

Hugh came to stand next to me, and said, “My money’s on Jake.”

I sighed. “Mine, too.”

We both watched, arms crossed, mouths open. I’m not sure if Hugh was marveling at the sight, but I sure was. There really didn’t seem to be anything Jake couldn’t do.

Jake and Beckett stopped midway up, tied their ropes with special knots around the trees’ trunks, and then Beckett attached the food bag with a carabiner to the rope and slid it out to the middle. It slowed at the halfway point, then stopped. Everybody cheered, even me, and then Beckett and Jake shifted into reverse to climb back down.

It hadn’t been that dark when they started, but in the twenty minutes that had elapsed, day had tipped over into night. It might have been the darkness. Or maybe it was just bad luck. But somehow, halfway down, Jake missed a branch or lost his footing. There was a fast, unnatural rustle as he dropped the final six or so feet to the ground that made me gasp when I heard it. He landed on his feet, but he held stock-still for a few very long seconds. He was really hurt, I thought.

But, then, he raised his arms over his head in victory and turned to the group, which erupted in cheers. With that one gesture, he rewrote the moment. He hadn’t fallen—he had won the race. The nonexistent race. And he wasn’t hurt, he was victorious. I stared in awe. Only Jake could make falling out of a tree into something awesome.

***

That night, I lay my sleeping bag under the tarp next to Windy—and as far away from Mason as I could get.

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