Free Backwater by Joan Bauer Page A

pictured marauding wild animals tearing apart our tent.
    Thought of falling off the mountain.
    Thought of something happening to Mountain Mama and how I would be left alone to die slowly.
    I thought about Jack, remembering his smile.
    I thought of Josephine in a cave with hair down to her ankles.
    I thought of the ancestral clan moving west from New Hampshire to New York, settling in Farmington by the river, not for the view as much as for the soft green grass on the bank. Comfort Breedlove, pregnant with her ninth child in as many years, sat down by the shores of the Blue Mountain River and said that was it; she wasn’t going any further.
    “Thou canst ride the wagon over my bones and slay me if thou must,” she is reported to have told her husband, “but I canst not find it within myself to journey further.” And she lay down and had her baby. Breedlove women were always opinionated.
    I wasn’t sure I wanted to go farther.
    I felt the wilderness wrap around me in frigid darkness.
    Somehow, I fell asleep.
    *    *    *
    “Hut, two, Breedlove, we’re moving out.”
    A hand slapped my sleeping bag. I was still in it. I moved inside my warm bag, opened one eye at the pitch black and groaned.
    Mountain Mama was a study in enthusiasm, rolling up her bag, putting supplies in her pack.
    “What time is it?” I muttered.
    “Five A.M. , Breedlove. I’ll get the fire ready for breakfast.” Mountain Mama crawled out of the tent.
    “Five a.m.?”
    “I let you sleep late.”
    I struggled from my bag. It was impossibly cold. My breath looked like cigar smoke. I put on extra layers, zippered on my coat, threw on a wool cap.
    I thought of my female ancestors slaving over the pot and kettle, getting up before dawn to prepare breakfast for the family, spinning yarn, making the coarse fabric called “homespun.” Women had to keep the fire going in the big open fireplaces. Everything they did took time, strength, and patience.
    If they could do it, so could I.
    I broke down the tent; the stakes had frozen into the ground at night. I took a pick axe, starting chipping away, yanked the first one up.
    Got two more stakes free.
    The wind picked up and moved under the tent, which ballooned with the air.
    “You in control, Breedlove?”
    “Maybe.”
    I yanked out the last stake, sat on the tent until it lay flat and began the folding process. Mountain Mama helped me.
    We had oatmeal and raisins and Hershey bars for breakfast as sunlight broke through the trees, beaming down on us with warmth.
    We left that campsite clean like we’d found it, embracing the rule of the wild and chapter twelve—
Leave Nothing Behind But Your Footprints.
    I looked to the high peak that gleamed in the early-morning sun.
    Josephine was there.
    I felt excitement and fear grinding in my heart.
    “We’re moving out,” Mountain Mama shouted. I shouldered my pack on my very sore back and headed toward her.
    “Anybody here need rescuing?”
    I looked up as Jack walked toward me, grinning ruggedly.
    Instantly my back was healed; my heart spun like a top.
    “Can I walk with you guys a bit?”
    I handed him a Hershey bar with almonds from my front pocket. He broke it in half, and handed half back to me.
    When we don’t have the words, chocolate can speak volumes.
    Mountain Mama waved her arm forward like a marine sergeant mustering the troops to take a hill. Jack fell in behind me, and off we marched into the vast unknown.

9
    We had hiked four hours through the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. Mountain Mama made us stop every hour and eat and drink something because she said in winter hiking particularly, a person needed extra calories. I was thrilled to know it is impossible to overeat in the mountains.
    My thighs were in agony from walking in the snow, but somehow I kept moving. With every hour, we were closer to Josephine.
    We stopped by a large rock formation jutting out to a snowy cliff and looked across to the huge gray sky and distant