Page 98 of Happiness for Beginners

I yawned again and settled down farther into my bag, and thought about how I really, really did not want to go to that bar mitzvah.

“Come with me to Baja,” he suggested then, like he was reading my mind. “That’s a legitimate excuse.”

“I love that idea,” I said, trying it on for size as I sank toward sleep.I’m sorry. I can’t make it, after all. It’s spawning season for the gray whales.

***

The second day of our Solo was as easy as the first day had been hard.

Packing up that morning, it was clear that we’d set up camp in Elk-ville. There were squished-down ovals of trampled grass all around our campsite. We’d spent the night surrounded by sleeping beasts the size of flying saucers. But there was no sign of them now.

“Early risers,” Flash said, surveying the scene.

Dosie and Jake proclaimed me the leader that day, and Flash didn’t argue. “Take us back to the barn, Holdup,” Flash said, as we clicked on our packs.

And so I led us back. Easy. It helped a lot to have the map right side up. But I didn’t say that. It also helped that I had this magical, totally-useless-in-the-real-world map-reading ability. I led us with complete confidence. We stayed on the trail, we stuck together, and the only difficulty at all came at the very start of the hike when we had no choice but to cross that rickety bridge—which was far more difficult for Jake, in his duct-taped glasses, than for the rest of us. The bridge creaked and swayed and the bottom dropped out of my stomach more times than I could count before we all made it safely to the other side.

We were the first group to make it back, and as we told Beckett our tale, he shook his head. “I can’t believe you people. Wasn’tanybodypaying attention?” Then he added, “Besides Calamity Jane?”

I couldn’t help it. I lifted up my finger guns and blew the smoke off the barrels.

It turned out every group had a near-death experience to report. Cookie’s group had a bear sighting, a mosquito infestation, and a twisted ankle. Windy’s group had been swept away during a swollen river crossing, leading to plenty of near-drowning, CPR, and hypothermia. Looking around, it seemed like a miracle that we were all still alive—assuming, of course, that Hugh was.

Nobody had said it out loud yet, but once we’d made it through the Solos, there was nothing else to distract us: This was our last night. It was a bittersweet feeling sharpened by opposites. We all, including me, wanted to go home exactly as badly as we wanted to stay. That night, we talked incessantly about the things we couldn’t wait to get back to (pizza, french fries, TV, showers, Charmin) and the things we never wanted to do again (eat rehydrated food, dig a cat hole, carry a full-grown man three miles through the woods). But it was an overly loud, overly boisterous strategy: staving off sadness by insisting you didn’t care.

Our last order of business before we turned in for the night was to cast our votes for Certificate winners. Beckett took this very seriously. It was a secret, fully democratic process, and everybody got one ballot—except for Beckett, who got an extra. “Everybody gets one vote and one vote only,” he said. “Unless you’re me. Then you get two.” We were expected to consider our hiking buddies without prejudice and to take into account the ways they’d evolved during our time here. “You are not the same idiots you were when you arrived that first day,” Beckett said. “Remember that.”

Our criteria were supposed to be: leadership, compassion, commitment, and virtue. The people who had consistently demonstrated these qualities were the only ones who could hope to go home with Certificates. “Take it seriously, people,” Beckett warned. “It’s not about the biggest or the fastest. Who paid attention? Who cherished every moment? Who helped out the most? Who went for water when no one else would?”

“Can we vote for ourselves?” Flash asked.

Beckett lifted his eyebrow a hair. “It’s fair to say that if you’re the type of person who’d vote for himself, that’s the only vote you’re likely to get.”

“What if we can’t decide?” Dosie asked.

“It’s not that hard,” Beckett said. “In fact, it’s not hard at all. I know who both my votes are going to. There’s one obvious winner here.”

The kids all bent their heads to their ballots. That’s when Beckett raised his eyes to mine. Then he pointed his finger at me and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 14

The last morning, we woke like any other, made coffee, packed up, struck camp—and then said good-bye to the wilderness. Beckett had us observe a full minute of silence at sunrise in honor of Mother Nature. Then he had us hold hands while he said a farewell prayer.

“All-knowing Mother,” he said, with his head bowed. “I’m sorry human beings are such a blight. I’m sorry we litter your earth and choke the fish in your oceans with plastic grocery sacks. We have been given incomprehensible beauty on this earth, but we don’t see it. We walk around angry and blind and ungrateful. I wish we were better, our dumb human race, but I don’t have much hope that we ever will be. The best I can do today is say: Thank you for this world of miracles. We will try to be more grateful. And less ridiculous.”

On the first day, or even during the first week, I would have been looking out of the side of my eyes, likeIs this dude for real?But now, as he came to a close, I started to clap. Everybody else started to clap, too, and shout things like, “Go, Boss! Tell it like it is!”

“Pipe down!” Beckett said, but he was smiling.

That was it. We hoisted up our packs for the very last time and snapped them in place. We assembled for the very last time in our well-worn grooves in the line. Everything was just the same as it had been all along, except each minute had a bittersweet tint because it was thelast time. It was Flash’s last chance to moon Vegas. It was Beckett’s last chance to shout, “Move it out, people!” It was the Sisters’ last chance to straggle along at the back, gossiping.

All morning, the kids had been talking about “next year,” and making plans to come back and do it over again, in a way that made me saddest of all. Because I knew that they wouldn’t. A year is an eternity, and they’d never come back. Life would get in the way. Maybe one or two would come back once or twice over the next few years, but it would never be this group again, in this place, with these circumstances. This was a moment in time that was already lost.

I would certainly never come back—but not because I’d never want to. Only because that’s how life is. It moves too fast—faster and faster the older you get, no matter how much you’d like to slow it down.

Jake lingered the longest before putting on his pack. After the prayer, as everybody hugged and cried and exchanged numbers, Jake stood off at the edge of the clearing, soaking in the light from that sunrise. Even as we started to hike away, Jake kept turning back for one more look.

Then we were in the trees, following a trail the sunrise hadn’t reached yet. Within the hour, we arrived at the final trailhead. The old green-and-white BCSC bus was waiting for us, door open. There was nothing left to do but get on.

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