Chapter 14: Going Awry




     "Did you see a dark haired woman in red shorts up there?" I call to a hiker coming down into the twilight of the valley floor.

"Yeah, weird that she's hanging out a sheet at dusk," he muses, pausing to glance back at the last rays of sunlight creeping up the hill.

"The call of the wild," I shrug, turning off the camp stove and slapping a lid on the bubbling SpaghettiOs.



     We'd come on this field trip equipped with all the camping equipment and insect collecting supplies we might need, but nowhere in that trunk full of gear was a flashlight. Sensing that Yogi Berra's assessment of right field in Yankee Stadium as "it get's late early out there" also applied to steep hollows, I decided to go get her while the getting was still good, or at least still visible.  



     "FM!" I howl as I stumble up the barely discernible trail winding through progressively steeper rubble. 

"Cruck cruck," echoing down from the ridge is my only answer, but at least it leads me past the intersecting side trails.

"Where the fuck are you?" I mumble squeezing through a cleft onto a starlit plateau and deciding she must have taken one of the side paths on her way down.

"Fucking down here!" peals up from the blackness over the edge of a gargantuan boulder poking out like a breaching whale.




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