I flung the Marlboro Lights onto the dashboard. They skittered across the faded green vinyl then wedged up against the windshield. My shiny metal key slipped snugly into the ignition. The hulking International Scout shook to life, its engine hoarse and raw. It sounded as if metal were eating metal and the whole thing was about to blow.

“Whoa, Tess! It’s gotten louder,” Lisa said.

“You think?” I bellowed.

Our black Labrador-poodle backed away in the driveway, a ridge of fur pricking up on his curly back. The Scout’s commotion swallowed up his scolding barks.

“It’s okay, Robber. Don’t freak,” I called out to the dog.

It was probably against the law for any vehicle to be as loud as the Scout. And decibel level wasn’t the only thing illegal about the boxy, rusted-out jeep. With its five-years’ expired registration and my learner’s permit, requiring an adult to be present whenever I drove, Lisa and I were outlaws on the dirt roads of Crested Butte. This only added to the goose bumps percolating on my forearms. Being at the wheel of my own car — at least for the summer – was a thrill. If we made it out of town without getting busted, we were home free.

My heart pounded under the bib of my dress. I’d cut the legs off of my favorite pair of overalls and sewn in triangles front and back to convert them into a mini-dress. Underneath was my favorite Fleetwood Mac Rumours t-shirt. I’d waited months to wear this outfit on this day: Sunday, June 19^th, 1979 — five days after I’d finished tenth grade. A small white teepee was embroidered over the denim pocket at my heart.

I revved the jackhammer-like engine.

“Go for it,” Lisa shouted.

Oily exhaust fumes drifted into the fragile alpine air. A spindly stand of aspens shimmied nearby.

“This Scout is heavy duty.”

From Lisa’s laid-back demeanor, you’d think every car she’d ever been in required yelling at the top of your lungs.

“Totally,” I bellowed.

I depressed the stiff metal accelerator with my hiking boot and the Scout rattled down our dirt road, kicking up a cape of dust.

“Glad you’re up for this,” I said.

“Are you kidding? This is so far out.”

The Scout’s roar came from the muffler. It was attached to the chassis with a length of wire that strongly resembled a coat hanger – one of the many things the mechanics at Crested Butte Auto had jury-rigged to get the Scout running for under $200. The rust-dappled jeep, which they rented to me for the summer, was 15 years old – my age exactly. Faded letters on the driver’s side door read ‘McClure Jeep Tours, Salida, Colorado.’ Like Crested Butte, Salida was high on Colorado’s Western Slope and not on the way to anywhere. And Salida didn’t even have a ski area.

Our eyes met over the rasping engine. It was hard to keep a low profile driving a car that sounded like a jet taking off. We could get pulled over at any minute and would not have valid drivers’ licenses or proof of registration. Lisa knew this, but grinned maniacally anyway. That’s what I loved about the girl. She wouldn’t let a little thing like illegality stop her.

“Co-pilot?” I asked.

“Co-pilot,” Lisa confirmed.

“I’m going to need one, in this beater.”

Lisa beamed. Her tranquil features gave no hint of her mountain-goat constitution and her fierce love of a challenge.

There was nothing exotic about Lisa’s face, but its smooth proportions inspired awe in boys – and consternation in girls. Her straight, slightly pointed nose, strong chin and pillowed lips were simple and well drawn and her delicate ears sported tiny gold hoops. Lisa’s one flashy feature was her robin’s egg blue eyes, capped by lazy, Paul McCartney lids. Oh, and her perfect, boyish ass. It was flashy, too, in its own compact way.

Lisa and I had spent hours in each other’s rooms in Boulder, imagining living in a teepee for the summer. From the bustling Colorado college town 240 miles away, the idea of calling all the shots at our mountain pad would make it the mirror opposite of our regimented lives during our first year at Boulder High. But as deliciously far out as our plan was, my stomach fluttered at the idea of living in such close quarters with anyone.

Lisa didn’t know I binged every day. No one did. Luckily I had a way to deal with my pig-outs that kept me from turning into a cow. Throwing up didn’t matter as long as no one knew. But I could feel the monster of craving twisting in my gut even as I pressed the accelerator. Food cravings came on as powerfully when I was totally psyched as when I was bummed. I had no control over my binging when the urge hit – only afterwards, when I got rid of it. But I could never spill any of this to Lisa. She was one of those girls who sometimes spaced out a meal if she was caught up in something. Or left half her fries on her plate. In other words, a complete and total alien.

As brilliant as the teepee idea was, we were both shocked when our parents actually signed off on it. Turning two girls loose in the outdoors was still unheard of even in 1979, when kooky thinking was totally mainstream. Lisa’s single mom and my widowed dad stopped short of being hippies, but they prided themselves on open-mindedness. Our teepee plan fit into their loose definition of ‘educational.’ Or maybe they wanted to get rid of us. All we needed to know was, they had given us their blessing. And now we were hauling ass into the wild, woolly unknown.

Our first stop was the storefront Texaco on Elk Avenue, where ancient Tony Verplank shuffled out to pump our gas. It seemed when he bent over to fill ‘er up he’d never return to standing again. I rolled down the window.

“Hi Tony.”

Tony knew my father well. Dad had a no-questions-asked charge account at the Texaco so it was a frequent stop for my brother, sister and me.

“You girls goin’ four wheeling?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Where to?”

“Oh Be Joyful Canyon,” I said.

“You’re kidding me. That’s the name?” Lisa said.

“No lie,” I said.

“Unbelievable.”

“You know there’s a cinnamon bear up there?” Tony asked.

“Is that so?”

I wished I could have covered Lisa’s ears, but I hadn’t seen it coming.

“A bear?” Lisa echoed.

Lisa looked into Tony’s well-lined face, her eyes suddenly circular.

“Yep, he’s a small one – less than 200 pounds, but people do see him up there. Be careful.”

“We will. Thanks, Tony.”

I fired up the Scout and steered out of town.

“You never told me about a bear,” Lisa said.

“I didn’t know for sure.”

“Holy shit!”

“Don’t worry. Cinnamon bears in these mountains are shy. And they mostly keep to themselves.”

“Mostly?”

“It would be cool if we could see it. I’ve heard they’re the exact color of cinnamon.”

“I’m not dying to,” Lisa said.

“When did you become such a wimp?”

“Since I found out I was neighbors with a bear.”

We cracked up.

Heading out of town, Crested Butte Mountain’s jagged cirque loomed in front of us. I glanced up at the Butte. The great mountain surrendered its steep flanks to skirts of velvety green each summer, retaining a cap of snow. Its 12,000-foot pinnacle jutted before us.

“It’s one kick ass peak,” Lisa said.

“That’s what I like about these mountains. They put our human B.S. into perspective.”

“Totally.”

Lisa might be gorgeous, but not all aspects of her life were pretty. The blue bandanna covering her light brown hair flapped in a gust of chilly air. My friend had her own reasons for wanting to go to the teepee. Like me, she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“Slate River is Crested Butte’s only paved road. The road to the teepee connects to it.”

“Cool.”

“You realize we’ll have to build a fire two or three times a day? Just to cook? We’ll wash dishes in the freezing cold river? There’s no toilet?”

My throat was getting sore from shouting.

“No stove, no fridge,” Lisa nodded.

She tilted her face into the breeze like a happy Labrador, excited to sit in the front seat.

“Are you kidding? That’s what makes it so cool,” she said.

I was still fixated on the ‘no frig’ part of the equation.

“Great.”

Driving out Slate River was an undeniably cool sensation. From where I sat, the ‘me’ that struggled to show up for class at Boulder High School, binged on graham crackers and Raisin Bran after school and refused to participate in anything – seemed a pale impostor. Today I was the tall, teepee goddess in the driver’s seat.

We plowed back onto gravel, shuddering up the washboards on Slate River Road for several miles. The nearby river curved in and out of view. Lisa giggled as we rattled across the metal bars of a cattle guard.

On either side of us, grassy hills engulfed us in newly hatched green. During these first days of June, the ground was still waterlogged from melted snow. As we passed the small oval of Nicholson Lake, I pointed out a small fiberglass sailboat, anchored near the shore. Its yellow sail and plastic mast were tied to the hull.

“That boat belongs to Dad. He won it in a contest.”

“Does he know how to sail?”

“Hell, no, but that never stopped him.”

Lisa laughed. She knew my dad’s playful side, often fueled by large quantities of alcohol. I pressed the accelerator and we rattled on a few miles farther, braking at the green and white sign for Oh Be Joyful Canyon.

“This is where we turn,” I said.

“Far out!”

I cranked the wheel hard left and the Scout bounced down a heavily eroded jeep trail, S-curving several times before it dead-ended at the river. The creek was about five yards across and its crystalline current churned up white spouts across its length. Tall cottonwoods leaned precariously over its ledged banks.

“The road picks up on the other side,” I said.

I had been down this road a week earlier, when my father and his crew erected the teepee. The river wasn’t as high or as rushing as it had been earlier in the summer. But this time I was driving.

“Fuckin’-A.”

I killed the engine. We got out and peered at the river.

Lisa lit a Marlboro Light, taking a deep drag.

“It’s three-and-a-half feet deep in the middle,” she said. “Maybe more.”

She reached out a finger and touched the icy current.

“With enough speed we might get across.”

“Totally,” I gulped.

Lisa climbed back in the car and waited for me to do the same. Her family had lived in the mountains surrounding Boulder on roads that were little more than deer paths. My family’s idea of navigating a river was inner tubing down the city irrigation ditch that ran through our front yard in Boulder.

“Hang on.”

I cranked the shifter into reverse, backed up a few yards, and then roared toward the river. The current slapped against the truck, nudging us off course. I grasped the steering wheel like a life preserver. Half way across, the water coursed up to the doors. For a moment we began to drift.

“Gun it!” Lisa said.

My own voice was stuffed way up in my throat and all that came out was a high-pitched croak. The Scout’s wheels gripped the gray rocks of the riverbed and yanked us forward. Water splashed all the way up to the windshield as the Scout forged through, bucked up out of the water and bounced up the opposite bank.

The two of us sat motionless, listening to water drip off the sheet metal.

“Shit. We totally almost washed downriver,” Lisa said.

“Lending a whole new meaning to us calling it a boat.”

We cracked up. Lisa let loose her trademark snort, which was almost identical to a donkey’s bray. It always made me laugh harder.

I parked the Scout under a ponderosa pine and killed the engine.

We climbed out like stiff survivors of a plane wreck. Lisa walked past me and opened the back hatch of the Scout. Our overloaded packs lay in the truck bed like fat seals on the beach. They bulged with cheese, bread, potatoes, eggs, peanut butter, veggies, pots, pans, utensils and the least amount of clothing we could get by on. For me, that meant twice as many clothes as Lisa, and a few cotton bras, which she didn’t bother with. Our plan was to rinse our panties in the creek beside the teepee, using natural Dr. Bronners almond soap, then hang them on a clothesline strung between two trees. Back in Boulder, Lisa and I had worked out these details over long planning meetings punctuated by bong hits.

I hoisted my pack out of the Scout and leaned it up against a blue spruce. Lisa’s pack weighed more than she did as she hauled it onto her back. A smile drifted between us. We had begun the voyage we’d only dreamed about for months.

“Tucker said we’d never make it up the canyon carrying these,” I said.

“Are you kidding? He’s pissed because you didn’t invite him,” Lisa replied.

“No doubt. He thinks I can’t stay away.”

“Maybe this will take his ego down a few pegs.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

Lisa hadn’t met my currently on-again boyfriend, who lived in Crested Butte. But she’d heard so much about him she felt like she’d known him for years. I started up the road, which wound through a stand of yellow-green aspens. Their smooth trunks stood out against the surrounding conifers, round leaves shimmering elegantly. An article I’d read in the Boulder Daily Camera explained that these seemingly delicate trees reproduced from deep root systems, not their cottony, flyaway seeds.

“Did you know most aspens are clones?” I asked.

“No way.”

“Yeah, that’s why they grow in stands,” I pointed to the cluster up ahead. “Their roots send out suckers that become new trees. So all the separate trees are   offshoots of the same plant.”

Lisa squinted at the trees. Then she looked at me with curiosity. I started back up the trail, but Lisa seemed frozen to the spot.

“What?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

She smiled, knowing damned well.

“Spill.”

“I’ve never heard you change the subject from a guy to trees before,” she said.

“It’s the new me.”

“Killer.”

We cracked up.

Lisa had a far away look as we trudged upwards. Teetering under my load, I studied the trail’s carpet of springy bristlecone pine needles. Doubts about our journey crowded in, even as the delicate alpine atmosphere surrounded us. The smell of sage and pinecones mingled with the musk of black dirt loosened by tons of melting snow. Each bird, tiny alpine chipmunk and deer track I saw reminded me these wild creatures would be our only neighbors. I shivered at the awesome beauty and loneliness of our new home.

We paused at a rocky outcrop and watched the river below winding like a snake through the valley. The wind picked up suddenly, its ominous sigh shaking the treetops. Ducking out of the wind, we turned a corner and left our last view of civilization behind. My stomach tensed as I realized I had only a flimsy and probably highly unrealistic impression of what teepee living was like.

Forty-five minutes into the hike, the road began a savage vertical climb. The straps of the pack bit into the bones of my shoulder blades and I huffed shallowly, trying to keep my breath quiet.  I’d rather choke than have Lisa hear me panting. Fortunately, Lisa’s Levi cutoffs bobbed up the trail ten feet ahead. As the climb wore on, I silently cried, stung by the flames in my lungs, shoulders and thighs. My father’s voice echoed in my head.

“Pattersons aren’t allowed to whine.”

Dad raised us after Mommy died of stomach cancer at age 36. He traveled with us, camped, built tree houses and taught us important things like how to hammer a nail. He was excellent when it came to adventure, but he had no time for coddling. It may have seemed harsh to outsiders, but my little brother James, big sister Maggie and I tried our hardest to obey the ‘no whining’ law, Of course, I broke it most often, being ridiculously sensitive and emotional. But over the years I’d learned a bit from my dad about how to buck up. There was no way I was going to snivel about the painful climb to Lisa. A trophy-winner on the Boulder High cross-country running team, she’d barely broken a sweat.

Time slowed to a near standstill as I grappled with the physical bite of climbing steep switchbacks carrying a 50-pound pack. Lisa slowed to pass me a joint, undoubtedly given to her by one of her many male admirers. I eagerly took a hit, hoping the pot would mellow my muscles’ insistent yelps. Instead, the buzz extended every moment to an eternity. The loud chirp of a fleet gray bird a few yards away startled me. The little bird cocked its head and confronted me with knowing black eyes. It peeped again, aggressively, as if to say, ‘Go home.’

“Hi, birdie,” I said.

My voice prompted the bird to hop a few steps back. It flew to a higher branch. A startling fact dawned on me as I toiled up the trail: I hadn’t obsessed about food, or my thighs, or Tucker, for nearly an hour. This was a major coup, tantamount to getting an A in algebra.

Lisa let out a little scream and loped forward. I looked ahead and saw the white point of the teepee in the distance. We bounded across the meadow and reached the teepee site in minutes.  I shimmied out of my pack. Free from its weight, I felt like I was levitating into the powder blue sky.

“Fuckin’ A,” Lisa said.

“I know!”

Lisa hugged me, her mouse-brown hair brushing against my chin. I was struck by a deep connection. You can’t pick your family, but if you could, she would be my sister for sure.

We stood there, staring at the new, white teepee. Its taut canvas flanks stretched above our heads, the 18-foot high cone laced up the front with stripped willow branches. Two loose flaps at the opening under the laces served as the door. Above the lacings, large triangular smoke flaps rose up to the top of the teepee. The top corners of the flaps were lashed to thin lodge poles, which wrapped around to the back of the structure. Lisa and I had seen many teepees, sprinkled throughout the mountains around Boulder, but this was completely different. This teepee was ours.

“Let’s check out the creek,” she said, after a few moments of awed contemplation.

Twenty feet from the front door of the teepee, a rock shelf jutted out above the river. Dusted with lichen and bits of bark, it offered an ideal vantage point for creek watching. Below it danced the rock-encased surge of icy clear snowmelt, whose high-pitched mutter filled the canyon. Lisa pointed to the fleeting gold and pink shadows darting between gray river rocks.

“Rainbow trout.”

“We should catch some!” I cried.

“But then you have to slice them open and scoop out the guts with your thumb.”

“Maybe not.”

I smiled, wiggling my fingers in a wave to the fish. We moved on to check out the woodpile with its stump for a chopping block, cleaved by a blue-handled axe. Under the shade of a nearby tree stood a blue metal Coleman cooler. In the center of the teepee site, river rocks neatly encircled an outdoor fireplace.

“This set up is far out!”

“Dad’s an architect. He likes to design stuff.”

“It’s like a real, comfy home.”

In the grassy stretch between the road and the teepee, my boot turned slightly on a little dirt mound. Similar burrows were scattered all around the meadow.

“What lives in these holes?” I asked.

I secretly wondered if a snake made a little pile of dirt near its hole, but I didn’t ask, fearing the question might be ridiculous. Lisa pointed.

“Yellow-bellied marmots. See?”

I caught a glimpse of what looked like a chipmunk without a tail or a stripe. It whistled, then jetted across the field and disappeared into a pile of rocks.

“Cute!”

She scanned the ridge, where a hawk glided in lazy circles, its wings steady like those on James’s balsam wood gliders. For a moment I missed my smart little brother, whose orange hair fell in bowl-cut bangs to the black ledge of his horn rimmed glasses. James would be 14 in September. I was pretty sure he had never kissed a girl. I hoped he found someone to hang out with this summer, although I doubted he would win any popularity contests. I didn’t want him to be lonely, but inviting him to join us would be out of the question.

Lisa and I gravitated back to the teepee, which was mottled with shadows from a nearby ponderosa pine. I approached the entrance. Lisa joined me as I parted the canvas door flap and ducked inside. The well-lit circular room offered ample space for us to walk around. I stared up at the long, spindly pine poles that formed the teepee’s interior framework. All of the poles joined together at the top of the cone, then poked out into the blue sky. Above us, sunlight streamed in through an opening at the apex of the poles, warming our shoulders.

“Wow, Tess.”

Lisa stood in the circle of light at the center of the teepee’s round room.

“It’s beautiful.” She said.

I nodded.

“There’s a special energy that happens right here in the center.”

“Totally,” Lisa said.

Lisa understood what I felt standing there. At least, I hoped so.

“It’s sacred ground.”

There was no way to say it without sounding corny, but what the Hell. It was true. Lisa nodded. We stood there for a few minutes, looking up at the teepee poles. Eventually I flopped onto my patchwork quilt-covered mattress. The twp twin beds met at one end, pillows touching.

Luxuriating in my bed, I lit up a joint.

“Dad never told me he was bringing all this stuff up here,” I said.

“Really?” Lisa asked.

“The day they put up the teepee, none of this was here — the beds, quilts, camp light, axe, chopping block, woodpile, the cooler.”

“He wanted to surprise you,” Lisa said. “It’s kind of sweet.”

I had myriad reasons to be pissed off at my father, but the image of him stealthily outfitting the teepee made me smile. I had to admit; the man was a pro at surprises.

I opened my dog-eared book, Mythology, by Edith Hamilton, which I had swiped from our bookshelf in Boulder. I could tell the book had belonged to my mother. Her elegantly handwritten notes filled its pages, but I couldn’t read her shorthand.

I loved Greek, Roman and American Indian mythology. The symbolism appealed to me, along with the idea of gods who lived above it all, wielding their superpowers in seemingly random ways. The goddesses – especially the fierce ones – were far out. I generally skipped stories that only dealt with the male gods.

I read for a while, then saved my page with my thumb and looked up.

“Do you know about Athena?”

“The goddess of beauty, right?” Lisa said.

“Nope. She was the goddess of war, the city, handicrafts, and agriculture. Plus she represented reason.”

“What a list!” Lisa said.

She was sketching in charcoal on the textured page of her sketchbook.

“Athena was Zeus’s daughter. Guess how she was born?”

“I give up.”

“Get this – ‘She sprang from Zeus’s skull, fully grown and dressed in a full set of armor.’”

I showed Lisa the illustration of the armored goddess.

“Don’t Goddesses spend their time laying around in silk togas?” she asked.

“She’s not your average goddess. It says here she was Zeus’s favorite.”

I looked up. Lisa had dozed off, curled on her bed.

Confusion swirled in my gut. Was I Dad’s favorite? When I was a toddler, he’d whispered  “secret friend” in my ear. He was one of my favorite people, despite his tendency to be an asshole when he was drunk. Was I still his ‘secret friend?’ Or had fighting destroyed our friendship over the past year? It was annoying how much I cared.

Careful not to wake Lisa, I stole outside. I hesitated a moment before opening the cooler’s metal lid, my heart banging like a kettledrum. I reached inside, plucking a Triscuit from an open box and surveying the rest of our larder. I could make a quick feast of the Swiss cheese, bread and butter, peanut butter, Triscuits, honey, and the large, calorie-laden bag of trail mix with its carob bits. I could wash it all down with the a few cups of creek water, purge into a hole and bury it, before Lisa even woke up. I’d brush my teeth at the creek, and voila! It never happened.

I started pulling food out of the cooler. One by one, I plopped the items on my lap: the cheese, the bread, the crackers, the peanut butter, the honey the butter. I slammed the metal lid and sat with the food cradled in my lap. I bit open a plastic wrapper and gnawed into a block of Swiss cheese. I stared down at the bite mark in the yellow rectangle, which intersected its delicate holes. It was okay to eat as long as you didn’t get fat. Whatever it took, it was worth it not to look disgusting.

I sat with the cheese in my hand, listening to the creek’s jangle, the shifting gusts of breeze in the woods, my own chewing. My feet shifted in the carpet of pine needles. Fear overtook my body as an unfamiliar new voice whispered to me:

There is no way you can scarf all this food. Lisa will notice.

I crunched another rough, salty Triscuit. Why should I care what my friend thought? But I did, more than anything. More than the food, I longed for the blankness, the delicious post-binge sensation of not feeling a goddamned thing.

A bird called out: who who. I looked around, but couldn’t see it. I shivered. My daily ritual of binging and purging would be impossible with such a small stash of food, carried up here in our backpacks. Suddenly, the summer stretched endlessly before me – a maze of many hours and precious few distractions. So much time to think, to remember, and exist, cold turkey. Where were my graham crackers when I needed them?

“Shit.”

I dumped the food back in the cooler and headed to the teepee for a nap.

I was startled awake by a rhythmic “thunk, thunk, thunk.” I went outside and found Lisa near the woodpile. Wearing only her shorts and a floppy hat, her boot propped on the broad stump chopping block, she raised the axe to split a log. Although Lisa was lean and athletic, her unclothed torso was a sonata of gently curving lines: round shoulders, smooth forearms, and a slightly rounded, child-like belly.

“Fab outfit.”

“Thanks!”

She grinned, then let the axe fly. The log fell into two perfectly cleaved halves.

“Try it. Just make sure you don’t hit a knot.”

She held out the axe.

I peeled off my t-shirt and gripped the wooden handle. Like my willowy mother, I had tiny wrists and frail-looking arms, but their length gave me leverage. I raised the axe and let it fall, missing the log entirely. But Lisa was right – it felt great. I nudged my feet into a more solid position, swung the axe over my head and sunk the axe blade into the log. The axe and log rose up with my next swing, then I cracked them down on the chopping block, the log bouncing into two halves.

“Far out!”

Lisa applauded.

“You’re an official, card-carrying mountain mama now.”

After we had split a neat pile of wood, we wandered over to the creek and contemplated the rushing whitewater.

“The snow above us is still melting. That’s why the creek is so raging,” Lisa said.

I pointed to a large log laid across the creek, from bank to bank.

“See over there? I don’t remember seeing that the last time I was up here.”

“It looks like it’s been cut by a saw,” Lisa said.

She looked toward Oh Be Joyful road, which traversed the length of our narrow canyon. If there were strangers in our midst, they would have to arrive on that road. I pointed to a Douglas fir with low branches.

“Let’s hang our binoculars here. We’ll keep an eye on the road. If we see anyone coming, we’ll check them out,” I said.

“We can keep our can of Mace here, too. For safe-keeping.”

Lisa indicated a little nook in the tree.

We looked at each other: two skinny girls alone high in a canyon with no doors to lock at night, no dog to bark. Our most threatening weapons were our Swiss Army knives and a palm-sized can of Mace. Under a sliver of a new moon, the entire canyon would be pitch black.

I was suddenly very, very hungry.

“Let’s gather up some kindling and build a big fire,” Lisa said, as if reading my mind.

“I’m not sure how to work the smoke flaps, so maybe we could build a fire out here.”

“Okay,” she said.

My hiking boots crunched the pine needles as I scoured the ground for sticks and snapped dead ones off the ponderosa pines surrounding our site. Why I hadn’t such obvious things occurred to me before? What were we supposed to do if we were attacked – sexually or otherwise – by intruders? What if one of us got seriously injured or became horribly sick? My perspective took a sudden, yanking shift. Could it be that my puking, which only a day ago worked out fine, distracted me from the possibility of danger up here? Was my mass consumption of graham crackers just another way of sticking my head in the sand?

At night by the fire, Lisa and I mapped out some ground rules for teepee life. We would pack out every scrap of garbage, leaving no trace of humans behind. All cooking would be done over a fire – no camp stove.

“The Indians didn’t have them,” Lisa said.

“They didn’t have a cooler, either, but we have one.”

“True. But that we can’t do without.”

“I think it’s cool, anyway. Lighting a fire to cook.”

“Totally.”

Every other day in the afternoon, we’d observe our bathing ritual. Filing naked down to the creek, we’d ‘shower’ in a spout of whitewater, then lay on broad slabs of river rock that were warmed by the sun each day. When it came to guests, we’d invite only people who would understand our new way of life. That brought up Tucker and Andy.

“I can’t picture them getting this,” I said. “When you meet them you’ll see.”

“Then they’re not invited.”

“Really?”

“Why not?”

“Tucker will freak.”

“Tucker will get over it.”

At first, this rule felt like a relief. If we invited guys, I’d have to contend with a constant stream of Lisa’s admirers. Then again, my track record for staying away from Tucker was not impressive.

Next rule: flashlights would be used only in dire emergencies. Especially the high-powered Coleman my father had left up here, nicknamed the “high beam.”

Wooden matches would be used instead of lighters.

“Indians didn’t have lighters,” Lisa said.

“They didn’t have matches, either.”

“Good point.”

“But they do seem more natural.”

Being unprepared was bad teepee etiquette, so we would carry our Swiss Army knives at all times.

No cigarette butts would be left on the ground.

“This is not Cancer Hill,” I said, referring to the butt-covered parking lot where the “hoods” smoked at Boulder High.

“Gross, no,” Lisa said.

Other items we agreed to ban from teepee life included dish soap, lighter fluid, bathing suits, watches and radios.

I decided not to mention my Great Lash mascara in Blackest Black. A swipe or two on my lashes, using the small circle of a mirror I’d hung from the pine tree out our door, was a must. Even as a teepee goddess, I wasn’t spiritual enough to face the day looking washed out.

Hey Diary:

Tess looked wasted when I got here. I swear, NO ONE gets dark circles like Tess. They look like artist’s charcoal or something, smudged under her eyes. She was such a rosy-cheeked girl when she showed up in 5^th grade. Mrs. Johnson called her ‘Miss Strawberry’ on account of the cheeks. Now her hair looks like straw & her jaw line is all puffy and weird.

Waited for her on the trail a lot. She’s been way behind, even when I was poking along at, like, zero miles per hour. Looked like she might pass out on the way up, even though it’s only a mile and a half. I want to ask what her trip is – trouble sleeping, too much junk food, cigarettes, worries about her dad, major drugs, blah, blah – but I probably won’t. Tess could collapse in front of me & I’d still pretend everything was fine.

Everything’s so fucking fine, I’ve run up a mountain, 500 miles from home, to hide out.