The Way Out by Craig Childs

Author:Craig Childs [CHILDS, GREG]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316028882
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dirk and I retreat into the night, setting up camp in the security of the sharp-edged hunting stones we had found earlier. The night is comfortable. No wind. All is frozen. Not Arctic frozen, but merely stiff, a temperature best not touched to the lips. Dirk has arrayed his life around him, a snug spot for sitting and sleeping cleared of stones. My pack remains strapped and full from the day. Dirk says that if I get the pot out he’ll cook dinner. I’m huddled away in the dark, buried in a Genghis Khan assortment of warm clothes, using a small lamp to chase my pen across journal pages. I look up at the cold and intimidating form of my pack. It will be a commitment to dig into it.

“Yeah, dinner,” I say.

My pack is lying on its side. A few items are scattered around, nothing that can blow away: a knife, a water bottle, my day pack. I walk over to it, kick it to loosen the straps, and start pulling things out, hauling the cooking equipment over to Dirk. Within half an hour we are eating steaming, mashed beans with hot sauce and rice cooked in water found in a nearby canyon.

“You know what it is?” Dirk says, tapping the air with his spoon. “I’m feeling constantly on guard down here. We don’t have any of our usual bail-out points. Not like up north. I don’t mind if our routes fail there. We know the rocks and the canyons well enough to get back out. But here . . . failed routes add up pretty damn quick. I feel like a cat. I’m not hissing yet. I don’t have my back up. But my tail is fuzzed out, on alert.”

I finish chewing, one hand absentmindedly fondling the stone ornament hanging from my neck. I say, “Mmm.” Agreement.

After dinner we lay out our bags, Dirk close to the wind shelter of the wall in case weather comes, and me out with the broken stone artifacts. I hear Dirk throw a sudden obscenity. He calls me over. His light casts onto the shiny globe-shaped body of a black widow spider.

I crouch to her level and watch her move. She is methodical and observant, tentatively exploring the hood of Dirk’s bag. He had set his camp too close to the wall and snapped her web. She is just down to repair her anchors. Her fine legs study the terrain. She is uncertain. Something is not right in her world. She knows we are here but is not sure who we are or what we might do.

I slide my journal under her and carry her away. As if saving the drips off an ice-cream cone, I turn the book this way and that as she tries to leap off or skitter up my arm. I find a place and let her go.

I come back as Dirk is moving his gear away from the wall, meticulously clearing a new spot. As he finishes he says,“Good thing you showed up.

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