Journeys North by Barney Scout Mann

Author:Barney Scout Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680513226
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2020-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

LAVA

Lake Tahoe to Bridge of the Gods

1051 miles

27

Watermelon

SATURDAY, JULY 14, 2007

LORI WAS STRUGGLING to keep up. It was the second day after she, Nadine, and Christy had hiked out of Echo Lake, and they were climbing 1400 feet up to 9389-foot Dicks Pass—the last time the trail would climb above 9000 feet in elevation. Pacha and Echo were trotting alongside and panting; their tongues lolled as they scampered from one new smell to the next. With the low humidity and direct sun, the eighty-degree heat left them hot and dry.

At the pass they followed a faint side trail running over chipped rock another six hundred feet up to Dicks Peak. At the broad summit, tufts of alpine grass and lingering patches of snow dotted the loose rock. Lori kept reciting, “I can’t wait to rest. I can’t wait to rest,” but once she got to the top, she immediately felt antsy. Nadine and Christy were doing what normal people do—sitting down. Lori called out, “Look there’s a big patch of snow,” and bounded off, leading the dogs, her shoes crunching on the loose stones. Then she saw something—was it a football? A basketball sticking out of the snow? As she got closer, she shouted out, “Watermelon!” The other two didn’t budge. Lori was flabbergasted. What’s wrong with them? Didn’t they hear what I said? Finally, Lori picked up the melon and carried it over as proof. Nadine’s eyes bugged when she saw it, a grin splitting her face.

This was not just a watermelon. It was a watermelon on ice in the middle of nowhere, with no footprints in the snow. There was only one explanation: it had dropped out of the sky like a meteor.

They hacked it open and ate piece after piece—pink juice running down their chins, staining their clothes—with the dogs happily eating the rinds. As hikers passed by, they shared the watermelon with them. It was the happiest Nadine had been on the whole trail.

When it was finally gone, they sat spent and full like lions sated from a fresh kill, the chewed-over rinds strewn about them. Only then did Nadine think to herself, My gosh, I hope we didn’t steal someone’s watermelon.

AS NADINE AND Lori set a leisurely pace in the stretch of trail north of Lake Tahoe, Frodo and I logged 21- and 26-mile days, covering it in half the time. We saw no watermelons, but we did have two opposite-spectrum wildlife encounters.

At Miller Creek, as Frodo soaked her sore feet, she saw some twigs moving oddly at the bottom of the cool pool. She bent in close and exclaimed, “Why, that twig has legs!” There were dozens—twigs, seed pods, and tiny pebbles—all with legs the size of tiny hairs darting like miniature hermit crabs. Days later Frodo was able to suss out what they were—caddisfly larvae. Before metamorphosing into winged flies, they were teensy, submerged, armored tanks that bonded bits of plants and other debris to themselves with a sticky silk that extruded from their chins.

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