After they ate, they all washed their dishes and repacked their food. Then Gwen changed out of her sweats and into her hiking clothes. She captured her hair in an elastic band and reluctantly put on a hat; she was not one of those girls who felt cute in a baseball cap.

Then, a flurry of organization. They folded their tents up and Tracy and Todd stuffed them in their packs. They sorted out clothes they didn’t need and threw them into the back of the car, Gwen trying to shake the feeling that she was forgetting something crucial. They filled their bottles from the stream and treated the water with a screwdriver-sized ultraviolet contraption. They adjusted and tightened their hiking poles—all except Oscar, who hadn’t brought any. By seven forty-five, everything was either in the car or their packs, and the campsite looked as clear as it had when they’d pulled in the day before.

“All right, we need a picture,” said Tracy, and so they lined up near the fire pit. They were now in their respective hiking outfits—Gwen in olive pants and an eggplant-colored long-sleeved shirt, Tracy in clay pants and a light brown button-down, Todd in a gray-blue long-sleeved shirt and tan hiking shorts, Oscar in black nylon shorts Gwen remembered from the gym, and a rust-colored pullover fleece. Tracy placed her camera on a tree stump, then ran over to join the group; she hoisted her pack on just as the timer counted down and the camera clicked. She retrieved it, looked at the picture, and held it out for everyone to see. “Off we go,” she said. “Explorers in the wild.”

Oscar looked over her shoulder and grinned. “What a bunch of dorks.”

“There’s just no way to look cool, is there?” Gwen agreed, laughing. “With these big old packs and poles.”

“I think we look pretty studly,” Todd said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, ladies.”

“I agree,” Tracy said flatly. “Carrying forty-pound packs for thirty miles, up to 11,500 feet, isn’t my definition of dorky.”

“Okay, okay, sorry!” Oscar said, shaking his head. “All right, we’re adventurers. We’re pioneers in the wild.”

Gwen knew what Oscar meant. Sure, a thirty-mile loop in the backcountry was a big undertaking. But they were in the Sierras, in a designated Wilderness Area—not too far from civilization. All of them had steady, responsible jobs; two of them had families. They could pretend to be whatever, whomever they pleased. But in the end they were four adults in their thirties and forties, a lawyer and a youth counselor, a trainer and a realtor. They were not extraordinary people.

They walked over to the trailhead—an unobtrusive passage through a thick cluster of trees—and then they were hiking, and Gwen could hardly believe they were on their way. The trail led through forest, then curved closer to the canyon wall. She was aware in a different way of her body itself—the effort of placing one foot in front of the other; the extension of her arm to plant a pole. And she was conscious of the pack on her back, which was like carrying a small child, except it didn’t adjust itself like a child would and simply added weight, so if she leaned left the pack tipped with her, threatening to pull her over; if she stood up straight it pulled her backward; if she bent over the pack pressed her toward the ground. After ten minutes she learned how to use the poles to help distribute the weight, another ten and she developed a kind of rhythm. She was third in line—Tracy led and Oscar followed, Todd brought up the rear. She watched how the others picked their steps and used their poles, and tried to ignore the pressure on her shoulders and hips.

They walked silently on soft trail, through cover of forest. They left the first canyon and entered a larger one. Here the granite walls were more varied—huge rounded domes with clear marks where bits of rock had crumbled off; and cliff walls where the rock had fallen away in squares, leaving shapes like the blunt-featured figures on Easter Island. After thirty minutes, Todd called out, “Hold on for a minute, I’ve got to tie my shoe.”

Oscar sat down heavily on a fallen log and swung his pack off his shoulder. From the look on his face, he was as glad to stop as Gwen was. She found a thigh-high boulder and lowered herself slowly, resting the pack on the rock to remove the burden from her shoulders. The hip straps dug into her stomach and she breathed in relief as she undid the buckle and slipped her arms out of the shoulder straps. She reached behind awkwardly to grab her bottle and then gave up and turned around, pulling the bottle out of the side pocket.

“I forgot how damned hard it is to walk with a pack,” Oscar said, taking off his fleece. His pack, an old-fashioned external frame, looked like a loaded sled set on its heels.

“It’s pretty tough,” Gwen agreed, and she glanced over at Tracy, who was still on her feet, looking up the trail, bear spray clipped to her belt. She stood there easily, bouncing on her toes, as if she carried nothing at all.

“We’ve gone one mile,” Tracy announced. “Only twenty-nine to go.”

Gwen took this in without comment, but her heart sank. They’d gone one mile? With all that effort? What had she been thinking? This was infinitely harder than any hike she’d ever done in LA. How was she going to make it thirty miles with a heavy backpack? Right now, she wasn’t even sure if she could make it another mile.

“Why are we doing this again?” Oscar asked.

“Aw, come on,” Todd said, hoisting his pack back on. “This is great.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Tracy said. “Only three more hours until lunch.”

Oscar looked at Gwen and opened his eyes wide. “You heard her. Only three more hours till lunch.”

Gwen twisted her arms at uncomfortable angles to get them into her shoulder straps, then reclipped the buckles at her waist and chest. She didn’t know how she would stand up again. She tried once but the pack was too heavy; she managed to raise herself about three inches and then sat back down.

“Lean forward onto the poles and bend your legs,” Tracy instructed, and she tried once, twice, before she finally got her feet set under her and pushed with her legs, shooting up so fast that the weight of the pack carried her forward and almost tipped her over.

“This is going to get easier, right?” she asked.

“Not really,” Tracy answered. “You just get used to it.”

This didn’t reassure Gwen, but as they continued on, she found that Tracy—as usual—was right. The pack was heavy, unwieldy—but she was getting used to it. She stopped thinking about the whole trip and focused instead on placing one foot in front of the other, using the poles to help her as she stepped up onto rocks and as the trail began to slope uphill. They had spread out now, fifteen or twenty feet between them, and Gwen was glad for the space and privacy. The woods around them were green and lush; the trees were clothed with bright green-yellow moss and the ground was covered with ferns. It looked to Gwen like a scene from a children’s book, some fictional benevolent forest. Several tree roots sprang up from and reentered the ground, like eels whose smooth, dark backs breached the surface of water. The landscape gave way to more open terrain, and eventually the creek revealed itself to be the fork of a larger river. They followed this new river past huge granite outcroppings like the toy building blocks of the children of giants. They continued under sheer granite walls, meeting up with the river again, where a jumble of fallen boulders caused the water to twist and spray; they walked close enough to feel the mist on their skin.

Suddenly Gwen heard a whooshing sound and locked eyes with a fish, level with her in midair, ten feet away. It was caught in the talons of a huge rust-winged hawk, whose right foot was clamped around the fish below its head, the left above its tail, the bird’s wings beating the air as it moved quickly skyward. The fish’s mouth was working and it must have been in shock, removed so suddenly from its watery home that it didn’t even struggle. Then they were gone and the great bird turned upriver, its large, solid body now dwarfing its prey, the wings moving with efficiency and power. As it flew, water streamed off the fish in a diffuse, falling spray. Rays of light hit the droplets as they fell, and the whole effect was like a million fireflies, or shimmery fireworks floating softly toward the river.