Legionnaire

It was two days later when I left.

Most of that time had been spent driving around, hitting stores for food I could pack that would last and not taste like cardboard. I picked up trail mix, jerky, instant coffee, oatmeal packets, tortillas, peanut butter, tuna packets, and a few protein bars that looked like they had been designed by someone who hated joy.

I woke up a little after dawn and got dressed.

Everything had been loaded the night before, so there wasn’t much left to do except hit Starbucks, get gas, and get on the road.

The drive started easy. Town roads, traffic lights, gas stations, strip malls. The usual ugly sprawl that made every place look the same if you weren’t paying attention.

Then the farther I got out, the more the world started to open up.

The houses thinned. The road climbed. The air looked cleaner somehow, sharper around the edges. Mountains rose ahead of me, dark with pine and streaked with stone. Patches of aspen flashed pale between the evergreens, and every now and then the road bent enough to show a strip of blue sky.

If I was being honest with myself, I felt excited.

I finally reached the parking spot Mike had marked on the map.

The drive hadn’t been anything special. Not really. But it was nice being away from town.

I put the truck in park and opened the door.

Then I remembered Mike.

“Shit.”

I pulled my phone out and checked the corner of the screen.

No service.

Of course.

I typed the message anyway.

Hiking in. At the spot. I’ll check in when I can.

It sat there unsent, waiting for a signal that probably wasn’t coming. I left it queued just in case the phone caught a bar somewhere along the way.

Then I got out.

The air hit me first.

Cool. Clean. Thin enough that I noticed it when I breathed in. The kind of air that made the inside of my nose sting a little and reminded me I’d spent too much time indoors.

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The morning was clear, with a hard blue sky showing through breaks in the trees. Pines crowded the edges of the pull-off, dark and sharp against the lighter trunks of aspen scattered between them. The leaves moved in little silver-green flashes whenever the wind came through.

Somewhere farther off, water moved over rocks. Not loud. Just enough to hear when I stopped making noise. Birds called back and forth in the trees, and every now and then the wind pushed through the pines with that low rushing sound that almost felt like the world taking a breath.

I stood there for a minute and let it all settle.

No engines.

No voices.

No waiting rooms.

Just trees, cold air, and the weight of the pack sitting in the bed of my truck.

I pulled it out, checked the straps one more time, then shrugged into it. The weight settled onto my shoulders and hips, heavier than I wanted to admit.

“Alright,” I muttered.

I looked toward the start of the trail.

“Let’s see what’s left in the tank.”

It was dark by the time I reached the first checkpoint Mike had marked on the map.

What he’d said should take about six hours took me nine.

I was in worse shape than I thought.

That’s the thing about your body. It can lie to you. You can still look fit enough in the mirror, shoulders still there, arms still there, some version of the man you used to be still hanging around. But cardio doesn’t give a shit what you look like.

And mine was past the point of ass.

I’d had to stop multiple times on the way up, even just getting this far. By the time I reached the checkpoint, I was gassed.

There was a large boulder near a small stream, and I backed into it pack-first, letting the rock hold the weight for me while I unclipped the straps. I loosened everything and let the pack slide off my back.

It rolled off the rock and crashed into the grass below.

I stood there for a second, breathing hard, then slowly walked over to the stream. I used the LifeStraw and drank until my stomach felt tight.

I was still sweating, but the temperature was dropping fast. That was a bad combination.

I needed the tent up.

I needed dry clothes.

It took me the better part of thirty minutes to figure out the tent with only a small battery lantern for light. By the time I was done, the wind had started picking up.

I dragged the pack inside, stripped out of my sweat-soaked clothes, and wrung them out the best I could. Then I wrapped them around the tent poles outside and tied them off so the wind could do what it could.

I hurried back inside, zipped the tent shut, and crawled into the sleeping bag.

It took longer than I remembered for the bag to warm up. The first twenty minutes were miserable. I lay there shivering, teeth tight, trying not to think about how stupid this would be if I got hypothermia on night one.

Then the warmth finally built.

A little at first. Then all at once.

Before long, I was damn near too warm.

I checked my phone again.

No service.

Mike hadn’t been playing. The text still hadn’t sent.

I set the phone down and pulled dry clothes from the pack. Every part of me wanted to just lie there and sleep, but I knew better. I needed to eat first.

I dug out a few tortillas, smeared them with peanut butter, folded them over, and ate them like they were an old MRE staple meal. A song popped in my head.

Hello darkness, my old friend.

It was funnier in my head than it had any right to be, but I enjoyed it anyway.

I was spent. Exhausted. Sore. Cold in places, warm in others.

And nearly happy, I think.

That thought made me pause.

For a few seconds, I just listened.

Not to the wind. Not to the stream. Not to whatever animal was moving somewhere in the dark.

To my own head.

It was quiet.

No intrusive thoughts. No running commentary. No constant spin. My brain wasn’t doing thirteen hundred miles an hour, chasing every bad memory and every worse possibility.

It was just…

calm.