Creature Discomforts

attractive, somewhat exotic features and is altogether the picture of muscular perfection. His short-sleeved white T-shirt and khaki shorts revealed lean, strong arms and legs. He had on woolen socks and heavy leather hiking boots. The shorts and boots had a comfortable, broken-in look, as did the unzipped black day pack that rested next to the hiker, who was sitting on the ground drinking from a plastic bottle. As maybe I need to spell out, this wasn’t some fleshy tourist who’d just finished expensively costuming himself at one of the outdoor outfitters’ shops in Bar Harbor. This was the kind of fanatic who trains for through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, speeding along the Pacific Crest, or frisking on the glaciers of Denali by dashing around Acadia making everyone else feel fat, slow, and morally inferior.
    The hiker smiled and said a pleasant hello that included the dogs as well as me. When I’d returned his greeting, he eyed the dogs and said, “The steep part begins ahead. You don’t hit the first ladder until below some steps.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “We don’t do ladder trails, or at least the dogs don’t. I just wanted to see what the beginning of the trail was like.”
    To my relief, he did not admire my “huskies,” ask why they didn’t have blue eyes, or joke about making Kimi do all the work. Instead he asked, “You show them?”
    Normal enough question, to which there must be a hundred normal answers, such as Yes, No, Sometimes, Once in a while, All the time, Not anymore, and I retired them after they took Best of Breed at Westminster in successive years. The only idea that came to mind was the grossly abnormal truth, namely, that if I did I had no memory of it. Before I had a chance to say anything, normal or abnormal, however, the hiker made it clear that he’d been stating the obvious rather than asking a question. He rose gracefully and tucked his right hand into the pocket of his shorts. As any show dog knows, that’s where the liver lives. Rowdy and Kimi shifted into show mode: Tails wagging over their backs, ears up, eyes sparkling, they posed for an invisible judge. With no recollection of how I knew anything about anything, including the dialect of the dog fancy, I felt pleased to watch them free-stack so beautifully. Without asking my permission, the hiker produced bits of what was obviously dog-appealing food from his pocket. Catching the dogs’ eyes, he lightly raised and lowered his hand.
    “Not every dog baits for trail mix,” he commented with approval.
    I said, without thinking, “These dogs bait for dirt.” After tossing each dog a few pieces of what I could now see was a mixture of nuts and raisins, he stowed his water bottle in the black day pack, zipped it, and slipped it onto his shoulders.
    “Have a good hike,” he said innocuously.
    Before I could return the banality, he’d taken long, easy strides in a direction that surprised me. His gentle warning about the Ladder Trail had made me assume that he’d just ascended it and was taking a water break before heading to the summit of Dorr. Instead of making for the trail, however, he moved rapidly in the direction the dogs and I were headed, and then suddenly bounded to the right, uphill and off the trail.
    “Bushwhacking,” I told the dogs. “He should’ve worn long pants.”
    As I did not tell the dogs, the hiker’s sudden disappearance unsettled me. For the first time, I was sharply aware of reenacting what must have been the events of the previous day. Somewhere nearby, maybe just below the ledges, was my Rock of Ages. Wasn’t it? Or was it farther to the right? As if the secure footpath might transform itself into a steep, unheralded, unavoidable ladder that would send us on a terrifying downward plunge, I shortened the dogs’ leads and took careful, one-at-a-time baby steps. Even at my foolishly slow rate, I soon reached the spot where the lone hiker had unexpectedly vanished upward. There, the trail turned left and headed abruptly downward. What appeared was not the nightmarish, fun-house ladder I’d feared, but another of the many narrow stone staircases that ran up and down the little mountain. This stretch of stepped trail was, however, exceptionally long and steep. Even more than the similar trails we’d already traversed, it created the artful impression of natural or even supernatural construction. Rather than switchbacking left and right along what, on reflection, would reveal itself