Bellis took me on an Angeles trail last week, Buckhorn Pass, I think. She knows all the names. It was a few days before the forest opened. Everything silent, save for our huffing and puffing in the thin, 7,000-foot air. At one point she leaned on her hiking stick and said, “Are you feeling this?” and I answered “Ah-huhh-huhh-huhh…” I like to be in front, but that made my heart thump thump thump in my ears.
We took a rest by a stream. I had packed hard-boiled eggs. We both agreed that an egg had never tasted so good. When we crossed the stream, she hopped from rock to rock. My shoes have no treads, so I just stepped in and waded through. Lucky for me, as the next mile or two headed straight up, in full sun.
“Tricky, these Armenians,” I said. And she asked what that meant. It was a line from It Happened One Night, and I would have explained, but it doesn’t pay to talk when you’re gasping for air.
“The main road is just around the bend,” she said. But it wasn’t that bend. “The next bend,” she said. It wasn’t that one either. Or the next. Or the one after that. Finally, I didn’t believe her anymore. But she didn't believe her, either.
Eventually we reached the main road. And everything stayed quiet, still, and empty. We walked for a mile down the center of Angeles Crest Highway. Thrilling, because no hiker will be able to do that again for the next hundred years.
Thanks Bellis.
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