Creature Discomforts

had it happened?
    “We’re going to find out,” I told Kimi. “And we’re also going to find Rowdy’s pack and pick up the bags of rice we left, and we’re going to see... Well, we’re going to see what’s to be seen, that’s what!” In case we did find Rowdy’s pack, I had him wear his yoke, but my right arm and both shoulders were so sore that I carried nothing myself. Before the dogs and I had even left the sidewalk that ran between the parking lot and the Wild Gardens of Acadia, a tourist shook an only half playful finger at me, then at Kimi, and said, “No fair making him do all the work!” Two seconds later, another tourist echoed the first. “What’d that one do to get stuck carrying everything?” About two seconds after that, a pair of adorable children just had to pat the dogs, and their parents naturally had to take pictures of the adorable children with the adorable dogs, and so forth and so on— Thank you, actually they’re malamutes, they’re not supposed to have blue eyes, and no, she doesn’t mind carrying the pack, she likes it, and yes, she’s a girl, her name is Kimi, the other one is a male, Rowdy, and...
    And if I didn’t bolt, we wouldn’t get on a trail until sunset. Whistling to the dogs to rev them up, I sped past the Wild Gardens and had just cleared the Nature Center building when I all but collided with Steve Delaney, who was standing near the entrance looking bored. The brief encounter nearly began with a dog fight, which would have been Kimi’s fault. Neither of Steve’s dogs did a thing to provoke her, unless you count the involuntary act of radiating female scent. One of the two was the pointer I’d seen the previous evening. The other was a shepherd—a German shepherd dog. Kimi gave me no time to collect my thoughts. At the sight of the shepherd, she raised her hackles, emitted a low growl, and yanked on her leash, and believe me, a malamute yank is not some light tug. It’s a massive wham designed to break an ice-encrusted sled from the tundra or to free a stubborn human arm from the shoulder socket. The dog doesn’t give a damn which. This kind of behavior is hideously embarrassing under any circumstances, even when you manage to terminate it within seconds by pretending that you’re God dictating the Ten Commandments. Instead of wordily commanding that Thou shalt not ..., you boom NO! at the top of your lungs, but you boom it with Old Testament wrath.
    “I hear you took a serious fall yesterday,” Steve said flatly. He looked older than he had in last night’s darkness. Hollows and lines showed under his blue-green eyes.
    “I told you last night. I just got a few scratches.”
    “You’re in no shape to go hiking alone.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not alone.” I nodded at Rowdy and Kimi.
    He almost smiled. “Your theme song.”
    “My what?”
    “ ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ ”
    I didn’t even recognize the phrase, never mind catch the allusion. Still, with utter nastiness, I said, “Damn straight!”
    Instead of the violently erotic response to him I’d had at Gabrielle’s party, I now felt overwhelmed with grief compounded by a humbling and even humiliating sense of my own stupidity. To prevent him from seeing me cry, I stomped away, hauling the dogs with me. Before long, we were on a wooded footpath. As some intact part of my brain must have known, it took us to the end of The Tarn and the trailhead for Kurt Diederich’s Climb, which I was able brilliantly to identify as such because, as one of the tourists had pointed out yesterday, Kurt Diederich ’s Climb was carved in one of the risers of the stone staircase that rose sharply upward. With better judgment than I’d had yesterday afternoon when I’d practically flown down the stone trail at the end of the dogs’ leads, I felt intimidated by the steepness of the stairs and by the word Climb. Putting one foot in front of another was within my capacity. A climb was beyond me. What if I fell again? Or lost control of the dogs? Or lost the dogs? Or got all three of us lost in the woods? “We will not get lost,” I told the dogs with sudden resolve. “We will not even think about loss. Loss has nothing to do with us. It does not exist.”
    It does, of course. So do climbs. As climbs go, however, Kurt Diederich’s isn’t one. Its beautiful stone steps rise upward, but they are steps, and Dorr Mountain is more a hill, as in “anthill,” than it is a mountain,