“I think this is home for the night,” said Tracy.

“This is perfect,” Todd replied.

“Let’s put our stuff down and I’ll look around for a place to set up camp.”

Gwen was glad to have a reason to sit; she took off her pack and collapsed. Down the meadow, a deer lingered by the river’s edge, still watching them. Its nose was black and wet, its huge ears swiveling in response to sound. Why didn’t it leave? she wondered. The lake was so still that the reflection of the mountain on its surface looked like an entirely separate mountain. In her exhaustion she half-wondered if she could swim out and step onto it.

Then Tracy was back. “There’s a good spot up there,” she said, pointing behind them and to the right. “Flat, protected by some trees, nice view of the lake. Exactly like it shows on the map.”

“Good. I’m ready to be settled,” Todd said.

Oscar stood up, groaning. “Tell me about it.”

The spot Tracy had found was perfect—clear, and nestled in trees, overlooking the lake. Gwen helped the best she could, unfolding the tent poles until they locked into place, clipping the plastic hooks onto the poles. But mostly she felt like she was getting in the way, so she stepped aside as Tracy attached the rain fly, collected rocks to the fill the gaps in what looked like an old fire pit, and gathered, with Todd’s help, an assortment of branches and sticks for a fire. Tracy was in a short-sleeved shirt now, black, and Gwen saw how the muscles in her arms shifted with her movements. Her calf and thigh muscles were so solid Gwen could see them through her pants. Even at forty, Tracy looked like she could still mix it up with the twenty-five-year-olds in the pro women’s basketball game Gwen had gone to recently with the kids. Tracy’s motions were steady and efficient, strong, and again Gwen thought of wolves. What a well-built creature, she thought, looking at Tracy’s body. Would she ever feel that confident in her own?

Once camp was set up, Oscar and Todd crawled into their tent for a nap. Tracy changed into some flip-flops and even she lay down now, head resting on her pack, cap over her face. But Gwen, after closing her eyes, sat up straight again. Despite her exhaustion, she was too charged up to rest.

She walked down from their campsite and stepped across a small creek, over to the other side of the lake. The lone deer still watched her from the river’s edge. There were a few mosquitoes swirling around her now, but she batted them away. Off trail, the wet earth of the meadow was like tar on her shoes; she stepped quickly so as not to sink in. And what was she trying to get to? She didn’t know. Maybe further into the heart of beauty itself. Finally, more than a hundred feet up the side of the lake, the ground was a little firmer. Here bushes grew in heavy green clumps.

There was a patch of easy shoreline ahead, and Gwen decided to go down to the lake to soak her sore feet. She stepped past some shoulder-high brush, about fifteen feet from the water’s edge. There was a blur of movement—a tiny form, bolting awkwardly away. It was a fawn—smaller than she’d imagined a deer could ever be, barely the size of a spaniel. It moved uncertainly on legs so fresh and untried that these might have been its first steps on earth.

“It’s okay,” she said reassuringly, but the baby was gone, stumbling to the next set of bushes. No wonder the deer had stuck around, she thought. She was afraid we were a danger to her baby.

Gwen was about to continue on when she saw a flash of blond fur—another fawn, curled up in a tight ball with its little bony legs angling outward. Was it dead? No, just lying still, head pulled into its body, ears lying flat against its head. When Gwen saw its dark liquid eyes looking up at her fearfully, she understood it was trying to hide. She stepped up to take a closer look at the little creature, its constellation of white spots, knowing she shouldn’t but unable to help herself. The fawn burrowed its head deeper into itself. “Oh, honey,” she said, “I won’t hurt you.”

Then she backed away enough to give the baby some space, and it sprang up and wobbled off to join its sibling.

“Don’t worry, mama deer,” she called out to the adult. “Your babies are fine.”

She went down to the water, took her shoes off, and stuck her worn feet into the lake, enjoying the shock of the snow-melt cold. She’d hoped to rinse off in the water, but the numbness in her feet convinced her otherwise. Instead, she submerged one leg up beyond her once-injured knee, to discourage inflammation. After her leg and feet got used to the cold, she looked up at the sky. A few afternoon clouds had floated in over the peaks; they almost seemed alive. They moved through, into, and on top of each other, in shades of white and gray. A chain of clouds like five ghosts linked their feathery arms and rose up to take a bow. Then she heard a noise and looked down at a circle expanding in the lake; a fish leapt up to catch a bug, and then another, their bodies clearing the surface and twisting before landing back in their watery homes. Finally, chilled but happy, Gwen put her shoes on and made her way back to camp. Her joy must have been obvious, because as soon as she arrived, Tracy asked, “What just happened? You look like you fell in love.”

“I kind of did,” Gwen admitted. “I just saw a couple of fawns down there. This high.” She lowered her palm to her knee. “Totally covered with spots. Legs so fragile they could hardly walk.”

“Very nice,” said Tracy. “They’re probably just a couple of weeks old.”

“One ran off, and the other was curled up right in front of me. I almost tripped over it. I think that was the mom we saw on the other side of the meadow.”

“Two of them,” Oscar said. He was sitting at the fire ring, rearranging food in his bear canister. “I didn’t know deer had twins.”

“They usually do,” came Todd’s voice from the tent. “Probably to increase the chances that at least one will make it. And they lie still because when they’re babies, they don’t have any scent.”

“How do you know that?” Gwen asked.

“I used to hunt them when I was a kid in Wisconsin.”

This hit Gwen like a punch in the stomach.

“That’s cool,” Tracy said. “Do you still hunt?”

“No,” Todd replied, sounding wistful. “I haven’t gone in years. I’d still be up for it, but I think my kids would disown me. Not to mention my wife.”

“I hunted a bit in Idaho,” Tracy said. “I haven’t in years either, but I do make it to the firing range sometimes.”

“Me too,” said Todd. “To work off stress. My family doesn’t know that, though.” He laughed.

Gwen tried not to hold Todd’s comment against him, or Tracy’s either. And it was easy enough to forget their conversation, since there was still so much to do. She unscrewed the locks on her bear canister and retrieved a packaged dinner, fixed up a cheese sandwich for lunch the next day. She took a Ziploc bag and some biodegradable soap, as Tracy had taught her, and went down to the river, where she washed her socks, her underthings, her hiking shirt. She hung her wet clothes on nearby branches, trying not to be self-conscious about them. She went off behind a rock and sponge bathed with a couple of body wipes and a washcloth, forgoing lotion out of worry of bears. There were a few raised bumps on her arms and shoulders from mosquito bites—they had bitten right through her shirt. She put on her warm base layer, top and bottom, and then her hiking pants. She layered on her pink fleece and then her purple down jacket, and pulled on a thin wool cap. She tried not to think about what the cap would do to her hair, or how she must look without makeup.

By the time she got back to their camp, the others had changed clothes too. Tracy was boiling water over the fire. One by one, Tracy poured the water into their food packages, and the hard unrecognizable material transformed into food. They were starving. Gwen’s beef Stroganoff tasted like a school cafeteria meal, better than she’d expected. The others, once the water did its work, had varieties of pasta and rice.