Adamant Spirits

Swept Away-2

I blinked back the discordant feeling. “What’s your other gifting?”

He just smiled his sideways grin at me. And turned up the music.

Sometime later, we arrived at the lowest campsite. Callum and I put up our tents while Xavier cooked over the fire pit. Of course, Callum had to show off again, starting the fire by increasing the concentration of oxygen around the kindling. Aerons. But he was otherwise more occupied with silently glaring at me while we set up the tents. I tried to hide the fact I had just purchased all the items at the store before we met for the drive, but more than once I saw Callum roll his eyes at the price tags I had missed. The outdoor store person said this was everything I would need. But as I stared at the pile of lightweight “necessities,” compared to the guys’ efficient gear, I was starting to think some of it was excessive, and I had been taken advantage of.

Callum kept his mouth shut, occasionally snorting derisively, as I struggled with my new lightweight, rapid-opening tent … which was not rapidly opening.

I was finally saved by Xavier’s call for dinner.

I perched on my fancy camping chair, unwilling to freeze on the cold ground but finding it hard to balance on the unstable ground with all the levers and the additional “comfort” foot rest. The guys had whipped out tiny tripod seats. With a flourish, Xavier tore open the foil, beaming a proud smile. “Tada!”

“Steak?” I asked with an incredulous laugh. “You brought steak on a backpacking trip?”

“First night is the best night. The raw meat won’t last of course, so tonight we live it up. When we restock later I am debating either fajitas or paella.”

My eyes widened. “Paella? An aquatic Fauna eating fish?” I had never tasted it, but I remembered a broad pan of rice and seafood and a thousand other ingredients in Father’s travel pictures.

“Some Faunas are vegetarians, but most of us understand the circle of life and eat meat mindfully. We value all life and are grateful to those lives that sustain ours.” He looked meaningfully at his steak. “These are sustainably sourced, pasture prancing, happy cows that do not ever suffer. Every aspect of the animal is used, without waste. The fish and seafood are similar.” He shrugged. “For me, I can’t eat pork since I had a potbelly pig live with us growing up. But there are ways to live in balance.”

“Alright, enough preaching.” Callum winked. “It all comes down to: is it delicious? Because that’s what’s most important.”

I smiled, hoping to offer a temporary truce. “Smells good.”

“Camping shouldn’t mean suffering. Life was meant to be lived wholly and fully. Indoors or outdoors.”

Is this what living is? Have I not been living? I breathed and ate and felt. I excelled in school, and set goals, and lived life to the fullest with my annual vision board. I meditated on my future. I was accomplished. Wasn’t that living?

I poked at my steak before cutting into it. And froze. It was delicious. Along with the steak, Xavier had prepared grilled Brussels sprouts with balsamic glaze and pan-cooked hashbrowns. The quality of the food shocked me. I had camped in cabins with my family and a hard camper at Yellowstone. But those had always come with refrigerators and our chef’s preplanned meals. For this trip, I had expected store-bought, hermetically-sealed astronaut food, granola, and an intractable iron will. This was much better.

The chirps of the evening crickets and a nearby owl welcomed the rapid darkening of dusk. Xavier hooted back to the bird, eventually calling a wide-eyed Great Horned Owl to swirl overhead. It landed beside Xavier and offered its claw; Xavier absently picked something from between the fuzzy feathered toe. The owl screeched and pecked at his hand, but when Xavier pulled out a spiked bramble, the owl muttered and chattered and hopped in place. It rubbed its face against Xavier’s hand before it took off again, silent in the night.

I gawked slack jawed at such a casual demonstration of Fauna. Where was the prideful scum my Father had told me about? Where was the talentless creep? Furthermore, that was not a fish. He was clearly more skilled than he had let on.

I tried not to stare at the way Xavier’s symmetrical features sharpened in the firelight. His jawline cut squarely but was softened by an easy grin that crinkled his eyes. Once, our gazes locked, and my stomach fluttered in response.

Xavier Winters was not what I had expected. I had expected a fool, but he was competent. I had expected an intrusive meddler, but he was friendly and curious. Curious in a way that made me feel like I was seen. Realizing I wanted that was discomforting. The calming evening wind plummeted the temperature, but while the fire scorched my cheeks and shins, another sensation stirred hot in my chest.

“You can’t really see it from here—we’re too close—but on your way home, look back. This set of hills is called the Mummy Range because it looks like a mummy is sleeping.” The park ranger s***h civil engineer Mr. Timothy Martin was a peppy morning person who’d had too many grounds in his strong black coffee. He had set a blistering pace up the mountain but could somehow talk and sprint at the same time. I was just glad I wasn’t the only one panting. Callum and Xavier were clearly fit, but no one could match the spry mountain man at the front.

He stopped suddenly and pointed between two mountains downhill from us. “That way is Estes Park.” Then he whipped back to tromping up the path, without allowing me to catch my breath. “Lawn Lake was made in 1903 by folks who wanted better water access to irrigate Loveland. So, they made the dam. There used to be a cart path for the horses, but it is long grown over. Now the only way to reach the dam is to walk. Six miles. Both ways. Isn’t it great?” There was no sign of sarcasm in his childlike grin. I would have snorted if I wasn’t struggling to breathe.

He gestured to our left. “This little crick is the Roaring River. Not impressive, but it is pretty.” He pointed right. “There’s the Cut Bank campsite.” I could barely hear the gurgling of the rocky river over my thundering heartbeat. My lip, forehead, chest, and back were dripping with sweat from the exertion and I had stripped off my top two layers, leaving only my tank top and hiking pants.

“Princess is prancing pretty good there.” Callum whispered next to me, breathing as hard as I was.

“Proficiently.”

Callum frowned. “What?”

“Your alliteration. It was good but, “Princess is prancing pretty proficiently,” would have been even more P’s.”

“Huh. You’re right. How about ‘The proud princess pranced pretty proficiently’?”

“Don’t forget pretentious,” I added.

“Can’t forget that.”

We met each other’s gaze in what was almost a peace agreement. I looked with a tinge of jealously at his dry skin, he was probably cooling and drying the air around him as we climbed. I smiled, then heard a shout ahead and hurried to catch up.

The school was 8,500 feet above sea level, and I liked to hike as much as the next Coloradan, but there was nothing, nothing, like hiking around the tree line. I felt my muscles scream as we crested over 10k, my lungs working overtime to feed my body some oxygen. Tim had slowed down a little; I assume it was a merciful response after he saw how red my face had turned.

Finally, we crested the hill and the land flattened. Lawn Lake rested in the bottom of high arching mountains, like water in the palm of God’s hand, his fingers reaching for the sky. The lake was massive, lined with tall pine trees in front of naked, treeless slate-gray rocks that jutted skyward. The persistent snow fell in waves on the side of the mountain, glinting white and bright in the sun against an impossible blue sky. The lake was clear to the bottom, and the alpine wind sliced across us, rippling the placid surface. Minnows dashed along the shore as several larger fish jumped to catch the last of their morning breakfast.

Tim stood with his hands casually on his hips surveying the landscape. “There is nothing like these hikes first thing in the morning. I have the best job.” His goatee curled wide to show his white teeth.

“How deep is the lake?” Xavier asked.

“About 26 feet at its deepest. It holds about, oh”—Tim waved his hand in a circle—“enough to fill the Bronco’s stadium three or four times. It’s a respectable lake. Not the biggest. But one of the oldest. That’s why we are here. The dam needs a good hard look.”

Callum walked up beside Tim. “You a Bronco’s fan?”

“I’m a Dennis Smith fan,” Tim answered. “We’ll see how the team shapes up this year.”

“He was amazing last season, I …”

I tuned out. A red rock had caught my attention and I set my hand on it. The taste of iron flooded my senses. A bright tingle burst through my fingertips as I hoisted the football sized rock up off the ground.

“Find something good?” a low voice said right beside me.

I squeaked and whirled, only to find Xavier grinning. I huffed a laugh. “You startled me.”

“I see that.” His eyes glanced down at the rock in my hand. “But you might want to put that rock back where it came from. And put it back … uh … how it came…”

I followed his gaze. A bright red handprint stood out starkly against the gray stone. In my fear, I had pulled all the iron to my hand. “Oops. Ah …. yeah. Right.” I cleared my throat and turned my back to Tim. The tang of the iron jolted through my arm and I pushed back from my core, gently scattering the metal back through the rock. It looked a little spotty, but no longer like a cave painting. Xavier nodded approvingly.

I tilted my head toward the lake. “The fish talking much today?”

“Ya know, the usual. ‘Blub blub, nom nom, glug glug.’ As they do.” His returning grin crinkled his eyes, exposing a dimple in his left cheek.

“As one would.” For a moment, I was lost in his smile and returned it like a fool.

With a clap of his hands, Tim turned to us. “Let’s get to it, team. First, we sample the water above and below the dam. We’ll evaluate the structures and flow through the pipes. Then we’ll finish our report. Should be pretty straightforward.”

We followed behind him toward the dam edge. “Is the dam pretty stable then?” I asked.

“Eh.” Tim scratched his goatee with an open mouth. “Well, a few years back someone said it was only in fair condition and needed to be rechecked when the lake was low. And a couple years after that they thought it should be checked right after the spring melt when it was full. It’s probably fine. This has been here nearly a hundred years. It’ll be here a hundred more.”

We set our packs down and started the work, the day passing slowly as we measured and checked the pH and took a break only for a quick lunch of summer sausage, cheese, and crackers. The iodine tablets that cleaned our water were so bitter, and only made marginally better by the powder we added to sweeten them. Yet, it was still a cold relief under the naked burning sun.

We moved below the dam after lunch; Tim and Xavier measured the flow of the river at various points, while I stood and searched for obvious cracks in the earthen wall. Callum shifted to my side with a frown etched deeply into his face.