Wilderness Reform by Matt Query & Harrison Query

Author:Matt Query & Harrison Query
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

THE ALPINE lake that the boys had all been so smitten with several weeks earlier—the location of their first night sleeping in the wild—had not lost any of its sheen, or become any less beautiful. They had spent most days hiking around these mountains since that first night, fishing and trapping and sitting cross-legged on the ground as the counselors lectured them on self-control and discipline. However, they had not recently been this high up in altitude, above the tree line.

The landscape had changed a bit. There were no more snowdrifts on the far end of the lakeshore, or any more ice runs along the edges of the boulder and scree fields. The heat of the summer sun and the afternoon rainstorms had seen to the demise of any vestiges of winter in the high country that happened to survive into the late spring, with the exception of a few ancient glaciers here and there. Wildflowers had started to pock the landscape as well. None of the twenty-eight boys in the summer class of Bear Springs Academy ever thought they would be awestruck by flowers. Yet here they were, most of them in a teenage-boy version of silent reverence as they gazed across the alpine meadows filled with bluebells, lupine, and Indian paintbrush.

Several of the counselors pointed out these differences in the natural world to the boys. Ben ingested their remarks and cataloged them away, as he had with every word spoken by every person within earshot throughout this summer, but he was seeing something else. Something different, in addition to the organic benchmarks of a season’s high time.

He was judging the steepness in different draws and drainages, taking note of how they looked from afar on their approach and then comparing them to what he saw when right up close. He was thinking about water sources, passable saddles in ridgelines, making mental notes about which kind of ground cover was the loudest and which the quietest to walk upon.

Ben was thinking about his escape.

The boys were encouraged by the camp staff to maintain a journal and had been given nice leather-bound journals upon their arrival, as well as a stick of glue to add in pictures and packing lists and other mementos of their summer in this place.

The afternoon before the group set off on this six-day backpacking trip—shortly before pushing Jimmy into the strange glitch mode so as to showcase the freakish nature of the situation to his friends—Ben had snuck into one of the offices in the lodge. He did not find anything hugely substantial with respect to the odd nature of the place, like a phone or a gun, but he did find a large topographical backpacking map of the area, several folding knives, a bag of road flares, and a big can of bear spray with its belt holster, all of which he’d hidden away within his gear. He’d also snuck up the massive stairs in the entrance of the lodge and tried the

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