At 1:00 AM, the northern lights streaked across the sky, mesmerizing, undulating bands in green and pink. The Old Man and Elsbeth sat on the makeshift chairs, smooth rounded rocks encircling the “table” boulder that had been dropped by the receding glacier at the exposed ridge at the East Chickenbone Lake Campground. An involuntary murmur of appreciation escaped her lips, “aaaahhhhhmmmm.” The beauty was palpable.
Around them, life abounded. The distant croak of frogs at the swampy shore. Night birds screeched, and rodents rustled in the stubborn grass scattered sparsely among the glacial till. The night was alive.
A scream. Whoosh of wings. A silhouette pumping away, a limp object clutched in circled claws.
Elsbeth’s air escaped.
“Circle of life,” the Old Man uttered softly.
The glow tarnished. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder growled.
Weaving among the rocks and brush, Elsbeth made her way to the tent, got into a base layer for sleeping, and slid into her sleeping bag She lay there with her back to the door where the Old Man would enter, and she pretended to be asleep when he came into the tent a few minutes later. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she ignored it, breathing evenly and slowly. She didn’t like the circle of life.
He knew too much of that circle, though. A light flashed in his memory. Rumbles rattled in his brain. He forced his thoughts to the real thunder outside. A glow illuminated the western horizon through the tent wall.
She liked to the thunder, low and distant, then the occasional flash that lit up the tent. As a child, she always liked the expectancy of a storm. The build up and the satisfaction, just as was promised. She especially liked the heat lightning transferring from cloud to cloud, never touching the ground. The flashes on this night cracked into the ground. Then the rain came. While they would have muddy trails in the morning, it would wash the dirt off the world tonight.
He took his hand back and rolled onto his back, listening to the steady rain. The forecast had predicted a slight chance of a thunderstorm, but the chance must have grown since he downloaded it on the satellite device earlier in the day.
He felt sure she wasn’t sleeping, yet her breath was even and soft.
Alone with his thoughts, he stared at the rainfly covering the the mesh body of the tent, watching it light up and then dim with the electrical activity across the sky. He remembered the booms that weren’t natural and shuddered the earth. This night, he willed his brain away from the memories, but a waft of spent munitions permeated his senses, even while scattered plops were all that fell from the sky. For a long time, he lay alert, knowing he waited for action that was not going to come, but unable to stand down.
Asleep, she rolled against his warmth, curling against his side. Her presence brought him back to the moment. Shortly, his snoring gently rumbled.
—
The next morning, they awoke to a steady splatter on tent. Elsbeth did not want to move. The Old Man shrugged into his raincoat and grunted into his hiking boots prior to getting upright in the open doorway of the tent. Elsbeth pulled the mummy bag over her head to block out the cold.
After some minutes, she sat up, dug her clothes out of the stuff sack, and followed suit. The rain abated to an occasional plop, plop, plop on to the rain fly by the time she was ready for boots and rain gear. She opened the tent door into the vestibule, pulled on her boots and tied them, then unzipped the opening to the vestibule, pushing it to one side. She stood and emerged from the tent itself in one motion.
Ah, the day! Cool. Wet. Crisp. If she didn’t look at the mud at her feet, the whole world was clean. The Old Man had already gotten the coffee started. It smelled good.
“Sorry,” she said. “‘Circle of life’ just seems so cold.”
“Yeah,” he replied, “but it’s true.”
She frowned.
She poured hot water into her cup and added a spoonful of instant coffee and two spoons of dry creamer. He drank his black and strong–two spoons of coffee and no cream. There seemed a tacit agreement not to talk about circles and life.
“What’s on our itinerary today?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I was thinking we could drop into Daisy Farm to catch the moose and wolf presentation tomorrow,” he replied. “We’ll probably be able to get a shelter and dry out the tent.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “I could heat some water to wash my hair.”
“It looks great to me,” he asserted.
She smiled and rolled her eyes, patting her greasy hair that hadn’t been washed in three days. You have to love a guy who lies so blatantly, and with a straight face, she thought.
Within an hour of waking, they both finished breakfast, dressed for hiking, and stowed the rest of their gear. The tent was rolled up wet and stuffed into its sack. The Old Man cinched the sodden mass trussed up in the dry sack the to bottom of his pack, ruing the extra weight of water that it held. Elsbeth was thankful that he shouldered the weight as her pack was heavy without anything extra.
They set off just before nine, using their trekking poles cautiously over the slick whaleback rocks. In the dips between the highest points on the ridge, wet branches from the underbrush brushed their legs as they passed by, the moisture saturating their pants legs and dripping water through and into their boots. By the time they crested the ridge at the junction of the East Chickenbone Cutoff and the Greenstone Ridge Trail, her boots squished with each step. She was glad she had taken camp shoes so she would be able to get out of the wet boots and let them dry for a day or two while they stayed at Daisy Farm.
The Wise Old Man trudged along feeling the extra weight. It was a few years since he had been jumping out of “perfectly good airplanes,” as he called them, with full gear, but the old saying tugged a smile to his cheeks: “Pain is just weakness leaving your body.” He used to believe that shit, at least somewhat. Right now, it felt like pain was just settling in for the long term in his knees and ankles, but he knew it would abate as they continued their hike. He would feel better in a couple of days.
From the Ridge, they had a few good looks toward the lake and over the southern terrain. The green was vibrant compared to the deserts he used to hump, but the lush river valleys between the mountains of Afghanistan appeared verdant against the rugged mountains, just as the view off the ridge toward Daisy Farm appeared freshly washed by the rain. The greens varied, dark green spruce in pointed cones reaching upward, maple trees broad and bright, pines like ragged flags towering over all.
On an early deployment in Kuwait, he was wounded, shot through by an Iraqi firing an American-made bullet that went, like a hot poker, through his gut. He remembered the red seeping from between his fingers as he clutched the wound.
His hand crept to his abdomen, tracing the scar through the front of his shirt.
Oblivious, she asked, “Are you ready?” She hefted her pack onto her back, tightened the harness straps, and latched the hip belt. The weight pressed into her shoulders as they set out. She cranked the belt tighter and loosened the harness to settle the weight onto her hips. Then she headed out, following the path down to the junction and then up again toward the Ojibway Tower.
Some hours later, they climbed down the last stair-like rocks on the Ojibway Trail into the sunlit Daisy Farm, their legs caked with mud from the trail. The Old Man sat at the picnic table at the first open shelter they saw. It was to the right of the trail and behind the beaver dam that flooded the campground.
“I’ll wait here,” he said.
“I’ll check five and one.”
Elsbeth carried on across the bridge over the dammed creek to check shelter five and then on to shelter one that was tucked back toward the ranger residence that was unoccupied on the shore beyond the end of the campground. Finding it empty, she dropped her pack on the picnic table and went back to fetch the Old Man from shelter six.
The privacy of shelter one was welcome as Daisy Farm, as the convergence point of four trails could be pretty busy with its abundant shelters and irritating with the slamming outhouse doors.
Elsbeth filtered water to heat for dinner and enough to wash her hair while the Old Man draped the tent over the sunlit bushes that surrounded the shelter. While they ate lunch, the mud on their pants crusted as it dried.
After they cleaned up, they attended the Wolf – Moose talk given by the researchers, a talk the Old Man had heard before. Elsbeth marveled at the moose and other animal bones that were passed among the crowd to demonstrate the adaptations and consequences of wildlife of the isolation of the island which allowed a diminishing gene pool. Moose who died of periodontal disease, for example, because there weren’t enough wolves present to maintain the predator-prey relationship. The sad story of the final non-viable pair who were related as sister/brother and father/daughter.
The presenter measured the audience with her eyes. She had a point to make. “What are humans really good at?” She asked, peering into the group surrounding her.
No one answered. She repeated her question. Elsbeth did not meet the presenter’s eyes.
After a long while, she looked directly at the Old Man. “What are humans really good at?”
The Old Man looked directly at her and thought for a moment before replying. “Human beings are really good at killing each other,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for centuries.”
The entire crowd gasped. Elsbeth drew in her breath sharply. She had not expected that.
“Well, that isn’t exactly what I was looking for,” the presenter said.
“He’s right, though,” someone said from the back. “We make war.”
“What were you looking for?” Someone else asked.
“Thank you for asking. Compassion,” she said. “Humans are the only species that show compassion.”
“I wonder,” thought Elsbeth, “if the killing is thoughtful. Who conceives of it?” She didn’t think most people who killed others actually decided to do it of their own volition. She was sure that those who made the decision were not present at the execution. Her eyes rested on the side of the Old Man’s face. She knew where he had been and what he had done but in the abstract. She knew that she didn’t really know, couldn’t really imagine, didn’t want to really imagine.
The presentation continued, with the contrast between the best of human potential and the impartiality of the natural balance between action and reaction, predator and prey.
Elsbeth wandered off toward the dock, leaving the Old Man settled in his chair, absorbed in the talk. Before long, she was wading in the frigid water near their shelter, kicking through the rough pebbles on the shore. She knew she couldn’t take any greenstones she might find, but she still thought it would be nice to see one. The geology of the island fascinated her. It predated the predator-prey balance. It was the bedrock of the story.
Awhile later, she looked up to see the Old Man watching her as she stirred the stones at her feet.
__
In the morning, the two set out of Rock Harbor to get a shower and do their laundry. Maybe it was an excuse to visit the town, such as it was.
“Are you thinking pizza or a burger?” The Old Man asked.
“Salad,” Elsbeth said.
“What if they don’t have salad?
“A burger.”
The hiked along the shoreline of Lake Superior, Park Headquarters visible on Mott Island across the expanse of Rock Harbor. The Rock Harbor Lighthouse stood silent at the head of Middle Island Passage as the generators on Mott droned across the water.
Elsbeth hiked in front as usual, the Old Man bringing up the rear. She heard a helicopter overhead. Odd, she thought. She stopped hiking to scan the sky for it. The sun blinded her, but she made out the shape of the helicopter above the trees.
Only a few paces behind, the Old Man caught up quickly. Elsbeth’s eyes were trained overhead. When she looked at the Old Man, his face was pale with sweat on his brow.
“It’s a medivac chopper,” he said, “but it’s not American. Must be Canadian.”
“How do you know?”
“The maple leaf on the door,” he said.
“That would make it clear,” she ventured. “I wonder why it’s here.”
“Looks like it’s trying to land,” the Old Man said as the chopper circled over them again and headed back toward Mott Island. They stood for awhile watching as the helicopter seemed to hang above the Mott Island dock.
They resumed their walk toward Rock Harbor, Elsbeth in front again. In a minute or so, she looked behind, but the Old Man was not there. She turned and retraced her steps around a curve in the trail. Underneath the cover of spruce boughs, he was seated in the shadows on a rock; his pack sat next to him on the ground.
“You okay?” She asked.
“I need to sit,” he said, his eyes met hers momentarily and returned to the red and white chopper circling above them.
She searched his face for signs of distress. His brow was damp with sweat.
“I know I am here,” the Old Man said, “but the only choppers I’ve heard overhead let loose on us if they spotted us.”
She dropped her pack and sat down on the rock next to him. There wasn’t much to say to that. She patted his hand in silence.
Eventually, the chopper landed and sat on the pad near the dock.
After a few moments, the Old Man stood up and put on his pack.
“You go,” she said, waving him forward. She wanted to see that he was okay as they walked. She didn’t think the chopper would stay long at Mott. After all, it wasn’t American, so it had to have special permission to be there.
On the trail again, the Old Man’s steps were sure and purposeful, as though he had a destination. She hoped it was the motivation of the pizza and not the aversion to whatever the chopper called up.
She scampered to keep up.
The Old Man mused to himself as he kept his accustomed military pace, first the thunder and now the chopper. The island seemed to be determined to thwart his purpose of letting its peace seep in to calm his soul.