Free Journal of the Dead by Jason Kersten

elevation, the wider lines were more gradual. Each 2 × 2-inch square represented a square mile, and there were more than 130 squares in all. They located the road and the trailhead where the car was parked, then followed the dotted line of the access trail down to the Rattlesnake Canyon trail, which they knew they were standing right on top of. The entire trail fell within four square miles—a mere eight square inches in that vast spread of paper, and they kept squinting among the swirling lines, then looking back at the giant, three-dimensional world surrounding them for points of reference. There were about five peaks nearby, but establishing their relative height was nearly impossible while looking up at them from the constrictedconfines of the canyon. The map quickly became an exercise in irony: the rendering of Rattlesnake Canyon would have made a lot more sense if they weren’t in the canyon already.
    But they weren’t discouraged, or even especially worried. One thing they were able to glean from the map was that they were in a small area, no bigger than four square miles. The trail had to be there because they had come down it the night before, and it couldn’t be too far off because if they backtracked much more they’d be in the vicinity of the campsite they’d just left.
    They formed a search area of about a quarter mile along the riverbed and canyon slopes and began their most careful hunt yet. At first they walked it off quickly, expecting to see the magic cairn any minute; when that failed, they tried walking fifty feet or so, stopping, and having a good look around. Occasionally they’d split up, each man pursuing an area he thought might be promising. Sometimes they’d search close to the slopes; other times they’d fall back across the riverbed for a wider view. Every new location seemed as if it had to hold the key, and when the path failed to turn up, it was almost something to laugh about. What kind of half-assed camping area is this, was the joke, but as morning burned toward afternoon they grew quieter. Rattlesnake Canyon was beginning to change.
    By eleven A.M., the sun had risen above the canyon walls, and the temperature, now in the high eighties, was climbing at a rate of about three degrees an hour. Sweating, their skin hot, they retreated into the shade of a shrub bank, telling themselves that they’d look again in a few minutes, but once they had nestled into the relative coolness of the bushes, they felt no hurry to return to the hot brightness beyond. They reclined in dazed silence andtried to comprehend what had happened. It seemed incredible that only three hours earlier they hadn’t had a care in the world.

    Around noon a cloud cover rolled in, bringing relief from the sun, and something else that was far more valuable, for it was the rainy season. As fat summer drops began falling over the desert, they moved out from beneath the bush, letting the downpour cool their skin. They had already felt the first, driving pangs of thirst, and cursed the fact that they had nothing ready to collect the water. But when they noticed it was rolling off some of the larger rocks and pooling beneath them, Raffi and David quickly went into action. Kneeling down over the small puddles, they slurped up mouthfuls of gritty water, then spit it back into the empty bottles. By the time it stopped raining, they had managed to collect about three-quarters of a pint each. They took only small sips from the bottles, opting for a strategy of rationing.
    Enlivened by the clouds and the rain, the friends resumed the search for the exit trail. They couldn’t tell if they had gone too far down the canyon or not far enough, but both of them felt that the trail wasn’t far off. Rather than risking getting more lost than they already were, they resolved to stay in the general area in hopes that rangers would soon come looking for them. Their camping permit was for only one day, and they had told the young ranger