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What We Do
"Don't ever not ask for help. If you need help, you ask for it," he said. That bit of common sense has stayed with me. So ludicrously simple, but Levi taught me that—a boy of 19, on our first spike, on the trail we were clearing.
Palomar Mountain is 60 miles north of San Diego. God is there if you look hard enough, though the switchbacks and steep climbs of the trail make it hard country, especially for someone who'd just spent four years reading books at college.
When we started, I was sure that Nikki, Seth, Levi, and John, my younger, less-educated teammates, weren't half as smart as I was. When I met them, I wasn't pleased. I was 23, and to me they looked like kids who wanted to loaf for ten months. Levi's face glared like an Illinois moon under his stringy long hair. John grinned in insolence. Seth had the faraway look inherited by hippie parents of the 1960s. I could learn nothing from them. I would do all the work while they took cigarette breaks.
We slept on air mattresses on the floor of an old mountain cabin. Kelly, our team leader, told us we'd be fine. "There's nothing like exhaustion to make you sleep well," she said. I looked at the photos I had brought along and was reminded of the comforts of home. When the sunlight stopped bending around the trees, an unexpected blackness settled around us. Then the wind started up. I tried to sleep.
I woke up that first ice-blue morning. I roused Nikki and Kelly; I kicked Levi, John, and Seth. "Five more minutes," Levi grunted. A sparkle of drool rolled down John's chin.
Clearing trail was no delicate affair. We used chainsaws and cement mixers, McCleods, Pulaskis, and other large, frightening tools I'd never heard of. Kelly, Nikki, and I worked together, hacking through fallen limbs so that visitors could come and smell the earth, see the Stellar Jays, maybe make it to the peak, where the world unfolded like a map. The boys could do their work—and their boasting—elsewhere on the mountain.
From somewhere up the trail, John called us "slow pokes," but I couldn't see because of the bright green vegetation. The sun filtered through the trees, dappling the world in yellow and white.
"Let's work harder," Nikki said. The 20-year-old from Kentucky started working double-time, her eyes still on the vast expanse of trail separating us from the boys. "I thought I was," I replied. She was already whizzing through the trail, raking away soft leaves and twigs, hacking through low-lying branches. She blew me away. Nikki and I neared the boys, whose bodies rose and fell as they sawed through felled branches. They were in perfect synch, spaced five feet apart. I didn't understand their technique. "Gina, you're working too slow"—that from Seth, the hippie progeny. John added, "The college girl's got no muscles." Levi called back, "Get workin', woman!" I hated them because I couldn't compete here. I was no good—useless as rock, slow as mud.
We needed to jump a stream to get to the other side of the trail. Nikki darted over quick as a goat, one stone to the next, each slippery and green with algae. John, Seth, Levi, and Kelly followed. They walked up the path a good ways before Levi realized that I hadn't yet crossed. He turned his face up to the empty trail that swallowed the rest of them, then back to me, small and cowering on the other side of the stream. "Come on, Gina," he said. The water rushed with the new spring thaw, spitting up rapids with a frightening force.
"Go ahead," I said. "Go ahead." I knew I'd fall and I didn't want him to watch me.
"Gina, come on, we can't just leave you here," he pressed.
"No, it's okay, really." I was unprepared to be so foolish in front of him. I was from urban New Jersey. I didn't do streams.
"I’ll help you," he called, jumping back over from stone to stone.
"No!" But he was there already, staring at me and reaching out his hand.
"Take my hand."
"No, no."
"I won't let you fall." I grabbed his hand tentatively, stepped out onto the rock and slipped off, landing in the cold, white foam.
He gripped my hand tighter as I sputtered and flailed, dragging me out with a serious look on his face. Not one laugh. That's when the 19-year-old looked at me—with my 23 years and a degree—and said, "Don't ever not ask for help. If you need help, you ask for it," he said. "It's what we do."
I felt hot and red despite my wet clothing. I understood something.
Levi reached into his knapsack and pulled out sweatpants and a blue hoody. "This is my favorite sweatshirt. Don't mess it up." He turned his back as I changed behind a tree. We climbed the steep rise to catch up with the rest of our team. I walked in front and held the branches for him to pass safely. When he passed me he did the same. No "thank you" passed between us, just silence as we listened for the falling metal, the thud of Pulaskis plunging into the packed soil of the trail. |
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