“Holy shit,” Todd said.

“That was something,” Tracy said, grinning.

“That poor fish didn’t know what hit him,” Oscar said. “Did you see him? He was looking right at us!”

“That’s life in the wilderness for you,” Tracy remarked. “One minute, you’re just swimming along, minding your own business. The next . . .”

Gwen took a few steps closer to the river. She didn’t want a life lesson right now. She didn’t want the moment to have meaning imposed; it was perfect and complete as it was. In the distance, she could still make out the tiny figure of the bird, the now-thinning trail of spray.

“Let’s keep going,” Tracy said, and so they did.

The trail stayed close to the river now, sometimes just beside it, sometimes winding away past a rock formation or through a stand of woods, never out of hearing distance. After another three miles the trail crossed the river. It was serene here, and there were enough rocks to use as stepping stones. When they reached the other side, they decided to break for lunch. They left their packs beside the trail and scrambled back down to the river’s edge with their lunches. Gwen sat on the sand, and Tracy a little above her on a fallen log. Todd clambered up on a big rock at the edge of the water, and Oscar, after removing his boots and socks, waded out into the river, where he hoisted himself up onto a rock and sat facing upstream. The usual gray boulders were intermixed here with smooth, shiny black rock, whose wavelike curves and circular indentations had been carved by the rushing water. They looked like sculptures, more beautiful than anything conceived by man.

They ate hungrily—cheese sandwiches for Tracy and Gwen, peanut butter and jelly for Oscar and Todd. They shared a couple of Snickers bars for dessert. Then the two men relaxed on their boulders, arms over their faces. Gwen gazed out at the water, which was so clear she could make out brown and gray rocks submerged far out in the river, as if she were looking at them through glass. Finally, nearly hypnotized by the sight of water sliding over rock, she lay back on the ground and closed her eyes. The feel of the sun on her face, drying her sweat, was heavenly; the smell of the pines and the water made her feel cleansed; the steady sound of the river was soothing and she drifted off to sleep.

It felt like ten seconds before someone jiggled her. “Come on, sleepyhead,” she heard, and when she opened her eyes, Tracy was standing over her. “We need to get moving.”

Gwen sat up slowly and saw that the guys were already back up at the trail.

“We refilled the water bottles and treated them—yours too,” Tracy said.

“Thank you. How long have I been asleep?”

“About half an hour.”

When they resumed their hike, Gwen was still half-asleep. The pack seemed heavier now, her hips and shoulders felt bruised, and hot spots were developing on her feet. And she was hungry again too—the sandwich had not been enough. Embarrassed, and feeling like she wasn’t pulling her weight, she asked to stop so she could put some Moleskin on her heels. Everyone waited quietly but she could sense their impatience. She got her shoes back on, ate a bit of beef jerky, and was quickly up again.

They continued for ten, fifteen minutes without much conversation. Then the trail veered sharply away from the river and uphill to the right, and they all stopped to assess their course.

Tracy pointed up the river’s path with her trekking pole. “Looks like the river comes from out of that slot canyon. No way for us to follow it.”

Upriver, forty-foot vertical walls of granite rose on either side of the narrow canyon. Whole sections had broken off in flat irregular shapes like sheets of glass, leaving light-colored scars on the rock beneath. Wherever the river was coming from, it wasn’t anyplace they could safely travel.

“What does it say on your homemade map?” Todd asked.

Tracy swung her pack off her shoulder easily and set it down with one hand. She unzipped the lid and pulled out the map. “Seems right. You can see that the trail heads away from the river.”

“So . . . it looks like we have some switchbacks coming up,” Todd said, looking over her shoulder. “And then there’s an open space here, maybe a meadow?”

“This is a lake,” Tracy said, pointing. “Right here at the end of it.”

“So we’re on the right track?” Gwen asked.

“Seem to be,” said Todd. “But brace yourself. We’re about to go uphill.”

Oscar was sitting on a rock, fiddling with his GPS unit, and now his shoulders slumped. “As opposed to what we’ve been doing for the last four hours?”

“Steeper uphill,” said Tracy.

Gwen just sat where she was, too tired to speak. She could picture her mother shaking her head, hear Chris’s derisive laughter. But what could she do? She couldn’t turn around and walk out. So she reshouldered her pack, more smoothly this time, and resolved to keep on going.

The terrain was steep, but it wasn’t as bad as Gwen feared. The trail was a ramp of earth and leaves, no rock steps. Still, she was glad for the workouts in Tracy’s class, the countless squats and knee drives; without them, her legs—and lungs—would never have been able to handle this load. And it helped that as they switchbacked up the slope, they began to see the wooded valley they’d started from. It was beautiful, and seeing how far they’d come gave Gwen the energy she needed. They heard water again, a stream that was working its way down from another part of the mountain. There was more granite here, massive swirling gentle slopes that flowed downhill in concert with the water. One huge dome was crisscrossed with numberless cracks, like a pot that had been broken into thousands of pieces and carefully glued back together.

Within twenty minutes they’d reached the top of the switchbacks and now they crossed another stream, balancing on a log that had fallen across it.

“Look!” Todd called out excitedly, and Gwen saw the dark, slick backs of fish, the flashes of pink on their bellies as they darted and swam. There were so many she might have reached out and grabbed them with her hands.

“Are they rainbow trout?” Oscar asked.

“No, those are eastern brookies,” Todd said. “Damn, I wish I’d brought my fishing pole.”

They stood admiring the fish for a moment—Gwen had never seen so many in a natural setting, so colorful and alive. They walked on and wound their way through the forest, passing a stand of white-barked trees that Todd identified as aspens, their flat round leaves shimmering and rustling in the breeze like a thousand gentle wind chimes. Then suddenly they were out, in a landscape so different they might have stepped through a wardrobe into Narnia.

They were standing at the edge of a meadow, a mile wide and at least two miles long. The lush green reeds were as high as their waists, and sprinkled through them, at each creek and rivulet, was an explosion of wildflowers—purple and red and yellow and orange, bright blue and scarlet and gold. The river here was wide and meandering, running calmly along the edge of the meadow; several deer were standing a quarter-mile away, drinking peacefully at its banks. The meadow was ringed with taller peaks that still held pockets of snow. Although Gwen could make out the gentle sound of the water, everything else was still; the silence here was even deeper than the silence that morning at camp; it was so full it was a sound in itself.

“Wow,” said Tracy. “Wow.” And if even she was impressed, Gwen thought, then this really was something special.

“Have we died?” Todd asked. “Because I think this might be heaven.”

“This is unreal,” Oscar said. “I didn’t even know that a place like this existed.”

“Well, dead or alive, we’re here,” Tracy said. “If our map is accurate, there’s a lake just a bit farther on.”

Here the cover of trees was gone and they were in the open sun; they put on sunglasses and sunscreen and lip balm. The meadow and mountains, the running river, only got more beautiful as they hiked. They were silent except for the occasional word from Todd or Tracy to identify a wildflower: lupine, monkey-flower, Indian paintbrush, mule’s ears, penstemon, mariposa lily. The grandness of it all left Gwen humbled and moved; it was almost too much to take in. After an hour the meadow narrowed and the two ranges came together; the peak straight ahead was the landscape’s gathering point. On each side a stream rippled down a steep mountain wall. And there, surrounded on three sides by mountain, they found the small, pristine lake. The surface glistened in the afternoon sun. The banks in front of them, and to the right, were rocky but approachable; to the left the meadow continued, reaching up to and beyond the lake’s end.